Article
The State of Partner Marketing 2025
Large, Mid-Size and Small Partner Perspectives on Co-Marketing in the Channel
Table of Contents
What works best in partner marketing shifts continuously. With AI surging in the channel, the pace of change has accelerated exponentially. Channel partners and technology vendors alike must adapt on the fly to sustain profitability and growth.
The 2025 State of Marketing Report will help you understand what partners need from tech vendors today so you can evolve your strategies and keep your partners engaged and consistent drivers of shared ROI. You’ll also learn how partner needs vary by partner size, which offers opportunities to differentiate your program with nuanced marketing enablement that meets partners where they are.
About Our Research
The State of Partner Marketing 2025 research was conducted by IPED, The Channel Company’s research team. These insights are drawn from an in-depth online survey of 151 solution providers and 1:1 researcher interviews with partners.
Partner Business Models:
44% Managed Service Providers | 30% Value Added Resellers | 10% Consultants | 9% Systems Integrators | 3% Custom Systems Builders | 1% Hosting Services Providers | 3% Other
Relationship Marketing Powers Through-Channel Success
In B2B, it’s never just business. Human beings are deeply relational. In both personal and business connections, relationships are built, and trust is established, confirmed, and strengthened through face-to-face conversations and in-person interactions that take place over time.
This truth holds fast among solution and service providers, too. Partners view in-person events as the best way to pursue new opportunities and sustain long-term relationships with tech vendors and end users.
In-Person Marketing Events are a Strong Partner Preference
One style of event is the clear winner in partner preference. Almost 90% of partners say face-to-face events are a very important element of their marketing strategy. In-person events were ranked #1 for marketing impact by both large partners (greater than $100M/annual revenue) and small and medium sized partners (less than $100M/annual revenue).
The most effective types of in-person events varied by partner business model and size. Large value-added resellers (VARs) and solution integrators (SIs) depend primarily on in-person events to spark new relationships and enhance existing connections with their enterprise customers. These events tend to be partner-led, have higher-end budgets, and are often designed for clients with long-term sales cycles.
Smaller partners with a customer base of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) tend to prefer smaller-scale local events and tradeshows. These events are most often run by other organizations (technology vendors/local trade organizations), and the incoming opportunity cycle is typically shorter.
The Power of Experiential Events
Shared experiences and personal connections between doctors boost performance outcomes in medical settings, according to research in the JAMA Internal Medicine journal. This research was spotlighted in a Harvard Business School Working Knowledge article exploring the long-term performance improvements that come from strong working relationships in B2B organizations.
Experiential channel events are an effective way to extend the power of camaraderie to your partner ecosystem. Partners frequently convey their need for vendor support for immersive events that help them connect with new customers and unlock opportunities with existing customers.
Experiential B2B Event Examples
The possibilities are endless (within budget constraints, of course). These gatherings are defined by dynamic shared experiences that coincide with learning, skill building, networking, and enjoyable, trust-building conversations.
- DIY events. Cocktail mixing classes with non-alcoholic options. Hands-on art classes. Cooking classes. Archery instruction.
- Immersive events. Outdoor or indoor golf experiences. Museum visits. Sporting events. Live music performances.
- Showstopping locations. Rooftop bars with city views. Venues with ocean or lake views.
Integrated Marketing Campaigns Elevate Event Results
Events are more powerful when part of integrated marketing campaigns that include digital touchpoints like inbound programs, email and social media campaigns, content syndication, and tech industry media visibility. These programs should lead up to events to build brand visibility and trust, and continue post-event with content that shares expert insights from the event through blogs, emails, and on-demand videos.
Impactful Marketing Strategies that Build on Events
Though events lead the way in partner marketing, they are not always-on activities because of time and cost constraints. Large partners rank content marketing as the next most effective strategy after events, while small and midsize partners rank web and inbound marketing most effective.
This aligns with the unique needs and goals of partners of varying sizes. Larger partners typically have stronger brand recognition and, therefore, benefit from lead nurturing above awareness building. Small and medium partners, on the other hand, are often still establishing brand recognition and benefit most from leaning into discoverability tactics.
Partner Marketing Challenges: Resource and Capability Limitations
Partners know marketing matters, with 71% sharing marketing is critical to their company’s future. At the same time, more than half of partners (60%) say the strategic impact of their marketing efforts fall short and are only somewhat effective or totally ineffective.
Additional Marketing Pressure Points
- Complex MDF requirements and co-marketing processes
- Pressure from sales to deliver campaign results within a quarter
- Lack of lead performance reporting to vendors
- Low utilization of vendor reporting systems (beyond MDF claims)
- Small partners: not qualifying for benchmarks and difficulty engaging vendor program offerings
“Marketing is a tricky area to measure impact. You never know what exactly attributed to a lead converting.”
– Mid-Size Value Added Reseller
Bigger Partners Qualify for More Marketing Development Funds
More than half of the marketing budget of large partners comes through vendor and distributor MDF programs. As partners get smaller, their dependence on self-funded marketing increases, either because they don’t meet MDF qualifications or they don’t have the time or staff to manage the MDF process.
Partners Enlist AI to Scale Marketing
Small (sometimes non-existent) partner marketing teams are turning to AI to help them address long-term resource limitations. Partners have now shifted from consideration, experimentation and pilot programs to real-world use cases.
“AI is impacting almost every aspect of our marketing. Content creation for sure, with more consistent brand storytelling, better quality original content, and helping us atomize content from long form and turning that into multiple blog posts. Also, propensity analysis, marketing analytics. Everything.”
– Large Managed Service Provider
Top 3 Marketing Use Cases for GenAI Among Partners:
1. Content Generation.
Partners are leveraging Gen AI tools to create engaging, high-quality blog posts, emails, social media posts, infographics, digital images, and more.
2. Marketing Analytics.
Integrated AI tools are being used to analyze audience data for campaign targeting, A/B testing of social posts, ads, and email subject lines, and to optimize campaign and ads in real-time based on performance analytics.
3. Customer Insights and Segmentation.
Partners can now create highly targeted campaigns, ads, and social posts based on AI-powered insights.
Great Content Expectations
Partners of every size are taking the lead on content development and leaning on GenAI to help. Though they welcome vendor content development support, they don’t want pre-packaged content they can’t customize for their brand and client needs. Vendor supplied content should help partners:
- Tell a solution-forward story that spotlights how they solve customer business challenges
- Propel audience engagement through optimized targeting, SEO, and social amplification
- Easily modify content such as blogs, email campaigns, and social posts so they are differentiated to your partners’ unique business value
“We take a big Google hit if we just use the same vendor content everyone else is using. A client said they got the exact same email, just with different logos—that’s not good. So, we have to write our own content.”
– Solution Provider Partner
Empower Partner Marketing Teams to Deliver Business Growth
Co-marketing and partner marketing achieves shared business growth goals with vendor support that respects partner differentiators, takes resource limitations into account, and adapts to changing partner expectations.
Accelerate marketing results with the support small, mid-size, and large partners want across campaigns, content, and events.
Partner Marketing Funds
- Enable smaller partners with pass-through MDF programs through distribution.
- Simplify your partner marketing programs, ensuring they are clearly structured and defined.
- Find and minimize friction points in your MDF processes.
Marketing Campaigns
- Provide personalized campaign planning assistance.
- Clarify campaign use cases and offer best practices for effective campaigns. Share strategies you’ve seen work among partners with similar target customers.
- Enable longer campaigns that extend beyond one quarter with strategy support and campaign development. Extend Proof of Performance (PoP) reporting timelines and claim rules to support long campaigns.
Content Development
- Provide content that supports easy customization.
- Collaborate with partners on content development when possible. (Clarify the importance of a small stakeholder team to accelerate campaign outcomes.)
- Consider developing custom GPTs and pre-built prompts partners can use to differentiate their content from competitors.
Event and Relationship Building
- Support face-to-face events that build trust and relationships. Here, working with effective and engaged partners is ideal due to the high resource requirements (people, time, money) of events.
- Provide event optimization and best practices content for partners.
- Frequently update MDF and PoP policies related to event sponsorships and activities.
ROI Tracking
- Focus on real-world results reporting over complex compliance requirements.
- Provide simple planning and reporting templates for smaller partners that respect their limited resources.
- Require detailed campaign planning and results reporting from large partners who use significant MDF.
- Provide automated processes that make it simple for partners to track and report on co-marketing performance.
Partner insights that spotlight their top challenges, needs and market opportunities right now are game-changing. Use this data to guide marketing enablement that empowers partners of all sizes to drive consistent and lasting demand for your tech.