Beyond Manual Co-Marketing: The Automation Shift Powering the Next Era of Partner Revenue

December 15, 2025

Michelle Rochford

By Trevor Burnett, VP of Marketing, Impartner, and Michelle Rochford, Channel Marketing Specialist, Partner+

Most partner programs want to drive more demand and increase partner engagement, but the traditional approach to co-marketing makes that almost impossible. Partners lack time, marketing skills vary widely, and vendors often spend countless hours creating assets that never get used. The result is the same across industries: low adoption, inconsistent execution, and little visibility into what’s actually working.

Impartner teamed up with Partner+ to break down the shift that leading organizations are making to address this, to better understand how automated through-channel marketing, combined with modern partner ecosystem strategies, is finally giving vendors and partners the ability to build demand at scale. We’ll walk through what’s changing in the market, how companies are overcoming these operational roadblocks, and what real results look like.

If your goal is to make partner marketing predictable, measurable, and scalable, this is the roadmap.

Why Co-Marketing Has Struggled to Scale

Even the most motivated partners often lack the time, expertise, or resources to run sophisticated digital campaigns. Global searches for local product dealers continue rising at double or triple-digit rates, yet many resellers are still dependent on manual methods. They rely on brochures, flyers, or one-off MDF activities that never reach today’s digital buyer.

Without automation, suppliers struggle with inconsistent execution and unpredictable ROI. Partners wait for assets, marketing teams wait for follow-through, and buyers move on to competitors.

Here’s how automation drives this shift.

A Better Path, Unifying Partner Strategy with Automated Channel Marketing

Impartner and Partner+ share a common mission to help companies build stronger, more efficient programs that generate real demand with and through their partners.

Partner+ brings deep expertise in partner management strategy, implementation, and hands-on PRM optimization. Impartner brings the industry’s most comprehensive partner automation platform, including market-leading through-channel marketing capabilities.

Together, the two organizations are showing companies across APAC and beyond how to modernize their approach to co-marketing.

How Stanley Black & Decker (SB&D) Created Local Digital Demand at Global Scale

Stanley Black & Decker (SB&D) faced a challenge felt across nearly every ecosystem. Their resellers were trusted locally, but they couldn’t run digital campaigns that matched buyer demand. Search for local dealers grew over 400% year over year, but partners were still relying on offline tactics and inconsistent MDF use.

By deploying Impartner’s Google Ads for the Channel, SB&D transformed partner marketing into a one-to-many digital engine.

Partners received automated, co-branded Google Ads campaigns, complete with localized landing pages and reporting. SB&D gained full visibility across campaign performance, adoption, ROI, and follow-up. Partners were empowered with a program that required zero digital expertise.

The results were proof of ecosystem-scale automation:

100% adoption
163% increase in reseller leads
49% decrease in cost per lead
75% time savings for partners and central teams

This kind of impact is exactly what modern ecosystems need: measurable improvements in reach, visibility, and revenue, delivered through automation that eliminates the heavy lift for partners.

Why This Matters for APAC and Global Partner Leaders

APAC ecosystems are growing quickly, but digital maturity varies widely across partner tiers and regions. This makes automation even more essential. We see three big shifts shaping the future.

Local presence is becoming a competitive advantage: Partners remain the frontline for customer influence. Automated marketing lets vendors amplify hundreds of local voices at once.
Digital campaign execution must be simple for partners: If your co-marketing program relies on partners to build ads or manage budgets, adoption will remain low. Zero-effort automation changes the equation.
Visibility and measurement are no longer optional: Modern ecosystems require real-time insights into performance, ROI, and partner engagement. Automation provides this data instantly, empowering better investment decisions.

Deeper Insight: How Ecosystem Trends Are Accelerating This Shift

For organizations looking to understand where partner ecosystems are headed, broader industry trends provide important context. Partner+ recently released a research-driven whitepaper that outlines how AI, integrated channel systems, and multi-tier partner models are reshaping partner programs across APAC and global markets. Many of the shifts highlighted in the research mirror what we’re seeing in co-marketing today: rising partner expectations, the need for real-time data alignment, and the move toward centralized orchestration paired with distributed execution.

It’s a valuable resource for teams evaluating how to modernize their partner marketing approach and benchmark their strategy against the direction the ecosystem is moving.

Where Partner Marketing Automation Is Headed Next

The next wave of partner-led growth will be defined by automation, intelligence, and simplicity. As ecosystems expand, companies can no longer rely on manual co-marketing motions or one-off campaigns that require partners to do the heavy lifting. The future is a model where vendors orchestrate demand creation centrally, and partners amplify it locally with minimal effort.

Three major shifts are driving this evolution

Centralized control with distributed impact
Brands need to manage messaging, budgets, and execution from the center, while giving partners the benefit of sophisticated marketing they could never run on their own. Automated campaign deployment, localized landing pages, integrated reporting, and more make it possible to scale influence across hundreds of partners.
Automation replacing partner dependency
The most successful programs are eliminating friction. Partners shouldn’t have to operate as a direct team, building ads, choosing keywords, or managing nurture flows on their own. Automated systems that launch campaigns on their behalf, monitor performance, and optimize over time are becoming the new standard.
Intelligence built into the engine
AI-driven optimization is no longer a differentiator, it’s an expectation. Marketing programs need built-in intelligence that improves targeting, bidding, content distribution, and partner follow-up without requiring manual adjustments.

Modern TCMA platforms are designed around these principles. They allow organizations to execute repeatable, measurable demand programs that meet partners where they are. A small reseller can access the same level of marketing sophistication as a global distributor, and the vendor gains the insights and control required to drive predictable revenue on a scale.

This is the direction the industry is moving to a future where partner marketing is automated and built to grow. The companies that will win in this new era are the ones that simplify execution for partners and use automation to scale what used to be manual and inconsistent. The shift is already underway, and those who embrace it now will set the standard for partner-led growth moving forward.