One of my absolute favorite things to do in marketing is working with partners. When it comes to spreading the word about your company or your product, I can't see why you wouldn't take advantage of working together towards this greater purpose. Partner marketing can really complement and help amplify your thought leadership pograms

What are the Benefits of Partner Marketing?

I see it as a win-win: let's say it starts with a piece of collaborative content you have come together to create.​ When it comes to promote that content, you have access to each other’s networks - their social media following (both personal and of the company), email subscriber lists, employees, and more. So you are effectively each doubling the reach of your content.

1  - Make it Easy. 
While I was at Affectiva, and even continuing at the Smart Eye group, the Human Centric AI podcast that I started is a great example of this. It was designed as a vehicle to build that relationship and then promote each other on our networks. We also packaged it up so that the speaker received a sample social post to copy & paste on LinkedIn to promote their episode, a pretty graphic featuring their headshot that they can easily share and tag to point back to my source content, 

2 - Brainstorm Collaborative Offer Ideas.
You can come together via partner marketing to collaborate on new, innovative thought leadership content - podcasts are one example, but you can also consider livestreams, blog posts, eBooks, webinar presentations, or joint speaking gigs to name a few. 

3 - Map out Your Ecosystem
So, take a minute to map out who the key players are in your ecosystem. They can be partners, clients, customers, or influential people in your network.

By aligning yourself and your company with thought leaders in your industry or in companies adjacent with your own lends credibility. This also ultimately builds trust with your target audience - it's nice to talk about yourself,  but even more powerful when you can team up and talk about each other.

Learn more about thought leadership and partner marketing strategies in this recent podcast I did! 

We've all been there. And we've been on the receiving end. Not just with websites, but with emails, heavily-worded presentations, elevator pitches, the works. Copy like:

"Dynamic integrated solutions provider emphasizing client success and software integrity to optimize and drive business results."

I could jam a few more buzzwords in there, but after reading that bad boy a few times, do you even know what I'm selling? 

It's a crime that many companies, across industries, commit. More often then not, positioning is reacting to competitor's statements, or how simple language or being more straightforward may appear to potential customers - especially at the exec level. 

But here's the deal. If you want me to do business with you, and I'm clicking around your website to figure out what exactly you do and how you do it, I'm not going to expend mental energy translating corporate speak into human language. At the end of the day, will you help me do my job better? Do you understand my issues? How can you help? 

It's an epidemic that I'm hoping is on it's way out, but it's not looking super promising so far - as long as older marketing mentalities continue to sign off on final web copy, email marketing, and other initiatives surrounding outward-facing company content. B2B businesses, and other "boring" industries are especially susceptible to copy-bloat. But they don't have to be - if they are willing to take that chance. 

This reminds me of a favorite Seth Godin mentality of mine around putting yourself out there and being vulnerable, believe it was from his book "The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?" It always struck me how scared people are to take something they created and present it up for the world to see, and say "I made this". This is often due to the fact that we are our own worst critic, and imagining the world of possibilities where reactions to what we say could go horribly wrong instead of allowing the "what if they like it?" possibility. 

I get it - your brand is on the line. Your reputation. Your employees, your customers. Throwing out the perfectionist guidebook and "how it's always been done" is scary. But what if you took baby steps to shake up your messaging a little bit. What if you B2B folks tried some B2C tactics - because you are after all, marketing to humans?

Some stuff might not work, some stuff might. It's about making your company vulnerable, like actual humans are, and be open to making mistakes and learning from them - because I can tell you that corporate speak websites are NOT resonating with any form of your customer.  Are you up to the challenge of figuring out what will?