Partner Marketing – What the Math Says

If 75% of World Trade flows indirectly (source: WTO), how are your marketing strategy and digital marketing budget reflecting this reality? 

Let’s do some math.

Gartner says 2023 marketing budgets are up around 9.5% of revenue, and 56% of marketing budgets are focused on digital marketing.* If you are a $1B company, then that’s $53.2M for digital marketing (at least). And if 75% of your business comes through your partners, that’s almost $40M that should be aligned with your indirect channel – which is 42% of the TOTAL company marketing budget.

How much should you invest in partner marketing?

Do your own math for your own organization. How much of your digital marketing budget and activity (online content, web syndication, social media management, email marketing, paid search, display, paid social) is focused on your partners, driving your messages through them to their customers, and driving customers & leads to THEIR sites?

Is it anywhere close to 75%? 

Don’t worry – we haven’t met a company yet that has aligned with this reality – yet. Most have channel marketing budgets completely separate from their corporate marketing budgets, even though we have been hearing over and over again that the customer buying journey is not linear, that it touches multiple partners, and that “the average customer trusts seven partners along their journey.”

If your digital marketing budget is focused on your own brand and driving new customers to yoursite.com, how do partners (who are delivering most of your revenue) integrate into your overall brand messaging and marketing strategy? 

• How are you building your branding and your marketing messages with your partners in mind?
• How do you ensure that your brand message flows through your partners in compliance with your brand standards?
• How do you integrate your partners into your digital marketing metrics?
• How does your digital marketing automation include your partner ecosystem?

Does Through Channel Marketing Cost More?

A through-partner marketing initiative doesn’t have to come from an entirely new budget.  In fact, we recommend that it doesn’t. We always recommend that your existing content be repurposed for an audience that is seeing it co-branded with your partners, and that you take a portion of your existing digital advertising budget and realign it to the partners who bring you business. Some companies will reallocate their unspent MDF to a through-partner marketing initiative.

Partner Marketing isn’t a silo anymore

Instead of making partner marketing a separate silo of your marketing team, you can use through-channel marketing automation and services to cut across the marketing function and integrate partners into your full go-to-market strategy.

Through-partner marketing (TPM) automation enables you to do exactly this – and at scale. Employing through-partner marketing as a managed service helps you implement months faster, and you don’t have to buy/learn new MarTech or worry about disruption if your SME leaves your marketing team. A partner marketing managed services provider like AscendX Digital can help set you up for success by implementing processes and facilitating cross-functional support across your organization. Plus, you only pay for what you need.

At AscendX Digital, we also deliver partner-focused digital advertising (Google Ads, Paid Social, and Display Ads) using proprietary technology (developed with Google) that enables you to create a SINGLE campaign with as many partners as you want, and without competing against your corporate ad spend.

The technology displays your ads on Google search results pages, cobranded with your select partners. It routes buyers directly to their local partners for a super-efficient conversion model.  AI and big data tools perform thousands of automated optimizations on the campaigns, delivering significant performance and cost efficiencies. (You can’t get this anywhere else.)

We believe in the Managed Services model because it allows you to integrate and implement through-partner digital marketing strategy – more than just technology – across your partner ecosystem.  It enables you full control over your marketing messages and activity through your partners. And, it helps you to measure performance and ROI – by initiative, by campaign, and by partner. 

If your partners are not online, neither are you

Equally important, Managed Through-Partner Marketing gets your partners aligned and online. If they’re active and online, they get found by buyers in their purchase journey. Since most partners (90%) are SMBs and most (84%) don’t have in-house marketing resources, they need your help. They need your content, and they want it along with their own brand. Most need help to stay active with social or email marketing, and they want you to invest in their long-term success. 

Having your partners found by buyers during the digital customer journey is so important now that if they are not online, neither are you. 

Aligning your marketing budget with the way that revenue flows just makes sense.  We know that Managed Through-Partner Marketing works, and we can make it work for you, and your partners.