Partner marketing still has substantial untapped potential

The partner channel has long been an under-discussed, often underfunded behemoth of sales in the B2B world. Despite the fact that around 60% of software sales are indirect, partner marketing is all too often unfairly treated as the poor relation with B2B marketing departments — tucked away in a proverbial broom cupboard, receiving minimal attention or internal funding, spending partnership development funds on a limited menu of available activations. As a result, partner marketing strategies frequently become tactical rather than strategic, expensive and disjointed, with little alignment to broader marketing goals.

Having worked extensively in partner marketing over the years, I see enormous untapped potential for driving greater value through this channel. The pieces of the puzzle are all there, they just need putting together. Here are the three big opportunities I see shaping B2B partner marketing over the next 12 months.

1) Partner ABM will come of age

Account-Based Marketing (ABM) has transformed the way many B2B businesses approach high-value accounts, but applying it effectively within the partner channel has been a long-standing challenge. The two primary barriers have been:

• Navigating complex multi-disciplinary teams with a sometimes-conflicting range of aims and motivations (already one of the major hurdles for any ABM campaign, but with complexity doubled when a partner is involved).

• Concerns over data sharing between partner organisations (not necessarily legal issues, but rather issues of commercial sensitivity).

However, we're now seeing the rise of more effective and adaptable ABM playbooks tailored for partner engagements, along with wider access to sophisticated data-sharing tools that address some of these concerns. These advancements are slowly chipping away at the traditional barriers to partner ABM.

Could 2025 be the year we finally see partner ABM scale? I think so. The pressure to demonstrate value from marketing investments is higher than ever, and the value of (good) ABM is now widely recognised. The opportunity to make it a real success is there, it just needs seizing.

2) Scrutiny of ROI will ramp up

Disappearing are the days when executing standalone partner content syndication campaigns can be seen as a suitable stand-in for an integrated strategy. For years, countless marketing pounds have been poured into these campaigns, generating lists of leads that are passed to sales teams and promptly disappear into the void without any follow-up.

In 2025, I expect to see greater scrutiny of the true ROI of partner marketing activities. As purse strings continue to tighten, marketing teams will need to demonstrate that their partner marketing pounds are driving real, tangible results. This means shifting away from disjointed campaigns toward more integrated approaches that align with broader omnichannel strategies.

Partner marketers will need to prove their value not just in terms of lead generation but also in how they contribute to pipeline growth, deal acceleration, and customer retention. The era of executing partner campaigns in a silo is ending.

3) Greater value will be placed on creativity

B2B partner marketing has become an increasingly crowded and, quite frankly, tired space. However, in 2024, we saw some ambitious enterprises recognise the power of creativity to cut through the noise and stand out in meaningful ways. This trend will only accelerate in 2025.

One of my personal highlights of 2024 was working with some excellent marketers at NTT DATA and AWS to host an AI art exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The event was a bold, creative play designed to engage C-suite leaders in meaningful conversations around AI—and it worked. It not only built brand salience for the partnership but, vitally, directly led to large volumes of closed-won joint deals. Creativity enabled us to cut through the noise in a way that a safer, more conventional approach would not have.

In 2025, I expect to see more partner marketers, particularly in ‘big tech’, allocate budgets toward creative initiatives that drive mutual value. These marketers will move funds away from their partners who are running the same old, ineffective plays and invest in partners who are willing to think outside the box and, crucially, generate commercial value.

The final word

The partner channel remains one of the most exciting areas of B2B marketing. It is complex and takes a very particular skillset to navigate, but it is the future and, when done well, partner marketing can be the true driver of growth for providers and partners alike.

And a final word on the most obvious omission- why isn’t AI one of my top three opportunities? Certainly not because I think it will fail to radically transform all areas of marketing, but rather because it underpins all the opportunities above. Much as ‘digital marketing’ became a nonsensical distinction in an age where all marketing had to integrate digital as table stakes, everything we do as marketers will have an AI element to it. It’s already streamlining research and personalisation in ABM, setting a new standard for expectations of ROI and is opening up exciting new creative opportunities every week.

That's my stake in the ground for the year ahead. Let’s see how it pans out.