Create the perfect "Partner Marketing Hub"

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Activation = partner-sourced revenue. Activating partnerships is what we all hope to do early and often. 

Partner marketing is usually the first step to activation. Depending on the stage and size of your program, you may have the luxury of doing custom content and even events with every partner at least once. For Google, this is not an option. What Google has created in the example below is a self-serve resource hub for all their partners' co-marketing needs. 

Included in this resource center is: 

  • Visual guidelines for each of their brands
  • Co-marketing collaboration application form
  • Asset approval submission and approval process documentation
  • Art generator
  • Legal terms generator
  • FAQs
  • Contact info for the partner team

For some of these resources, like the art generator, you may have to look to Ai-enabled SaaS to achieve. Let's take a look into how we would recommend creating a very useful partner marketing resource hub for your program. 

First, determine whether partners are advertising their partnership with you... or, if you are more of a behind-the-scenes partner for them. 

Some litmus tests for this decision: 

Is "{{your product}} experts" or "{{your product}} integrations" a searched term on google?

Do your partners want to post on social advertising the relationship? 

Also - do you have your marketing team buy-in to work partners into campaigns?

If any of these are a "yes", then you should have a resource center like this example - agency or tech.

So what can any team reading this do to produce a partner-activating marketing resource hub? Let's do it section by section:

Here's the example we are going to refer to: https://partnermarketinghub.wi...


Partner Marketing Hub section 1: "Let's get align on brand"

This is a section speaking about your brand positioning within the core verticals or ecosystems you sell in. 

Link off to a page that holds: 

  • Brand guidelines 
  • Asset packages - light / dark logo's, svg and png
  • Mission / vision statements
  • ICP details
  • What you're known for in your space
  • Some of your current partnerships

Partner Marketing Hub section 2: "Co-marketing opportunities"

My favorite section! This is where partners can get immediate value from your program when a shared deal may not be in the pipeline. You have some options here - form, co-marketing contact email inbox, an embedded Airtable or Notion list of open opportunities... 

But, if you are a Partnerhub® user, we've made this much easier by providing you a page on your profile you can link to so: 

  1. You can advertise offers with requirements, expiration dates, details, and links. 
  2. Non-partners will not see the opportunities unless they send a partnership request and your team accepts it.

Here's what that looks like from an agency-users' POV: 

And, for the agency reading this, you can host your co-marketing (or project) "Opportunities" inside Partnerhub® with a direct link found by clicking your company profile in the marketplace and this is what it will look like for other agencies viewing: 


Partner Marketing Hub section 3: "Asset approvals"

You don't want your partners creating off-brand assets. Link them to both the process description and the submission portal or form. This will help ensure proper approval of all co-branded assets your partners use. 

You can use a content and design collaboration SaaS, or a form. If you're on a budget, just use an embedded Google form.

Partner Marketing Hub section 4: "Tools to help you"

Google has two great tools for helping their partners with asset creation and legal clause creation. You probably don't have those in-house. Thankfully, there are tailor-made solutions out there powered by Ai, like Jasper and Copy.ai to help your partners with asset creation. You could also create unbranded assets you know your partners need (leaving a space for their logo). That's a common practice for most partner teams. Some assets you will want to create are: 

  • Side-by-side logo graphic for partner announcements.
  • Better together one-sheet
  • Better together slide deck
  • Badges... 

There is also a new product and service from Blake Williams for partner asset creation called Growth Story Check that out. Legal agreement creation can be something you also provide via a saas or form, depending how much added support you can handle based of your program terms and partner needs.

Here's what Google has in that section: 

Partner Marketing Hub section 5: "Need help?"

Finally, make sure you are offering help and some FAQs. That will close the loop and provide most of your partners what they need in order to work closer with you and your team on shared growth. 

If you liked this content, please make sure to subscribe to the newsletter and join Partnerhub® to get more partnerships-led growth strategies!