Partnerships
Builds collaborations with other companies to grow together.
You'll like it if you love meeting people and negotiating.
What it is
Partnerships are collaborations between companies with a similar audience that aren't competitors. Whoever runs them finds the right partners and builds deals where both sides gain something: new customers, visibility, products made together. Affiliate programmes, where you pay a commission to whoever brings in sales, also belong here.
Works with
- Sales
- Legal team (contracts)
- Marketing analytics (tracking)
- Product marketing
What they actually do
Finding partners
Looks for companies, websites or associations that speak to the same audience.
Proposal
Prepares a partnership idea with clear benefits for both sides.
Agreement
Sets who does what, the cost, how results are shared and for how long.
Co-marketing
Organises campaigns, content or products created together.
Affiliate marketing
Manages partners' links and codes and works out commissions.
Results
Measures what each partner brings and decides whether to continue.
How the work is measured
The indicators (KPIs) they look at most often. The charts are just drawings, not real data.
- Partner sales
- How many purchases come from each partnership.
- New customers
- How many new customers the partner brought.
- Partnership cost
- Commissions and expenses compared with results.
- Active partners
- How many partners bring results, not just how many signed.
How to get started
People often come from sales, affiliate marketing or business development. A good training ground is running a small affiliate programme or a partnership between two local organisations.
1. Skills you need
- Negotiation
- Thinking about benefits for both sides
- Communicating with people from other companies
- Basic numbers and contracts
- Consistency in following up
2. Free tools to practise
- HubSpot CRM (free)
- Google Sheets
Tools by other companies, free or with a free plan: we mention them only as examples.
3. In job ads it's called
- Partnerships assistant
- Junior affiliate marketer
- Junior business development
4. Later you can specialise in
- Affiliate marketing
- Co-marketing
Try it
Exercise 1 · A box made by two
Luca from Five Leaf writes to you: "Shall we do something with another company?"
4 parts, nothing to type: just choices, with a professional's solution at the end.
What you learn
- choosing a partner
- co-marketing
- splitting the margin
- what to put in an agreement