TPM Best Practice Series – Partner Communication

This is Part #3 of our Through-Partner Marketing (TPM) Best Practice Series, where we will discuss partner communication – what, why, and how – and its importance to the success of your TPM program.  

The first partner communication will usually be about the TPM program itself, and what’s in it for the partners. There’s a ton of value for partners and you want them to be excited and eager to participate. 

You want the partners to see that while it is beneficial to their business and relationship with you, it also brings significant value to their overall business. Here are some of the key partner benefits to consider:

• Through-partner marketing automation immediately provides a dynamic experience for customers on partner sites. High-value vendor content helps partners build trust, develop relationships, improve conversions, and generate leads. In a recent Foundry study, buyers reported they were 74% more likely to consider an IT vendor that educates them throughout each stage of the buying process. Buyers are looking online. Having good, credible, co-branded content will keep potential buyers on the partners’ sites longer.
• Partners get access to content and marketing resources they would never be able to afford on their own. Technical briefs, white papers, videos, and industry analyst reports are vendor/partner co-branded and immediately available to customers in their digital journey. Partners can effortlessly leverage the deeper marketing pockets of their vendors.
• A new online and consistent social media presence builds the partners’ own brand awareness and credibility, influencing potential buyers. LinkedIn has a billion members in more than 200 countries globally, and 84% of C-level buyers say they are influenced by social media for making purchase decisions. And, social media algorithms reward consistency which gets them in front of more buyers more often. 
• No in-house marketing resources are required, which is a big deal for partners. Most partners (90%) are small/medium-sized businesses, and 84% of them do not have in-house marketing resources. Vendor marketing programs that require partners to log in and execute campaigns will be ignored by most partners. With Through-Partner marketing automation, once the partners onboard, there is nothing required of them, and the automation does all of the work.
• Partners will always have current content that is vendor-compliant. No need for Vendors to audit partner sites, and partners always meet their program obligations.
• Partners get lots of new potential buyers on their sites. Of course, the email and social promotion will drive traffic to your content on their sites, but once the potential buyer is there, they can easily navigate around the partner site to any content of interest. 
• Partners get leads. As customers interact with content – gated and not – information is shared with partners, so they know who is interested in their solutions, allowing them to follow up with potential buyers.

How do you communicate your program to your partners?

In Part #1 of this series, we talked about the importance of cross-functional integration. If you’ve done the work to get buy-in across the organization, and if you’ve integrated the TPM program into your partner program, you can and should leverage your partner sales teams. The Partner Account Managers / Partner Business Managers are the first point of contact for partners and it’s our experience that when the PAMs/PBMs are promoting the program and its value, more partners participate.

When we work with clients, we use several communication strategies, such as webinars, 1/1 meetings with partners, brochures, and videos. Launching the program at your partner events, providing demos for partners, and incentivizing participation all help to get partners to engage.

Stay top of mind with ongoing communication.

Now that you have partners engaged and excited to participate, communication doesn’t stop there. In fact, it’s just begun. There was a time when TCMA/TPMA was promoted as “set it and forget it”, but that would be a mistake. The last thing you want is for your partners to “forget it.” Ongoing partner communication keeps your program top of mind. 

Best practices include:

• At the beginning of each period (quarter, half, etc.), summarize the content that you’ll be sharing on your partners’ websites and through their social channels and email lists. Let them know what campaigns you’ll be running so they can follow along.
• We recommend periodically highlighting specific content for partners regularly – monthly or quarterly. Remind them about specific products or services, the content, and collateral on their site that will be posted, and give them guidance on sales strategies they can employ.
• Regular analytics reporting is critical.  Much of the activity builds awareness and their brand, which needs to be communicated. Tell your partners how many cobranded impressions they’ve had and how much traffic you’ve sent to their website. Tell them how many emails you’ve sent, open rates, and click rates. Tell them which content categories had the most activity, and how many documents were downloaded. Share their social media outreach metrics – how many posts, how many clicks, and which posts had the most customer interest and engagement. Summarize their lead information.

Be proactive.

While you can post this information on your portal, we recommend that you set up a proactive partner communications cadence. Partners want information they can easily consume and that shows real value. Be sure to copy the PAMs/PBMs and include the quarterly metrics in the partner QBRs.

Stay connected, communicate value, and keep your partners engaged!