Changes Afoot: Partner Marketing through the Lifecycle Lens

New data suggests a powerful, marketing-driven way to rethink partner orchestration. 

Recent research from Canalys brings into focus changes many of us in the industry already sense: Partner Marketing organizations’ remits are rapidly evolving to address customer engagement across the entire lifecycle, from awareness to advocacy, triggering a cascade of effects that could impact every facet of the GTM operation. 

According to Canalys, today’s buyer experiences 28 moments (on average) that lead to a purchase decision, and “many of”—we at Bridge Partners might suggest the majority of—those touchpoints are with partners and through marketplaces. Further, the average customer trusts only seven partners to engage with across the entire customer lifecycle.  

Those two itty-bitty data points suggest a breadth of rather transformational implications: 

• Partner Marketing organizations need to manage their ecosystems at least in part through the lens of the customer lifecycle. In many cases that means rethinking fundamental understandings of the customer and how to communicate with them. 

• Partnership Ecosystems need to be fine-tuned to the role in the customer journey and value proposition of individual partnerships. Each one matters, is potentially unique, and represents a turning point in the customer journey that must be optimized. 

• Partner Marketing organizations need to be tightly synched with Product, Sales and Integrated Marketing teams, requiring in many enterprises new cross-functional muscle—building from communication to coordination to collaboration at every stage of the marketing process. 

• Customers must be rigorously understood in part in terms of the trust relationships they build with partners. That requires new kinds of data—and new questions for data governance. 

• And separately from the direct implications of the Canalys data, we’ll offer an extrapolated assertion for your enjoyment: Transactions don’t equal trust. 

To effectively integrate partners into the customer lifecycle, Partner Marketing leaders can start by understanding how different partner types impact each stage of the customer journey, aligning with business functions to ensure partners are holistically incorporated into customer initiatives, and equipping partners with co-marketing incentives and enablement tied to lifecycle impact.   

For some organizations, the magnitude and complexity of changes required can be overwhelming. So we’ll offer a usefully-simple classification of partner types, an easy starting point for more granular ecosystem management. 

Creating two partner segments is a practical place to start 

Partners come in many forms, and their relationships to the customer and roles in the customer lifecycle vary depending on whether they play a transactional or non-transactional role. This is by no means the most optimally-robust approach to classifying partner types, but it is an effective starting point:  

Transacting Partners are directly involved in selling, billing, or processing transactions for a vendor’s products or services. They typically have a formalized agreement with the vendor to resell, distribute, or embed the vendor’s solutions into their offerings. Examples include VARs, MSPs, CSPs, and ISVs.  

Non-Transacting Partners support sales and customer engagement but do not process transactions or handle billing directly. Instead, they influence buying decisions, extend product capabilities, help implement solutions, or enhance customer outcomes. Examples include SIs, ISVs, OEMs, Consulting Partners.  

There is no hard and fast rule for which partners fit where in the customer lifecycle, especially as partner business models evolve and customer solutions become increasingly complex. But understanding partner value contribution, even in the simplified way we’re suggesting here, enables you to orchestrate the roles of multiple partners to maximize their impact and position each partnership for success. Consider this framework: 

Frameworks are nice. Bringing them to life means tackling fundamental challenges. 

To fully integrate partners into the customer lifecycle, partner marketing organizations often must address strategic misalignment, measurement challenges, and operational inefficiencies. Success requires structured partner engagement, data-driven decision-making, and enhanced enablement that extends beyond demand generation. Let’s walk through some of these issues and how to tackle them: 

Lack of Alignment  

Many organizations struggle with defining the precise role of partners at each stage of the customer journey. Misalignment between sales, marketing, customer success, and product teams often leads to unclear expectations for how partners contribute beyond deal closure. 

Develop a partner engagement framework that defines partner types and roles at each lifecycle stage. Conduct joint business planning to align objectives, strategies, lifecycle stage impact—and embed partner strategies into sales, marketing, and customer success workflows. 

Difficulty Measuring Partner Impact 

Organizations often lack visibility into how partners contribute to customer success beyond initial transactions. Many CRM and marketing automation systems are not designed to capture partner-influenced touchpoints in retention, upselling, or renewal.  

Implement a PRM solution that integrates with CRMs and partner attribution models to measure partner impact on pipeline, adoption, renewals, and expansion. Standardize partner reporting dashboards and use AI-driven insights to improve lifecycle marketing strategies. 

Partner Enablement Gaps  

Many partners lack the necessary training, content, and tools to effectively engage customers throughout their journey. This is especially problematic in post-sale phases where partners play a role in onboarding, implementation, and support. 

Launch lifecycle role-based partner enablement programs, co-branded customer success assets, and certification programs to ensure partners are equipped to drive adoption and retention. 

Channel Conflict  

Internal sales teams may resist partner involvement in the customer lifecycle, fearing channel conflict or revenue dilution. This can create friction, especially in retention and expansion efforts. 

Define clear partner-seller engagement models, incentivize collaboration, and implement partner-seller co-engagement playbooks to define ownership and reduce conflict. 

Ineffective MDF Allocation 

MDF programs are often designed for demand generation and net-new acquisition rather than customer retention, adoption, and expansion. As a result, partners lack funding for post-sale engagement activities. 

Expand MDF eligibility to customer success programs, introduce performance-based MDF models and co-investment opportunities tied to lifecycle initiatives and impact. 

Limited Post-Sale Co-Marketing Capabilities  

Most co-marketing initiatives focus on lead generation rather than customer expansion and advocacy. Partners may lack the tools to run effective adoption and renewal campaigns. 

Offer customer journey-focused co-marketing programs, develop automated nurture tracks for partners to engage customers beyond initial sale, and provide customer advocacy toolkits to drive retention and expansion. 

Partner Marketing can (really, must!) become a strategic driver of customer value. 

It’s not your imagination. These challenges are genuinely daunting, and while they’re all solvable, the solutions aren’t simple. But they’re also good challenges to have, because they represent an opportunity for Partner Marketing to play a more strategic, influential role in the enterprise, spanning functional areas within and beyond Partner GTM to generate more impact than ever. It’s exciting. 

By embedding the right partners into each stage of the customer lifecycle, organizations can: 

• Extend brand reach and credibility through trusted partner relationships. 

• Increase full-funnel engagement and conversion rates with tailored co-marketing campaigns. 

• Enhance post-sale support and customer retention through partner-led services. 

 As customer expectations shift, partner marketing organizations must accelerate their pace of change. Emerging trends like ecosystem-led growth and AI-driven partner engagement are reshaping partner collaboration to enhance customer experiences across the lifecycle. New opportunities, as always, appear suddenly in such dynamic marketplaces, and as always, best-in-class partner organizations are already moving swiftly to capitalize. Our core advice remains the same: Start small. Move fast. 

 Bridge Partners is the growth consultancy for technology enterprises. We help our customers unlock new sources of growth with unsurpassed GTM expertise and solutions spanning Partner, Marketing, and Sales.