Partner marketers agree: Content sits at the heart of their channel marketing strategy. To be successful, B2B vendors need to produce more content to help their channel partners engage prospects at every step of the buyer journey—to close sales and generate revenue.
In fact, 88% of B2B partner marketers ranked content development as a top priority in 2022, according to Tendo Communications’ B2B Partner Marketing Insights 2022 report. This report surveyed decision makers and practitioners from B2B partner marketing and channel marketing teams, capturing their biggest challenges, successes, and priorities.
3 Channel Partner Marketing Best Practices for More Effective Content
Content investments take thoughtful planning and a strategic approach. Whether your team is creating “to-partner” content (recruitment emails or updates on program incentives and requirements, etc.) or “through-partner” content (co-marketing campaigns, co-brandable content assets, etc.), these three guidelines can help your content break through the noise and generate results:
- Share content that coaches partners.
- Create engaging content experiences.
- Explore thought leadership together.
Why Partner Marketing Content Has Become Indispensable
The growing emphasis on partner content correlates to a larger trend: High-quality B2B digital content is a key contributor to content marketing success. That’s because customers want to take greater control of the sales process, educating themselves as much as possible before contacting a sales representative. Successful vendors understand this and create a wealth of content that their partners can customize and share with prospects.
Tip #1: Share Content that Coaches Partners
The most impactful content you create is not always customer-facing. Vendors reap long-term benefits when they invest in helping partners improve their digital marketing capabilities. (Check out how we helped Cisco with its partner marketing content.)
Show them how to be great at marketing in your particular industry—the best marketing tactics to reach key decision makers; the latest trends in the B2B marketing world. Partners will appreciate your support. And their enhanced skills will grow your bottom line.
Tip #2: Create Engaging Content Experiences
A cohesive and delightful digital content experience is now critical to the customer journey. You must think more holistically about the content assets and webpages you create to help partners engage their customers about your product or service.
Sure, each piece of content should be engaging and helpful on its own—and mapped to a specific stage of the customer journey. “But also consider the connective tissue between content assets and webpages,” says Lindy Roux, executive vice president and partner at Tendo Communications.
“Create a connected content experience that allows your partners to progressively engage audiences with related content elements that all work together to fulfill their informational or transactional needs. That’s the essence of a great content experience.”
Tip #3: Explore Thought Leadership Together
Collaborate with your channel partners to create content assets that serve their marketing needs and speak directly to their customers. After all, your partners are on the front lines—they can share customer success stories, and they understand customer pain points and needs in detail.
Together, you can develop content assets that hit the mark and position both organizations as industry thought leaders invested in customer success. Your partners will deepen engagement with your brand and your solutions. They’ll also be more motivated to promote collaborative, co-branded content.
Drive Channel Partner Marketing Success with Tendo
For deeper insights into channel marketing challenges, successes and priorities, download Tendo’s report, B2B Partner Marketing Insights 2022.
And if you need help elevating your partner marketing program and content, we can provide customized support through our content creation services. Let us know what your business and marketing goals are—contact us today.
First published March 21, 2022
