How to Measure the ROI of Partner Marketing

Why is partner marketing ROI hard to measure?

Because the sale usually happens somewhere you can't see. A customer sees a dealer's ad, calls the store, and buys at the counter, in the dealer's system, not yours. The marketing ran through the partner, and so did the revenue.

You won't get perfect attribution, and you don't need it. You need enough evidence to see which programs, campaigns and partners work, and to put more behind them.

What should you measure?

Four layers, each easier to get than the next and each useful on its own:

1. Participation: how many partners are marketing at all, and which campaigns they use.
2. Activity: what they ran, in which channels, how often, and how much they spent (their money and yours).
3. Response: clicks, calls, form fills, visits, redemptions, quote requests: whatever a customer does first.
4. Revenue: opportunities and sales tied back to a campaign, a partner and a period.

Report all four. A program with rising participation and flat revenue has a different problem from one with a few very active partners and nobody else.

Why does participation matter so much?

Because it's the lever you control most directly, and nothing else happens without it. A campaign that works at a handful of partners is worth far more once most partners run it. Track the share of partners active each month, by region and tier, and follow up with the quiet ones. See how manufacturers can scale dealer marketing for what moves it.

How do you track response from local campaigns?

• Unique tracking links (with UTM parameters) per partner and campaign.
• Tracked phone numbers per partner or campaign, where calls matter.
• Landing pages and forms per partner, so leads arrive tagged with where they came from.
• Offer or promo codes, for in-store and printed pieces.
• QR codes on print, signage and direct mail.

Build these into the templates, so partners never have to set them up.

How do you tie partner marketing to revenue?

Send leads into your CRM with the partner, campaign and channel attached, and let outcomes come back from there. Where deals close in the partner's own systems, ask partners to report outcomes against campaigns (a simple monthly form works), or match sales data from distributors or point-of-sale feeds to campaign periods and locations.

Where you can't trace individual deals, compare groups: sales at partners who ran a campaign against similar partners who didn't, over the same period. It's not perfect, but it's honest and it answers the real question.

How do you calculate partner marketing ROI?

The formula is the ordinary one: revenue attributed to the program, times your margin, minus the program's cost, divided by the program's cost. The judgment is in what goes into each part.

• Cost includes funds paid out (MDF and co-op), print and media, the platform, and the people who run the program.
• Revenue should be what the program added, not everything partners sold. Group comparisons help here.
• Use your margin, not revenue, unless you're comparing programs with each other.
• Pick a period long enough for your sales cycle.

How do you measure the return on MDF and co-op?

Start with utilization: how much of the available money partners actually used, by program, region and partner. Then tie funded activity to its response and revenue the same way as any campaign. Funds that go unused have a return of zero, which is why fixing the claims process often improves ROI more than anything else. See MDF vs. co-op advertising.

What should a partner marketing report include?

• Active partners this period, and the trend.
• Top campaigns by participation and by response.
• Results by region, partner tier and channel.
• Fund utilization and what it paid for.
• Top partners, and what they do differently.
• Partners who need help, and what you'll do about it.

Share a version with partners, too. Partners who see their own results run more campaigns.

Where does OnBrandify fit?

OnBrandify reports participation and performance by partner, region, campaign and channel, ties leads and revenue back to programs through your CRM, and tracks fund utilization, so the report above is mostly already built. See the platform, or request a demo.