It's completely understandable. Most resellers grew because they were good at selling and supporting technology, not because they had a marketing plan. But the way Microsoft pays partners has changed a lot this year, and that makes marketing much harder to treat as a side job. So, if you're looking for a full-service agency to fill that gap, here's what I'd look for and why.
The short answer
A UK IT reseller without an in-house marketing team needs a full-service agency that can act as its marketing department. That means one team that handles strategy, positioning, content, campaigns, website and search, paid media and reporting.
If most of what you sell is Microsoft, and for most UK resellers it is, that agency should specialise in Microsoft partners. It should be able to plan your activity around this year's Co-op rules and keep the evidence your claims need, so the funding you've earned actually comes back into the business.
Why does this matter more for resellers this year?
FY27 started on 1 July, and with it came what many in the channel are calling the biggest reshaping of CSP incentives in years. The flat run-rate rebate on Modern Work and Dynamics 365 has been retired in its old form. The cheapest, non-strategic SKUs drop to zero, and the margin now goes to partners who drive growth, premium products and AI adoption.
For a reseller, that's a big deal. For years, a decent chunk of profit came from simply transacting licences, and marketing was a nice-to-have. Now the value sits in growing seats, moving customers up to premium and security-rich SKUs, and helping them actually adopt Copilot and AI, which is a services and advice conversation. You can't win that conversation if nobody knows you offer it, and that's a marketing job.
What does "full-service" actually mean for a reseller?
"Full-service" gets used loosely, so it's worth pinning down. For a reseller without a marketer, I'd expect a full-service agency to cover these areas:
- 1
Strategy and positioning
This means working out who you're really for and why a customer should pick you over the next reseller. There are tens of thousands of IT businesses in the UK, many selling exactly the same Microsoft licences as you, so this is where everything starts.
- 2
Content and campaigns
Not a "quick post" here and there, but joined-up campaigns that take a customer from not knowing they have a problem to booking a conversation with you.
- 3
Website, SEO and AEO
More buyers now ask ChatGPT or Copilot for a shortlist before they ever visit a website, so you need to be findable in those answers as well as on Google.
- 4
Paid media
That means LinkedIn, but also channels resellers often overlook, like Microsoft Advertising. Some Microsoft product searches have much higher volumes on Bing than on Google, and the B2B targeting on Microsoft Advertising is surprisingly close to LinkedIn's.
- 5
Co-op planning and evidence
This means planning activity Microsoft will actually fund and collecting the proof as you go.
- 6
Reporting
Show what's driving pipeline in plain English, not a dashboard of vanity metrics.
The point of having all of this under one roof is that nobody internal has to stitch it together. When marketing is spread across a freelancer, a web developer and a paid media contractor, the joining-up becomes another job for someone who's already busy enough.
Why a Microsoft specialist rather than any full-service agency?
A general B2B agency can write a good blog and run a tidy LinkedIn campaign. But if you're a Microsoft reseller, a lot of your marketing is funded by Microsoft Co-op, and those rules have just been rewritten.
This year, the single incentives guide was split into three separate investment programmes. Email, social, digital and direct mail have been merged into one activity called "paid media with multi-touch campaign". Some activities, like proofs of concept and Microsoft syndicated content, can't be claimed at all any more. And any activity that features a non-Microsoft product can only claim back 30% of its cost.
When we ran our FY27 Co-op webinar with Noteworthy Support in September, one of the clearest messages was how often good, well-delivered activity fails at the claim stage. Usually it's because the evidence wasn't kept, or because an agency invoice just said "campaign services" with one figure on it. An agency that doesn't live in this world will happily build you a campaign Microsoft won't reimburse, and you'll only find out months later.
There's also the matter of messaging. If your agency doesn't know that Microsoft now measures the Microsoft 365 Copilot specialisation on paid monthly active usage rather than seats sold, it'll write you campaigns built around selling licences. Microsoft, and your margin, now reward usage and adoption.
What should you still own internally?
I'd always be honest about this one. It's absolutely fine to outsource marketing to specialists, but the resellers who get the most out of an agency are the ones who keep somebody internal to own the thinking. That doesn't have to be a marketer. It could be the founder, a sales lead or whoever looks after your Microsoft relationship.
Their job is to know what the business is trying to achieve, feed the agency what customers keep asking about, and make decisions quickly. That first-hand insight is gold, because it's the one thing an agency can't get from anywhere else. And it's what stops your content sounding like every other reseller's.
How to choose between agencies
When you're speaking to agencies, these questions will separate the ones that suit a reseller like you from the ones that don't:
- 1
"Who else like us do you work with?"
You're looking for other Microsoft partners of a similar size, not enterprise software brands.
- 2
"What changed in FY27, and how would it change what you'd do for us?"
A specialist will talk confidently about incentives, specialisations and Co-op. A generalist will move the conversation on.
- 3
"How do you handle Co-op evidence?"
The answer should be "from day one", with itemised invoices, one line per activity.
- 4
"What would the first three months look like?"
You want a clear plan, not a retainer that starts with three weeks of discovery and no output.
- 5
"How will we know it's working?"
Ask about pipeline, conversations and customers, not just impressions.
Why Resultful suits resellers without a marketing team
We're a marketing agency built for Microsoft partners, and we only proactively work with them. Yes, that means turning some work away, but it's how we stay close enough to the ecosystem to be useful.
For resellers without a marketer, we act as the marketing team. We sharpen the proposition, then plan and run joined-up campaigns, often funded by Co-op and built so the evidence is there when it's time to claim. A typical Copilot campaign might start with an introductory e-book and a short "what is Copilot?" blog. From there, it moves to a webinar and an ROI case study, then finishes with an AI use-case workshop for customers who are close to buying. We can get those foundations up and running in a couple of weeks, or spread them across six months so they become a 12-month programme rather than a mad dash to spend Co-op before it expires.
We also like to think we're a bit different from a traditional agency. We'd much rather explain what we're doing and why, so you understand your own marketing better, than keep it behind a curtain. That's why we run our monthly Microsoft Partner Marketing Meet-Up and sessions like our Co-op webinar, and why we're always happy to share what's working.