Inspire partners with campaigns that highlight business value

It started with a vision of scale. More than 100 partner events in a year. Offered in-person and virtually across multiple regions, time zones, and languages. It was a daunting partner marketing challenge.

The challenge

This corporate partner team had a fundamental objective. Develop and provide technical and sales training to help partners grow in-house talent. The training would accelerate timelines for building and deploying customer solutions while still maintaining strong customer outcomes.

The initiative required strong branding to differentiate it from the existing training series. It also needed a clear, persuasive narrative on why these training offerings were worth a partner’s time and attention.

With any series of events like this, the primary marketing objective is to drive awareness and, ultimately, get butts in seats. The team was limited to a select number of marketing channels that were already used for similar offerings to the same audience. They needed tactics to land their messages while avoiding oversaturating channels or cannibalizing their wider audience by going after them with competing promotions.

The plan

The answer sounded simple. We needed to build and execute a year-over-year integrated marketing plan that aligned promotional schedules based on event type to reach the targeted partner segments.

Our partner event marketing plan spanned five key pillars:

1. Holistic partner messaging: Frame all event offerings with messaging focused on key partner needs and benefits. This was used as a wrapper for all activities, establishing a consistent narrative throughline.
2. Partner thought leadership: Keep partners coming back for more by using leading voices from within the company and the partner base to provide an authentic, actionable view to inspire other partners to act.
3. Selective event marketing: Use select events and moments to drive targeted actions in volume. Land core messages while a broad audience is already tuning in.
4. Multi-channel promotion: Use existing audiences—internal teams, executives, partners, brand channels—to share pre-created content for events and other key motions as relevant to their priorities.
5. Paid demand generation: Run targeted paid campaigns for specific moments to reach a broad audience outside of the company’s existing ecosystem.

Establish the “why” with consistent messaging and branding

It’s easy for core messages and purpose to get muddied and lost in the noise of competing events and offerings. We knew that if partners understood the intrinsic value their employees and their company would gain from events, they would commit their time and attention.

Focusing on the day-to-day business challenges the training addressed, we developed a hero narrative and visual brand to illustrate real outcomes and value partners gain for their businesses by participating. Partners were hearing a consistent message aligned with their unique needs.

A program brand style guide reinforced the messaging and look of all communications, making it easy to identify this team’s events from the larger swath available.

And with multiple teams supporting events, these resources provided a single source of truth to inform thought leadership and marketing content creation—no matter who took the lead.

Use a channel mix to build awareness and drive registrations

We knew empowering the partners with self-serve information was essential to marketing to this audience. We worked with the partner team to establish a landing page hub where partners see the latest upcoming events and training opportunities. With a single location with always-on marketing information, we could effectively promote all events at scale rather than individual offerings. The tactic reduced costs and channel overload and streamlined the partner experience.

Our team supplemented the always-on marketing site with a mix of marketing tactics and channels—custom event invites, thought leadership blog posts, nurture campaigns, newsletters, social, and paid media—to reach partners.

The outcome

In the program's first year, the team saw more than 500M+ paid and organic social impressions, 5M+ link clicks to visit event pages, and 250K+ event registrations.

But the most important outcome? The partners became vocal advocates for the event program itself, creating a halo effect with a lasting impact. Positive quotes from event participants allowed us to drive out new messages and benefits in other promotional materials. Social posts by event attendees helped us reach an even broader audience. We also interviewed strategic partners at events, which allowed us to publish in-depth thought leadership blogs and videos with real-world outcomes and actionable insights.

The beauty of partner marketing programs

Whether you’re focused on partner, event, or content marketing—or a beautiful combination of these tactics—Delightful can simplify the experience. Our knowledge and understanding of the intricacy and challenges of each approach allow us to formulate and execute a custom strategy that works for you and your needs, time and time again.