Why partner marketing is critical to establishing more meaningful connections with customers

For organizations with partner programs, 2024 is set to deepen the nature of collaboration, as the channel becomes a crucial avenue for building more meaningful relationships with customers and driving new business. In recent years, sales departments have not seen the headcounts and levels of investment return to pre-pandemic levels, largely due to ongoing economic pressures. Buyer preferences are also shifting to technology partners that offer more value through a greater understanding of the solutions and services available to them outside their core provider’s ecosystem.  

These factors are bringing about a closer reliance on channel partners to become the irreplaceable, trusted technology advisors for customers. 

A hybrid approach 

There is now acknowledgment from vendors that they cannot be the sole provider of everything their customers need. This means that their channel partners must have the knowledge of the wider vendor offerings and ecosystem in order to understand where and how solutions can be integrated and deliver real value. Customers ultimately want to know that their own IT estate is meeting business requirements and that their technology partners are invested in helping them navigate the evolving and increasingly fragmented and complex technology landscape. 

Hybrid cloud strategies are a typical example of the paradigm shift that has led to vendors moving away from a protectionist state of mind, with the likes of Google, AWS, and Microsoft accepting that many customers do not want to rely on one provider to manage their entire IT posture.  

Vendors understand this dynamic and are increasingly using their partner ecosystems, and the expertise within, to cut through and deliver added value to customers. The result of this evolution is that organizations with partner programs now also want assurances that their channel partners have wider knowledge of the competitor landscape and can embed themselves as advisors, rather than only as funnels of proprietary offerings.   

When operated effectively, this strategy creates new opportunities and routes to market, as complementary products and services can be added around competitor offerings. Critically, it also establishes the greater emotional and personal touch that businesses are increasingly seeking. Partners must therefore pivot messaging toward showing an understanding of the complex needs of customers and provide confidence in their ability to assist with the integration of technology that sits outside the master vendor’s ecosystem.  

Defining partner messaging 

Vendors will, of course, have their role to play in defining messaging and helping partners become well-rounded and essential consultants. It’s not enough for them to communicate targets around products and services without providing partners with the essential tools and educational assets that will empower them to confidently sell them. Getting this right will certainly be a factor in determining the success of partner programs in 2024.  

Customer data, and insights from this data, for example, will be crucial when it comes to defining messaging and meeting the real (as opposed to the perceived) needs of customers. By analyzing customer feedback and conversations, as well as their long-term technology roadmaps, vendors and partners are able to understand the key anxieties and purchasing triggers and to adjust go-to-market messaging accordingly so that decision-makers are engaged effectively at key inflection points in their buying journeys.  

Through acting as a technology-agnostic advisor, partners can further embed themselves into customer environments and technology adoption roadmaps. The obvious benefit here is that partners are privy to vendors’ product roadmaps and therefore can align engagement around nascent technologies with customers’ business objectives.  

The advent of generative AI is a clear example of how this dynamic works in practice. With the release of ChatGPT, businesses quickly began exploring the technology’s potential to enhance operations. With the inside track on vendors’ AI offerings, partners could educate customers on the potential value of proprietary offerings, stealing a march on their market rivals by showing how the technology could be adopted and integrated into the existing stack, and the benefits of choosing their core vendor’s solutions.  

In essence, effective partners still wear their team colors, but they will understand and appreciate the potential value of players among their rivals. In 2024, this is the mentality that will deliver success for vendors and their channel partners.