Speaker 1: Hey there, welcome back to my channel. In this video, I will show you how to build a partner co-marketing deck. This document will be part of your partner marketing strategy and will be sent to your partners to let them know what type of initiatives you can create together. If you are new here, please like the video and subscribe, so you get notified when I upload new content. And now let's jump right in. I like to structure this document in three different parts. Part 1 includes an overview of your company. Part 2 gives an overview of how you work, so that your partner knows what to expect. Finally, part 3 includes an overview of all the co-marketing initiatives you can do together. Let's start with the first part, the company overview. Here I generally start with who we are as a company. So I like to include things like the vision of the company, the mission, who do we serve, what industries and company sizes, where are we present, in which countries, and also some notes on the company history, as well as main achievements. Next I like to include our positioning, as well as the category that we play in. And then move to the product USP and the brand promise. So what does the product do, what problems does it solve, and why is it relevant for the end customer. Next I include a slide with the core competencies, or the main functionalities and use cases of the product. I generally keep this rather high level and focus on the main product pillars, highlighting differentiators but not going too deep into features. After this I like to have a slide for the main use cases. So who benefits the most from using the product and what exactly are the use cases for each segment. I like to mention if the product serves a specific job function or a specific job title better. Next I include a slide with benefits for the end customers. Here I like to highlight again the common pain points and to show how the product solves them as well as how the customer's lives improve after using our product. I think it's good practice to include a couple of impact numbers here to back up your statements. Finally I like to include a slide that gives the overview of our marketing strategy. From the approach that we have or the methodologies that we use, to our marketing goals, channels, as well as main tactics. This first part should give our partner enough information to know whether we are a good fit for a co-marketing initiative. In the second part I like to detail our co-marketing approach, so how exactly do we work. I generally start with the partnership goals and I highlight not only why do we co-market with partners but also what our expectations are and what type of resources we can invest. Next I like to go into co-marketing pillars and to briefly describe our approach to partner enablement, co-branding, co-marketing and co-selling. This creates alignment not only between marketing teams but also between sales teams. This slide is a good starting point for discussing the approach to co-branding as well and for getting the partner's approval to use their logo in marketing and advertising assets. Next I include the co-marketing phases, so how exactly do we roll out all the partnership initiatives. Although these phases will vary from one company to the other, in general you will have a kick-off phase where you have a call with a partner and then an alignment session. Then you will agree on initiatives and you will have a launch phase, followed by ramp-up, consolidation, evaluation and realignment. This timeline will vary from one partner to the other, but in general you will have a series of initiatives specific to each phase. For example, in the kick-off phase you will have a couple of calls with a partner just to get to know each other, to discuss your marketing approaches as well as your co-marketing approach. Then you will have alignment meetings between team members as well as to align on the general goals. In the launch phase you might have initiatives such as creating sales enablement materials, maybe even trainings, as well as social media posts, for example a partnership announcement post. In the ramp-up phase you might have a series of initiatives such as blog articles, webinars or content syndication in each other's newsletter. In the consolidation phase you will probably create more content assets, for example co-branded reports, white papers, integration guides, as well as customer stories and cases for shared customers. You might also join each other's podcast and continue the social media cross-promotion. Throughout all these phases you will run quarterly business reviews to make sure that the co-marketing initiatives are helping you reach your common goals. Finally, in the evaluation phase you will review all the different initiatives and the results they brought so you can decide how to continue. Before you can launch an initiative though, you will need to work on your joint solution USP. This is important for telling the better together story and for showing customers why they should use both your products. So I like to include a slide for the USP and for the boilerplates in this document as well. Another thing that goes into the co-marketing deck is the common messaging framework. This helps you maintain consistency in messaging when creating partnership assets. When you share this document with your partner you might want to give examples of the main message and narrative as well as examples of your messaging pillars. Then I like to include our general content themes. This will help both you and the partner choose themes and topics of interest for the overlapping audience. For example, if you create content assets, you will want to focus on a mix of topics that are of interest for both audiences and that help you cover the full funnel. By doing so, you will make sure you use resources in the most effective way possible. Of course, next to the themes and topics, you should also include your channels and content types in this document. By knowing where you are present, where you distribute your content, you will be able to support each other and to take advantage of each other's networks so that you can amplify your joint message. Also, if one of the company is better at producing a specific content format and the other has strengths in a different area, you will be able to choose initiatives where you can complement each other to make the most of your joint resources. Finally, in this part of the document, you will want to include a timeline of the agreed initiatives. This will depend on the partnership's goal and on each other's budget, but it's good to plan for the upcoming 3-6 months. Unlike in-house production, co-marketing will go slower and will have more dependencies. So it's better to plan ahead, but also to keep your plan flexible. Once you agree on initiatives, it's good to also list the responsibilities for each party. For example, who will coordinate the content creation, who will produce integration videos, who will create the sales enablement materials, and so on. Finally, in the last part of the document, I like to include the types of co-marketing initiatives that we can do together. This is really just a list of deliverables, with examples for each of them. Usually I start with the types of content that require less effort. For example, adding each other's logo and a boilerplate in the marketplace is low effort and helps give some visibility. Next you can add quotes on each other's website to help with the social proof. Another type of initiative is creating a joint solution landing page or an integration landing page. For each of these content formats, you will want to describe the asset, to give an example maybe even with a link, to specify any requirements, as well as the distribution channels where the asset will be shared. Do mention what you will do in-house and what you will need your partner to contribute with. Another type of asset that you can create together is integration videos or interactive product tours that focus on the integration. Moving on, you can create also one-pagers, you can agree to do info sessions together, you can write help articles and FAQs for the help center, create case studies and customer stories for your shared customers, and co-create white papers, playbooks or e-books. If both products serve the same industry, you can also work on research reports or industry reports, and of course you can always create guest posts on each other's blog. Another type of initiative you can consider is one-off emails. These emails could promote an upcoming event, a co-marketing asset, or just the announcement of your partnership. You can take a similar approach with content syndication and share content in each other's newsletters. Then you can do social media cross-promotion, work together on ABM campaigns, or co-create podcast episodes. Other formats that you can look at are direct mail campaigns, interviews with your partner, press releases where you highlight the benefits of the partnership, webinars or roundtables, as well as trade shows and roadshows. Again, the goal of the partner co-marketing deck is just to give your partner an idea of the types of initiatives you can do together. You will want to share this type of document with each of your partners, or each of the partners that you consider for co-marketing initiatives. For your final partner marketing strategy, you might want to choose a partner for some initiatives and a different partner for other types of content. I will create a separate video for the partner marketing strategy, so make sure to subscribe so you get notified when I upload a video. I hope this was useful. I will link this template below the video so you can use it right away. Thanks for watching and see you in the next video.