Partnerships are critical requiring a digital strategy
Partnerships once established tend to be ignored by many companies. It doesn’t need to be that way with new digital marketing technologies. If you’re unsure how to leverage your partnerships fully, you could soon be lagging behind and losing opportunities.
They have always been a crucial strategy for companies looking to grow in new or unfamiliar markets, tap new customer segments, or sell additional products or services. Partnerships have also always been notoriously tricky to manage work. Digital marketing can change the situation and make them more dynamic and fruitful.
Ensure you map your partnerships and align your budget allocation linking everything to your marketing growth strategy, including partner events, campaigns, training and programs. For best outcomes, your partnership marketing budget allocated to digital marketing should reflect the revenue generated from the relationships.
Current partnership marketing revenue is an essential piece of the pie in today’s business environment. It requires an understanding of digital strategy to maximise the potential of future relationships and growth.
Digital marketing and partnerships go hand in hand
In today’s hyper-competitive, hyper-connected marketplace, quality partnerships have taken on greater strategic importance as well as complexity. Both business-to-consumer and business-to-business companies are in a race to develop innovative user experiences, expand distribution, and capture new sources of revenue.
Many leaders are discovering their future which depends not just on what their own companies can do, but on the capabilities, functions, channels, and insights they can tap by partnering with others.
Digital marketing can provide a robust look at the various criteria each partnership may have to offer. Implement appropriate digital technology, so everyone wins. It could be the catalyst required to make each of your partnerships more meaningful and worthwhile.
Companies can rarely reimagine their business in a digital world without the external support of good partnerships. Digital strategies stand in stark contrast to traditional approaches to product and service innovation.
Improve partnerships management with dashboards
Measure what you manage. Too often there’s a tendency to view partnerships through the lens of past activity. While this provides some value, it shouldn’t be as critical as other key indicators which can influence sustainable growth.
As users jump from experience to experience with increasing speed, and traditional sources of scale and differentiation decline in value, the need to build capabilities for managing and delivering against new partnership rules has never been higher.
With old methods, creating productive partnerships can be expensive because significant partners will typically demand differentiated solutions unique to their wants and needs. Developing a partnering approach that combines scalability with low-cost is critical.
Designing technology and tools around specific partnership objectives and metrics can give your company a broader and longer-term competitive advantage.
What to track on a partnership dashboard
A useful dashboard focuses on a handful of measures that show whether each partnership is creating value now and building momentum for the future. Too many metrics can hide the signals that matter, so start small and refine as you learn.
- Leads and enquiries generated through each partner, including referral links and co-branded campaigns.
- Conversion rates from partner leads compared with your other channels.
- Revenue and margin attributed to each relationship.
- Engagement with shared content, events and training.
- Partner activity, such as how often they promote your offer or use the resources you provide.
Using digital marketing to strengthen each partnership
Digital marketing gives partners practical ways to work together rather than simply sharing a logo. Co-hosted webinars, joint blog articles, shared email campaigns and cross-promotion on social media can all introduce you to audiences who already trust your partner.
Make it easy for partners to promote you. Provide ready-to-use content, images, tracked links and clear messaging so they can share your offer without extra work. The simpler you make it, the more likely they are to take part.
Review results together on a regular basis. Sharing dashboard data openly builds trust, highlights what is working and helps both sides agree on where to invest next.
Without digital marketing, old partnership management leads to the same old outcomes. What dashboards can you use to manage for improving outcomes?
