1.
The rules of
engagement
Helping partners navigate
the buyer journey
Our quick fire guide to
boosting the returns from your
partner marketing activity

2.
ContentsAn alliance of equals..............................................................................1
The forces of resistance........................................................................2
Supporting awesome.............................................................................3
The Fantastic Five...................................................................................5
Delivering results...................................................................................7
Comprehensive coverage......................................................................8

3.
An alliance
of equals
Asking the key question in partner marketing
Let’s start with a number: $23 billion. That’s the estimated amount tech
vendors spend each year on channel marketing. In return they get to
deliver various types of local, regional, and global marketing activities that
covers all the items in the modern marketers toolbox: search, social, email,
automation, events, telemarketing etc.
What’s more, it’s a vital endeavour for extending the reach and capability
of a specific vendor. An effective and reliable channel can be a prized asset
for any tech company that can’t be everywhere at once. The challenge of
course is that despite the budgets involved, the results don’t always back
up initial expectations. ROI can be questionable, and the ability to offer a
truly joined up approach can prove an elusive goal.
All of which leads to a question asked by many a CMO or Marketing
Director: what can we do to improve the results being delivered by our
partners? Finding the answer can be difficult, especially when you consider
how the ‘rules’ of channel engagement have themselves subtly shifted in
recent years.
Gone are the days when partners fought to establish their credentials
with a large vendor. Today, it’s the vendors themselves who are under
increasing pressure to ‘wow’ partners who themselves can have multiple
relationships with multiple tech companies.
So what’s your ‘next best move’? Well, by reading on you’ll find some
useful insights, hints, and tips to get you started…
28%
13%
12%
10%
8%
shorter
sales
cycles
more sales
reps
achieving
quota
higher lead
conversion
rates
better
attainment
of team
quota
higher
acceptance
of marketing
leads
Did you know?
According to the Aberdeen
Group a fully enabled channel
can deliver:
1

4.
The forces
of resistanceWhat’s holding channel marketing back?
Why is channel and partner marketing such a tough egg to crack? Let’s take a brief look at
the main barriers to success:
A lack of control
It’s a simple truth that partners don’t necessarily report to the vendors they’re selling for, especially if
they’re promoting multiple product lines. What’s more, if they don’t depend on any one vendor for a
significant % of their revenue, they’re likely instead to focus on those vendors who offer the most
immediate benefits – or where relationships are strongest.
A focus on the ‘immediate’
While wanting to avoid sweeping generalisations, it’s probably fair to say that most partners tend to focus
on short-term, tactical activities – and lack the resources needed to map out multi-quarter campaigns. As a
result, the tendency can be to focus on activities deemed ‘safe’ (events etc.) rather than delivering a well-
planned strategic approach.
Limited resources
A large section of partners are going to have 1 or maybe 2 marketing headcount, which means if you’re not
providing dedicated, proactive support they’re unlikely to truly engage. That’s why the investment in tools
like marketing automation and ‘campaigns in a box’ are so essential for helping drive forward activities – and
for demonstrating ROI.
The challenge of funding
The problem with marketing development funds (MDF) is that not every partner is created equal, and
ensuring these resources are favourably distributed (and actually used!) is never guaranteed. In addition,
many partners don’t want to spend budget unless the ROI is easily achievable. As a result, vendors can
struggle to sell in a programme – and end up working with a few dependable partners.
Uneven growth
The Pareto Principle is certainly at work in channel marketing, where it’s common to see 80% of revenue
come from 20% of partners. The challenge here is that vendors will focus efforts on this 20%, but due to a
large ‘share of wallet’ see little in terms of growth. Where opportunities do exist (within the 80%) they’re
often held back by poor coverage.
2

5.
Supporting
AwesomeHelping partners show their true potential
Enablement is the ‘secret sauce’ behind any successful channel strategy. To understand why is to understand the
typed of ‘partner’ most tech firms are dealing with. A recent analysis of the US market from CompTIA suggests
that of 137,421 IT channel-oriented partners in that region, 88% were rated as ‘micro-channel firms’ – with nine
employees or fewer.
What this tells us (or at least reaffirms) is that the vast majority of channel partners ‘out there’ are going to
be severely restricted when it comes to resource. At best they’re going to have one or two over-stretched
marketers available for bringing any new activity to life (alongside limited budgets).
Hence the importance of enablement, which comes in a number of different flavours:
Enabling partners to be better educators
Great content is of course a useful starting point. But of equal importance is context, and delivering the
educational support needed to help partners fully understand the what, why, and how behind any product and
its promotion. Such assistance is aimed at ensuring they can speak with assurance in any customer meeting,
complete with hard numbers, compelling stats, and a clear analysis of the competitor landscape – thereby
boosting their credibility and win-rates.
Enabling partners to be better marketers
With resources at a premium, anything that can be done to help polish your partners’ skill sets will have a big
impact on their overall performance. Examples here include training
(online/face-to-face) in marketing essentials such as:
• Segmenting their market and target audiences
• Developing richly detailed buyer personas
• Building out targets lists (in a way that’s fully GDPR compliant)
• Creating a lead pipeline and the process for sales follow-up
There is of course the fear that you’ll be teaching them to ‘suck eggs’, but in our experience most partners
remain hungry for this type of guidance – and appreciative of any company prepared to invest in providing it.
3

6.
Enabling the delivery of great marketing content
Interesting, intriguing, and engaging content drives the marketing engine – but only if it’s relevant and timely.
The enablement piece here therefore relates to the buyer journey, and working through a variety of different
scenarios to determine right asset/right time, as well as ‘next best action’. Helping partners model the flow of a
campaign, and ensuring content is aligned to critical touchpoints, can make a huge difference to overall results.
Enabling the right options
Simply put, all the guidance and support mentioned above can serve to overwhelm a partner. Hence why effort
should also be directed toward helping them find the options that work best for their budget and level of
experience. To do that means creating a range of assets (from email and DM to banner ads and brochures) that
partners can combine in their own intuitive way. Armed with a menu of options, each partner can then make
selections based on their own comfort level and overall expectations.
Effort should also be directed
toward helping them find options
Enabling frictionless access to resources
Everyone wants an easy life. For partners, this starts by simplifying the way they can access and use your
marketing resources. By providing simple access to content management systems, and making assets easy to
find, customizable, and actionable, you’ll dramatically increase the likelihood they’ll be put to regular use.
Enabling the personal touch
Let’s face it, empowering your partners to achieve greatness is not too different from the process of direct
customer sales. Both demand multiple touchpoints across different comms channels in order to drive progress
toward a measurable ‘win’. But while you can call on a host of technologies to help you scale and optimize the
engagement, meaningful progress still comes down to personalities and relationships.
Meaningful progress still
comes down to personalities
and relationships
4

7.
The Fantastic
FiveIdentifying key areas to focus your attention
The mechanics of working with a partner, be they a re-seller, a technology partner, service partner, or
consultancy, will obviously differ from one company to the next – depending on what they’re trying to achieve,
and what services they bring to the table. That said, there are five key areas that when focused on help bring
clarity to any on-going engagement:
Focus area #1: People
Partnering is ultimately a people-led activity, especially when you’re trying to stand out from rival vendors. But
more than this, every successful co-marketing campaign is built on an understanding of the individuals involved.
Getting the people dimension right therefore begins by asking two key questions:
1. Does your partner have access to the necessary skills and knowledge needed to produce and execute
the required campaign activities (this should stretch to cover writers, designers, web developers,
analysts, inside sales etc.)?
2. Do they have a firm handle on who the target buyers are, and why these people should choose their
services and your products in tandem? Understanding the ‘who’ is essential for defining needs and
responses throughout a campaign
Focus area #2: Technology
The vast majority of partner campaigns will obviously involve the use of digital technologies. In particular they
require (at various stages) a content management system, marketing automation, CRM, and analytics. Or put
another way: the ability to make content easily available, to send it out to relevant contacts, to manage the
follow-up, and assess the results. It’s therefore a no-brainer to spend time before starting a campaign to make
sure these are all in place, alongside the processes needed to support their use.
Key recommendation: of all the tech involved, we’d suggest the most critical tool is automation – to help cut
timeframes, reduce the ‘burden of delivery’, and ensure relevant prospect engagement.
5

8.
Focus area #3: Buyer journey
Lead nurturing is central to any joint marketing activity, which brings us to the buyer journey. It’s here that
thought turns to the types of conversation your partners are able to inspire – depending upon a prospect’s
requirements and level of ‘progress’.
Questions to ask here include:
• Does your partner have a process in place for nurturing leads generated as part of the campaign?
• What qualification criteria are in place, and how will ‘inappropriate’ leads be filtered out in the quickest
way possible?
• Is there content in existence that maps to each stage of the buyer’s journey?
Focus area #4: Content
All the budget, resource, and energy you can muster will matter for little if you or your partner is pushing out
mediocre content. As we all know, the best chances of success comes with content that’s stand out, intriguing,
attention-grabbing, and designed to elicit a reaction.
It’s therefore important to ask:
• Has the partner customised content for the campaign and target audience, or are they relying on
generic, pre-existing, or product-focused assets?
• Are they relying on ‘safe’ formats such as ebooks and whitepapers, or are they open to more creative
approaches and delivering disruptive assets to drive up engagement?
Best chances of success comes
with content that’s stand out
Focus area #5: Reach
The reach of the campaign, and the marketable universe available, will have an obvious impact on both the scope
and success of any marketing campaign. Especially when you’re looking to go after new wins with companies
that have (possibly) never heard of you or the partner before – which is why it becomes a numbers game.
Some of your earliest questions should therefore be:
• Does the partner have the organic reach (email contact lists, social following etc.) required to meet the
campaign objectives?
• If not, how what are the plans for expanding the target audience (in a way that’s GDPR compliant) – and
what’s it going to cost?
6

9.
Delivering Results
Aproven track record of making partner marketing work
Who or what is Quantum Marketing? The short answer is that we’re an end-to-end demand generation agency
focused on the B2B tech sector – with 20+ years of experience up our sleeve. We work with the biggest names in
tech, dynamic new start-ups, and everyone else in between – and can point to some pretty impressive numbers
when it comes to delivering partner activity:
15%
22% 53%
23%
68%17%
220 MILLIONsales
lift
sales lift
market
savings
for a global telecom company
in partner pipeline
lift in social
across 6 countries
based on time a tech giant spent
running previous campaigns And a resulting
23%sales increase
for one device
manufacturer
within 6 months for one tech vendor
running a centralised programme
increase in device sales
following the development of
a partner toolkit for consumer
electronics company
rise in engagement for a
large manufacturer, with
support from partners
in over 40 countries
7

10.
Comprehensive
coverage
Quantum offers a host of proven channel services
Who or Our Channel Services incorporate partner recruitment activities; campaign management, lead
generation, and a whole lot more besides:
Strategic
planning
Where we can assist you in
crafting the ideal channel strategy,
empowering partners, and ensuring
the right coverage by region and
service.
Campaign
management
Where we can both define and
implement partner activities,
alongside the strategic management
to ensure everything is working
smoothly.
Marketing
automation
Where we help marketers plan,
coordinate, manage, and measure
campaigns that drive the right
message to the right prospect at
the right time.
Partner
recruitment
Where we help identify, assess,
on-board, and activate suitable
organisations, based on their
expertise, location, size, and
potential.
Insights and
data strategy
Where we help you expand your
marketable universes in support
of a campaign, as well as providing
deep insights into audience
expectations.
Account
Based
Marketing
Where we can support partners
in delivering ABM programmes at
scale, alongside the one-to-one
messaging needed to generate
interest.
Creative
development
Where we can help shape the ‘big
idea’ behind an activity, as well
as work with you and partners to
develop customisable assets that
are good to go.
Demand
generation
Where we create high quality
opportunities and sustainable
pipelines for partners to help
justify their marketing spend and
boost your sales targets.
Reporting
and analysis
Where we have the tools and the
proven processes in place to keep
you up-to-date on the rate of
progress and any issues holding us
back.
8

11.
ConclusionWant to put us to the test?
It’s amazing what can start with a simple conversation. For instance by
getting in touch we’ll quickly get to the bottom of what you’re looking
to achieve from your partner marketing. That includes objectives,
opportunities, and any known obstacles. Then we can talk through
our ability to get you there, including an overview of relevant services
and examples of where we’ve delivered similar activities – including
the results.
No obligations.
No hard sell; just plain,
straightforward advice
and insight.
You can contact Quantum Marketing by visiting:
quantummarketing-group.com
9

12.
AboutQuantumMarketingThe one B2B demand generation agency for technology
At Quantum we can point to a long track record of success since first opening our doors in 1999. These are
success stories centred on delivering a consistent ROI for large blue-chip tech brands, smaller mid-market
businesses, and everything else in between.
All of which means we’re passionate about generating leads for our clients, and delivering opportunities
that have an immediate impact on sales pipelines and customer experiences.
To do this, we offer a range of services that collectively enable Quantum to offer a truly end-to-end
engagement model:
• Demand generation
• Insights and data strategy
• Creative development
• Channel partner services
• GDPR compliance
• Audience building
• Account based marketing
• Digital social marketing
• Marketing automation
• Inside sales
• Proposition enhancement
• Bid support sales enablement
T: +44 (0) 118 902 2500
F: +44 (0) 118 902 2501
E: enquiries@qm-g.com
W: www.quantummarketing-group.com
Quantum Marketing Group
Abbey Gate, 57-75 Kings Road
Reading, Berkshire
RG1 3AB