Channel Partner Marketing Plan Template

A channel partner marketing plan template is the difference between a co-marketing campaign that both sides understand and one where the vendor thinks the partner is generating demand while the partner thinks the vendor is. This channel marketing plan template is taken directly from the Certificate in Channel Marketing and is free to download below.

It is built around the P.A.C.K.A.G.E.S method the Channel Institute teaches for planning co-marketing campaigns, so it walks through positioning, audience, content, budget and measurement in the order those decisions actually need to be made rather than the order they usually get made in.

What the template covers

Most co-marketing plans fail at the same two points. The first is positioning: the campaign is built before anyone has decided what makes this partner different from the other forty resellers carrying the same product, so the messaging is the vendor's messaging with a partner logo on it. The second is measurement: nobody agrees in advance what the campaign is supposed to produce, so afterwards both sides can claim it worked or did not.

The template puts both decisions at the front. It asks who the campaign is aimed at and why that audience should care about this partner specifically, what each side is contributing in money and effort, what content needs to exist and who is producing it, and what number will be used to judge the result. None of that is complicated. It is simply rarely written down, which is why the same arguments recur at every quarterly review.

The Certificate in Channel Marketing

The template is one artefact from a ten module certificate. The full course is where the method behind it is taught, module by module.

Module 1. Foundations and terminology

The fundamentals of channel marketing, key concepts and the vocabulary everyone needs to share.

Module 2. Business strategy

The most common reasons co-marketing campaigns fail, and the role business strategy plays in reseller success.

Module 3. Market positioning

What market positioning is, why it matters so much for resellers, and the methodologies available for it.

Module 4. Segmentation and targeting

Why segmentation and targeting decide the outcome of reseller co-marketing campaigns, with the tools for both.

Module 5. Partner differentiation

Frameworks for helping resellers differentiate, which makes every campaign that follows more effective.

Module 6. Partner value proposition

What makes a joint value proposition compelling, using methods such as the Value Canvas.

Module 7. Co-marketing campaign planning

The P.A.C.K.A.G.E.S planning method this template is built on.

Module 8. Buyer personas

Templates and tools for building buyer personas that hold up in partner marketing campaigns.

Module 9. Buyer's journey

How partners and vendors align marketing content to the buyer's journey.

Module 10. Benchmarking and ROI

Where to find data to benchmark campaigns, and how to judge return.

The certificate is online and self-paced, about 20 hours of study, ending in an exam with a 70% pass mark. Marketers whose organisations call this partner marketing rather than channel marketing can read the same certificate set out as partner marketing training.