It’s almost 6 years to the day since I started my channel marketing consultancy business. I chose She/Her as my business name at the time because it reflected the fact I was working for myself, it demonstrated my pronouns (which less people were using back then), and it spoke about the way I wanted to run my business – based on a more collaborative, partnership-based approach.

To the outside, your channel and partner marketing probably looks successful. You’ve got a bunch of partners signed up. You’ve got regular campaigns going out. You’ve probably got a partner portal. It might even have content in it! You’ve spent a fortune on your tech stack. You’re full of ideas that you want to implement. So why won’t your board spend more on your channel and partner marketing?

What I’m seeing right now in tech, and especially SaaS companies, is the constant pressure to do more, with less. And no surprise, this is especially the case in partner and channel marketing. Budgets are largely flat (despite sales looking like they are picking up…this doesn’t seem to be filtering through to marketing budgets right now!), buyer journeys are more complex than ever, and more people are looking for added value in every sale. In this environment, one thing is clear: partners and alliances are no longer optional – they’re central to growth.

I took part in a webinar recently which talked about the power of the channel and how partnering has become so important. On this call, Jay McBain, analyst for Canalys, described the last decade as being the ‘era of the ecosystem’.

The biggest problem in channel and partner marketing that I see at the moment is not a lack of activity. It’s an overwhelming amount of activity! Who has time to actually read all the emails we get? I know I am constantly saving things that look interesting ‘to read later’. But later never comes! We are all so busy, that having time to spend on learning about new stuff, even if it’s interesting, is increasingly hard. And on that note, if you haven’t got time to read this whole article, you can just cut to the bullet points at the bottom