Partner marketing is undergoing rapid transformation, branching out from its origins in affiliate marketing to include various sectors such as influencer marketing, strategic brand-to-brand partnerships, channel agreements, and other emerging domains.
From our point of view, partner marketing is highly undervalued when it comes to growth tools. In fact, high-growth brands are significantly more inclined to incorporate marketing partnerships into their overall strategy, with a threefold higher likelihood compared to stagnant firms.
However, simply starting a marketing partnership and hoping for growth is insufficient. Instead, it is important to strategically and meticulously plan and manage partnerships to guarantee that both parties achieve their objectives. This is where a partner marketing plan becomes essential! In this discussion, we will delve into the definition of a partner marketing plan and its rightful place within your partner marketing strategy.
What is a partner marketing plan?
A partner marketing plan is a comprehensive document that details the concepts, objectives, tactics, and actions associated with a partnership. Essentially, it formalizes partner discussions, ensuring that all agreed-upon aspects can be easily referenced in a centralized location.
Having a partner marketing plan is essential to ensure that all partners are aligned and united. Additionally, it enhances visibility and fosters a sense of responsibility for the agreed-upon actions in both partners.
Your partner marketing strategy guide
In order for your partnerships to thrive and be successful, a partner marketing plan must be an integral part of a comprehensive partner marketing strategy. Prior to developing a partner marketing plan, there are several essential steps that your business needs to undertake, including those before seeking a suitable partner.
Follow this simple guide to ensure that your partner marketing strategy is as strong and effective as possible.
1. Make Greater Use of Your Customer Data
Considering what you know about your shoppers and buyers at three different stages can be highly valuable. Your first-party customer data, as a distinct asset, can assist in the development of improved programs and achieving better outcomes. By attaining a comprehensive understanding of your customers, you can enhance programs, refine offers, and personalize messages to take advantage of lucrative market opportunities.
- PRE-CLICK What sorts of offers and information are the best motivators of first actions? How do you message for different stages in the buyer journey?
- POST-CLICK/PRE-PURCHASE What measurable signals do anonymized shoppers provide to us before they buy? Are we collecting the information necessary to leverage buyer behavior for more effective tactics? Think in particular about their product searches, add to carts, and places in the buyer journey that users seem to get off track or lost.
- POST PURCHASE What insights do we have about our actual buyers versus our shoppers? Do they skew differently? Do there appear to be different buyer segments among our purchasers? To cite an example use case for the travel industry, this could also mean insights from booked versus consumed reservations.
2. Understand and Leverage the Strengths of Your Leading Partners
Establishing a strong foundation for successful win-win strategies involves understanding, engaging with, meeting payment obligations, and maintaining a direct connection with your major partners. Although it may sound simple, personal connections hold immense value in the partnership industry. Partners can be motivated and rewarded through various proactive methods to enhance customer acquisition, accelerate conversions, increase lifetime value, and promote trial-to-subscription models, among other approaches.
3. Explore Technological Solutions to Market Opportunities
In the ever-evolving martech industry, it is increasingly crucial to incorporate the latest and emerging technologies. Ensure that you find a convenient and budget-friendly method to stay informed about technologies that could be pertinent to your business. This may involve receiving regular insights from your team or agency, familiarizing yourself with recent third-party tech integrations, or staying updated on internal product enhancements related to your tracking solution or network.
4. Watch Your Competitors and Amazon
It is important to keep ahead of your competitors while also regularly assessing the programs and strategies they are currently employing. Many companies fail to adequately consider how competitors are altering their approaches in the market, which could result in significant costs for you or your brand. Periodically evaluate all aspects of your competitors’ programs to gauge their efficacy compared to your own.
Partners possess valuable knowledge regarding “what is working” in various areas, including your own field. However, it is important to note that partners should not, and likely will not, disclose confidential information about your competitors. It is advisable to be careful with partners who claim they can provide such information, as it may result in your plans being exposed to your rivals. Nevertheless, partners possess a distinct market perspective that can greatly benefit you and should be utilized to achieve optimal outcomes.
5. Identify and Pursue Top Tier Strategic Brand Partners
The trend of brands collaborating with each other for co-marketing and cross-promotion is on the rise. SurfStitch, a leader in lifestyle apparel, and Hawaiian Airlines have recently partnered, serving as an excellent demonstration of this type of alliance. We consider brand-to-brand partnerships to be a significant opportunity for generating revenue in the future, and we advocate for all our clients to seek out intelligent and strategic collaborations with other prominent brands.
6. Set clear goals
To begin with, it is essential to establish specific objectives that you believe a marketing partnership can assist in achieving.
Partner marketing can serve as an effective means of achieving growth. However, forming a partnership without a specific objective would be pointless. Likewise, if there is an alternate approach that can better accomplish the desired goal, establishing a partnership is not necessary at this time.
7. Identify relevant partnership types
After determining your desired objective, you can commence contemplating the types of partnerships that can assist you in reaching it.
- Affiliate marketing
- Content marketing partnerships
- Co-branding
- Comarketing
- Distribution marketing partnerships
- Sponsorship marketing
- Product placement
- Incentive marketing partnerships
- Referral agreements
- Charity partnerships
Although these methods involve collaborating with a partner for brand or product promotion, they have varying characteristics that can offer distinct advantages to your organization. For example, if you aim to enhance your brand’s image, particularly if you have faced negative publicity, a charity partnership would be a suitable option. Conversely, if you desire to expand into new markets, a comarketing or distribution marketing partnership would be highly beneficial.
8. Picture your ideal partners
You can now start developing a concept of the appearance of your desired partners, ensuring that they have the ability to collaborate with you effectively in order to accomplish the goals you specified!
9. Recruit partners
Once you have completed all the preparations, you can now proceed with the recruitment of partners to collaborate, which can mutually benefit both your business and theirs.
If you have made the choice to establish a conventional partnership program, such as for locating affiliates, it is necessary to create a marketing plan to promote it. This may include utilizing methods such as paid advertising or email marketing.
10. Action your plan, measure, hone and repeat
Afterwards, all that remains is to implement your plan! The advantage of having a partner marketing plan is that it will clearly outline the tasks that you and your partner must undertake. Therefore, it is now the perfect moment to turn your plan into a tangible outcome and, with a bit of luck, enjoy the rewards of a successfully executed plan!
Parting Thoughts
In order to thrive in the captivating partnership industry, one must possess a combination of unwavering commitment and adaptability to effectively respond to evolving situations.
If your program is already running efficiently and bringing in revenue, congratulations. It is evident that your program possesses numerous exceptional qualities. However, achieving optimum results in this field demands continuous reassessment; it necessitates exploring beyond your current practices to identify additional ways to enhance your outcomes in the future.
