Partner Marketing Works Only If You Treat Is as a Function, and Not a Favor | HackerNoon

Partner Marketing is still a relatively new field. For a long time, it sat under Demand Gen or Growth — sometimes owned by whoever had capacity, sometimes a shared effort across departments. But in the last couple of years, that’s changed quickly. “Partnerships and Alliances” is now a formal revenue category in many companies, including startups. Most fast-growing tech businesses now have dedicated Partnerships teams, and increasingly, Partner Marketing is becoming one of the most strategic levers in Go-to-Market.

I’ve led Partner Marketing at a fast-scaling B2B company, growing the channel from zero to millions of euros pipeline and revenue over a year. This article shares how I built that (and learnings obtained along the way) — I will talk about the campaigns structure, mindset shifts, and cross-functional enablement that helped make it work.

1. Start with ecosystem fit — not logo hype

This is where most Partner Marketers go wrong from the start. They prioritise brand name over real alignment. Instead, begin by looking at your ICP and mapping your ecosystem around it. Ask:

• Who already sells to the same audience?

• Who solves a different problem in the same buying journey?

• Who has similar sales cycles and GTM motion? It’s tempting to chase big names, but if your buyers don’t overlap, you won’t see results — no matter how many co-branded assets you ship.

2. Use data to prioritise projects, you won’t move far with guesswork

Once you have a list of potential partners, it’s time to bring in the data. There are tools that integrate yours and partner’s CRMs and help surfacing actual customer overlap, open opportunities, and exciting new prospects in the partner’s database. When I started prioritising partners based on real account data, it changed everything — campaign outcomes, partner relationships, internal buy-in. I stopped guessing who we should work with and started proving it.

3. Build together or don’t bother (much)

Here’s something I learned the hard way: if one side is doing all the work, it’s not a partnership — it’s outsourced content. If you want a campaign to perform, co-create it. That means:

• Building messaging together

• Aligning on goals and follow-up

• Sharing the lift across both teams

  The best partners treat campaigns like internal launches. They loop in Sales, enable CS, share outcomes, and invest time. If they’re not up for that — it’s probably not worth your time either.

4. Move fast and learn as you go

There’s no such thing as a perfect first campaign. My first partner GTM content was approved in a very short term as soon as the partnership was given a green light. We knew it wasn’t too polished, but we shipped it — and used the feedback to tighten everything we did after. Momentum builds trust. Once Sales sees you’re doing things that bring them the engaged leads, the work you do will get more validation internally.

5. Track revenue and pipeline, not just leads

Forget about the leads. Shift your mind to:

• Pipeline sourced
• Opportunities opened
• But even if you are not measured on it, keep your eyes on: Revenue closed

In my case, Partner Marketing was directly tied to Sales targets, not vanity metrics. This really helps for Leadership to care, for Marketing to lean in, for Sales to open up their time and resources.

This led to this meme shared in our internal channel because interest in leveraging Partnerships internally was growing together with the numbers:

6. Think of Partner Marketing as of an amplifier

Partner Marketing doesn’t replace your Strategic Partnerships team — it supports and scales their work. It makes Partner Managers’ work not just about referral volume. A solid partner marketing motion helps you:

• Activate customers who aren’t showing intent signals yet;
• Re-engage dormant accounts across both ecosystems;
• Move from passive referrals to a structured GTM play.

But you need the right GTM playbook. If your partners sell to SMB, your campaigns will look very different from those targeting enterprise buyers with 18-months sales cycles. In those cases, you’ll need a shared ABM strategy and tight alignment between marketing and partnerships on content sequencing and touchpoints.

7. Cross-functional buy-in isn’t optional — it’s a must

None of this works in a vacuum. To run Partner Marketing well, you need Sales, CS and Marketing on board. That means:

• Sales sees how you help source or accelerate deals;

• CS understands how this impacts expansion and retention (and both CS and Sales give back, too, as Partnerships and Partner Marketing is about giving back to the Partner!);

• Marketing is willing to resource campaigns — even when they didn’t own the original idea.

  Sales buy-in is usually easier. They want warm leads and credible entry points into accounts. Marketing is the trickiest one from my own experience. Marketing is already running toward their own OKRs. Until your leadership team builds the target and attribution structure that doesn’t make teams to compete against each other, you’ll struggle to scale. It doesn’t mean you can’t take things in your own hands and challenge the status quo — using the data.

Final thoughts

Partner Marketing works — but only when it’s treated as a function, not a favour. Done right, it creates leverage across your entire GTM engine. It helps you tap into warm networks, generate real pipeline, drive revenue, and build trust inside and outside the business. If you’re just starting, map your ICP, prioritise based on data, and get to your first campaign quickly. If you’re already running partner campaigns, ask yourself: are we aligned across functions, and are we tracking what really matters? Because when it clicks — it’s a channel like no other.