What is Partner Marketing in SaaS?

Partner advertising refers to a joint venture where two or more companies promote each other’s solution to their audience. In other words, these businesses create and apply a strategy to economically acquire customers.

This happens because the same resources and possible customers are utilized. 

HubSpot and Salesforce, Slack and Zoom, or Shopify and Facebook are some examples of marketing partnerships in the SaaS landscape.

The main types of SaaS partnerships are co-marketing, referral, integration, and reseller.

• Co-marketing: When two or more businesses work together on a joint marketing campaign.
• Referral: When a business refers customers to another company and receives a commission.
• Integration: When businesses combine both party’s products and services.
• Reseller: When one business becomes a reseller for another’s product.

These revenue models are beneficial to certain types of businesses, depending on their goals and resources. Some may prefer referral programs for direct customer acquisition, while others choose co-marketing for brand awareness. 

The key benefits of partner marketing include brand awareness, affordable customer acquisition, access to additional markets, shared resources and expertise, and improved products and services.

This all contributes to accelerated growth, increased revenue, and a stronger market position for SaaS companies. Partner marketing provides a strategic way to overcome challenges like limited resources while also reaching a broader audience.

Here are three real-life partnership examples:  

• HubSpot and Salesforce: Provide a coherent experience for users of both products by integrating their two platforms.
• Slack and Zoom: Start Zoom meetings directly from Slack.
• Shopify and Facebook: Sell products directly from Facebook and Instagram.

These examples of Saas partner marketing illustrate the weight of collaboration when two companies with similar products or services come together. They use each other’s brand name to enter into other markets.

Marketers must identify, develop and manage their relationships in parallel with strategic growth goals. 

They are responsible for partner recruitment, marketing strategy development, program and relationship management as well as performance analysis.

Partner Marketers must possess strong communication skills, and relationship building, and have an analytical mind. Negotiating agreements, creating captivating campaigns, and measuring the impact of SaaS partnerships will be required to manage this model.