Partner Marketing
Partner marketing is marketing done with or through other companies to reach their audiences: joint campaigns, co-branded content, marketplace listings, integration launches and affiliate programs. It covers both marketing to partners and marketing with them.
Two distinct jobs under one name
Marketing to partners is recruitment and activation: convincing companies to join the program and giving them reasons to stay active. Marketing with partners is demand generation into their audiences. The two need different skills and different measures, and conflating them is why partner marketing roles are so often unclear about what success looks like.
The main channels
The obvious ones are co-marketing activities such as joint webinars and research, integration launch campaigns, and presence in partner directories and marketplaces. The less obvious and often more productive one is affiliate and creator content, where partners publish independently and continuously rather than in coordinated bursts.
Directory and marketplace listings deserve more attention than they usually get. They capture buyers at the point of comparison, which is the highest-intent moment in the whole journey.
Measuring it
Partner-sourced pipeline is the headline number, with influenced revenue reported separately and with a stated definition. On the recruitment side, the meaningful measures are new active partners rather than new signups, and the proportion of the partner base producing revenue in the last quarter.
Where to start with limited resources
One motion, executed properly, beats five half-run ones. For most B2B SaaS companies the highest-return starting point is the one that compounds without requiring coordination for every activity: an affiliate program that gives creators, agencies and consultants a standing reason to publish about the product, plus listings wherever buyers compare tools in the category. Joint webinars and formal co-marketing are better added once there is a partner base worth marketing with.