How do you make a partnership live beyond the marketing department?

At the same time, a partnership often holds significantly more value if more parts of the company understand the opportunities available and how they can be utilized.

Sales, HR, and management have different needs and work toward different goals, but a partnership can be relevant to all of them. The challenge, therefore, lies not only in creating a good partnership but also in making it a natural part of more areas of the business.

More people need to understand what the company has actually purchased

When a company enters into a partnership, there are often far more opportunities than those visible to the public. These can include networks and meeting places, activities for customers, content that can be used across various channels, tickets and experiences, or opportunities to engage employees. For these opportunities to be utilized, more people in the organization need to know they exist and understand how they can be relevant to their own work.

For the sales department, for example, the partnership can create new contexts for meeting customers, developing existing relationships, and making new contacts. For HR, there may be opportunities to engage employees and work on the employer brand. For management, the networks surrounding a property can create meetings with other companies and decision-makers. If that knowledge remains solely within the marketing department, there is a risk that a large portion of the opportunities the company actually has access to will never be used.

The partnership can be a tool in sales work

We find the connection between partnerships and sales particularly interesting. Sports create environments where people want to be and where companies can meet in contexts other than traditional business meetings. However, this does not mean that a ticket to a match automatically creates a better customer relationship. The company still needs to have a strategy regarding which customers to invite, which relationships to develop, and which new contacts to create.

When that connection is in place, the partnership can become an additional tool for the sales department. An activity around a match can be relevant for an existing customer, while a network surrounding the property can create an entirely new business contact. The important thing is that the opportunities are used with a clear purpose and not just because they happen to be in the agreement.

The partnership can also create internal value

There are also parts of a partnership that can be relevant to the company's own employees. This can involve experiences and activities, but also content and stories that can be used in internal communication or in employer branding efforts. For some companies, the partnership can also be a way to create pride and engagement around issues that are important to the business.

For this to work, HR and other relevant parts of the organization need to be part of the discussion. If they only hear about the partnership when the marketing department needs help with a specific activity, it becomes much harder to find the opportunities that could actually create value for them. We therefore believe that more parts of the organization can be advantageously involved as soon as the company discusses what the partnership should contribute.

The marketing department still needs to coordinate the whole

The fact that more parts of the company use the partnership does not mean that responsibility for it needs to be spread across the entire organization. There needs to be a clear owner who coordinates the whole, keeps track of the agreement, and ensures there is a plan for how the partnership should be used. In many companies, it is natural for that role to lie with the marketing department.

The difference is that the owner of the partnership also needs to understand the needs that exist in other parts of the business and help make the opportunities available to them. In this way, the marketing department can still coordinate the work while more parts of the company get the opportunity to use the partnership.

A partnership can create value in several ways

When a partnership is evaluated, it is natural to look at things like exposure, reach, and the results of various communication efforts. These are important parts, but they do not always provide the full picture of what the partnership has contributed.

A new customer relationship, a stronger relationship with an existing customer, or increased engagement among employees can also be results of the same investment. Therefore, we believe that the question of what a partnership should contribute needs to be broader than just what the marketing department wants to get out of it. There needs to be a vision of what the company as a whole wants to gain from the partnership and which parts of the organization can benefit from it.

The marketing department can still be the one coordinating the work, but the better the rest of the organization understands the opportunities, the greater the conditions for the partnership actually being used.