Plan the joint campaign from the decision the market needs to make back through the work each partner can carry. Start with the audience and offer, test the route to market, set goals, then choose tactics, channels, and timing. Starting with activity is an easy mistake. A perfectly executed tactical plan can still target the wrong segment.1 A strong marketing plan can fail when it reaches sales.2 Treat these points as gates: approve a channel or timeline only after the partners agree on the audience and can support the follow-through.
Start with the foundation
Use this stage to make the campaign clear to both partners before they debate formats or channels. Put the shared assumptions into a working brief while the plan is still easy to change.
Bring co-marketing into the planning and organization stage.3 Build a shared brief with the ICP, persona pains, use cases, competitors, required proof, distribution plan, and localization needs.4 Then identify the partners' commonalities.5
Ask which audience the partners share, which problem both can credibly address, and where the offer fits each partner's business. One concrete overlap is two partners providing unified communications services and targeting mid-sized businesses with communications needs.6 Continue once each partner can describe the shared audience and the reason for working together in similar terms.
Choose the audience and campaign motion
Decide what the campaign should change before choosing the channel. The audience decision also determines the customer movement the campaign should create.
The first segmentation decision is whether to start with whom you target or what you sell.7 Both approaches can be appropriate.8 Product companies tend to focus on what they sell.9 Services companies and many resellers may start with whom they support.10
Match the campaign motion to that decision. A net-new motion targets customers who are brand new to both partners.11 A cross-selling motion targets Partner A customers, Partner B customers, or both.12 An upgrade motion moves a joint customer from an older product to a newer offering.13
Ask which customers already know one partner, which need the other partner's offer, and whether the campaign creates a new relationship, expands an existing one, or moves an existing customer to a newer offering. Continue when the audience and customer movement describe the same campaign.
Decide how the value proposition will appear
The value proposition route should follow the target customer and campaign motion. Decide how the partners will enter the conversation before writing the copy.
The choice of value proposition depends substantially on the target customer.14 Partners can present A before B, B before A, or both together.15 In a sequential sale, the path can move from Partner A's value proposition to Partner B's and then present both for the final sale.16
When one partner mainly handles fulfillment, the selling partner can do most of the selling with its own value proposition.17 After the customer agrees to buy, that partner can bring in the fulfillment partner to help implement the product.18
Ask which partner should open the conversation, when the other partner should appear, and whether the customer needs the combined story immediately or will understand the route more clearly in sequence. Continue when the route matches how the customer is expected to buy.
Test the partners' capacity
Check capacity before building a complex execution plan. Find out what each partner can bring to the work and test sales capacity with operating detail.
Determine which skills each partner brings to the joint relationship.19 Include marketing and sales skills in the assessment.20 Technical skills also matter for overall planning.21
Ask "are you able to sell net new business?"22 Then ask "tell me about your sales team, how much of their quota is on net new business?" and "how much net new businesses did they generate last year?"23 Net-new business means brand-new customers that did not come from a referral.24
Representatives can achieve 100 percent of quota through existing customers.25 When that happens, the representative will not spend time on an early-stage opportunity.26 Use the answers to set the campaign's complexity and the amount of early-stage work it can reasonably create.
Set goals before tactics
Set the commercial destination, then work backward to the pipeline and campaign work required to reach it. Goals can be addressed at the beginning of planning and revisited at the end.27
Map the desired net-new customers, revenue, upgrade revenue, and cross-selling revenue.28 The desired closed business is the closed business goal.29 The pipeline needed to achieve it is the pipeline goal.30
Ask what outcome the campaign must produce, which customer motion produces it, and what pipeline must exist before the target can be reached. Keep the goals clear enough for both partners to use when choosing channels and judging progress.
Build tactics, messaging, and timing
Choose the activities only after the partners have agreed on the audience, value proposition route, capacity, and goals. Once the foundational items are established, the next planning stage covers tactics and messaging intended to achieve the goals.31
Before fixing the schedule or channel mix, check whether journeys or campaigns overlap by timeline, audience, or channel.32 Ask whether the channel reaches the selected audience, whether the message fits the value proposition route, and whether the timeline collides with another campaign aimed at the same audience. Resolve overlap before launch and keep execution within the skills and sales capacity the partners confirmed.
What not to do
Use these as review gates before approving the campaign.
- Do not choose tactics and activities before the partners have established the campaign foundations.33
- Do not assume technical skills are already covered when the partners plan the work.34
- Do not accept a yes to the net-new selling question as proof of capacity, since nearly 100 percent of people say they can sell net-new business when asked.35
- Do not force every campaign into a joint value proposition.36
- Do not design a complex plan when one required partner has basic marketing skills.37
- Do not set too many top-line goals when a few clear goals will guide the plan.38
Take the draft into the partner meeting and get agreement on the audience, motion, value proposition route, capacity, goals, and overlap checks. Then turn the approved brief into channel and messaging work with the follow-through already tested.