The Correlation Between Thought Leadership and Partner Marketing

Photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash

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!