AMA: TrustRadius Former Sr. Director, Product Marketing & Brand, Harsha Kalapala on Partner Product Marketing

When starting out, partner PMM work should be an experiment run under core product marketing. The fundamental principles are all the same. What changes in the environment in which you operate, your audience mix, and the non-traditional opportunities you can uncover to get creative in your GTM? Once you see traction and results with the experiments, and the product team is producing a roadmap of new partnerships, it is time to spin off a dedicated partner marketing function to stay ahead of the g ...Read More

There are typically strategic outcomes and tactical outcomes to partnerships. Partnership GTM leaders should be goaled on the tactical outcomes, but also incentivized to drive strategic outcomes that may be harder to predict and measure. These are some of the KPIs I've worked with –  Tactical KPIs: Pipeline driven - Number of inquiries, New opportunities created, Expansion opportunities created, In count and in dollars driven Revenue impact - Closed won opportunities - new business or expansion ...Read More

There are many lessons I continue to learn as I drive more partnership go-to-market initiatives. These are the top ones that stand out so far: Driving adoption is key - especially when the integration UX is on the partner's side. User adoption is what keeps a partnership alive. Without it, the partnership won't last beyond the initial splash of the launch. Not having the UX be in your control puts more of a need for you to have a pulse on the levers needed to drive user awareness and adoption. D ...Read More

It is critical to have full buy-in from the exec team on the role partnerships play in the company's growth. They should believe in the potential of partner marketing to amplify the partnership's awareness, adoption, and revenue impact. The best way to get buy-in is by making progress and showing traction. There is no better reasoning than evidence to invest further into what is working. I would run with any creative hacks to drive your KPIs and rather ask for forgiveness, not permission to test ...Read More

This essentially involves zooming out with the exec team and making sure the team is on the same page on the definition of "product". If you can get leadership to agree that partnerships, integrations, services are all part of the solutions offered, this job gets easier. The responsibility for partnerships sits in different departments, depending on the company structure. Sometimes it sits with product, and in other instances with sales/revenue orgs, or have its own team that reports to the CEO ...Read More

Sales will always welcome your support when you can clearly demonstrate that you are helping them drive more sales. Map out how your partnership initiatives will help deals directly or indirectly. How will you help them hit their numbers faster? Get buy-in from sales leadership, and then enable the sales team with any materials and training they need to take the next step. Make their job easy and rewarding, and they'll do it with you. One approach that always helps is to pick 1 salesperson who o ...Read More

You always want to include a partner's brand and messaging in your joint collateral. Your audience may be attracted to either part of the partnership - so your collateral and messaging should tailor to their interests. I wouldn't include the partner too much in developing the asset - it just slows things down. You can get their final look before you publish it if needed. In most cases things can be changed even after putting collateral out. I would push for pace over perfection on asset creation ...Read More

This is an important question. The marketing rule of 7 exposures applies here as well. I try to get on as many opportunities as I can to educate and train partner stakeholders. Ask for a few minutes on their weekly team meetings — the product team, the customer success/support team, the sales team, etc. and walk them through the same talk track on the partnership. Why is it important for you and your customers? What does it do? When does it come out? What can you do, based on your role? Where ca ...Read More