They know they need outside help with marketing, they've been told to look for a "specialist channel marketing agency", and they want to know how to pick a good one.
My honest answer is that "channel marketing agency" is still too broad a brief. If you're a Microsoft partner, your shortlist should only include agencies that specialise in Microsoft partners. Here's why, and how to tell the real specialists from the ones who've just added a Microsoft logo to their homepage.
The short answer
If you're the founder of a UK Microsoft partner, choose an agency that works only, or almost only, with Microsoft partners. It should be able to explain this year's programme, incentive and Co-op changes without needing to look them up, and it should be able to show you recent Microsoft partner work that created real pipeline.
A general channel marketing agency will understand resellers, distributors and through-channel campaigns, but it won't keep pace with Microsoft's products, programmes and funding rules, which change every single year. And FY27 has been one of the biggest shake-ups in a long time.
Why is "channel marketing" too broad?
Channel marketing covers a lot of ground. The same agency might be running through-partner campaigns for a hardware vendor, managing MDF for a security vendor and building partner portals for a cloud provider, all in the same week. Each of those ecosystems has its own rules, portals, funding models and fiscal calendar.
Don't get me wrong, plenty of those agencies are very good at what they do. But knowing the Microsoft ecosystem properly is a separate skill, and it takes constant effort to stay current.
Think about the size of it for a second. More than 500,000 partners sit in the Microsoft AI Cloud Partner Program, and they sell across Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, Azure, Fabric, Foundry, Defender, Sentinel and Purview. Each one has its own buyer, its own licensing and its own go-to-market motion. Build 2026 alone brought announcements across Microsoft IQ, Work IQ APIs, Foundry IQ and the Agent 365 SDK. A generalist agency can't absorb all of that alongside four other vendor ecosystems, and frankly, you wouldn't expect it to.
The pace of change is the real test
The best way to judge whether an agency really knows Microsoft is to look at what changed in just the last few months. FY27 started on 1 July, and since then:
- 1
Incentives have been reshaped
The flat run-rate rebate on Modern Work and Dynamics 365 has been retired in its old form. Microsoft now rewards growth, premium SKUs and AI adoption instead.
- 2
Specialisations have moved
The Copilot specialisation is now the Microsoft 365 Copilot specialisation. It's measured on growth in paid Copilot monthly active usage rather than seats sold, and customer references have been replaced by a third-party audit.
- 3
Co-sell has gone Marketplace-first
This means Marketplace billed sales are now how Microsoft recognises partner impact.
- 4
Certifications have changed
AZ-500 retired on 31 August, AI-102 is handing over to AI-103, and new agentic AI certifications have arrived.
- 5
Co-op has been rewritten
The single incentives guide has been split into three investment programmes. Activities have been renamed and merged, so email, social, digital and direct mail now sit under one activity called "paid media with multi-touch campaign". Microsoft syndicated content and proofs of concept are no longer claimable at all. For CSP and hosting partners, allocated resource is capped at 50%, and any activity that includes a non-Microsoft product can only claim back 30% of its cost.
When we ran our FY27 Co-op webinar with Molly Ridley from Noteworthy Support in September, her warning was blunt. If you're still working from an FY26 plan, parts of it are now completely unfundable, and you probably won't find out until you go to claim. The guidelines themselves run to around 300 pages.
So what does that mean when you hire an agency that isn't across it? You might get a lovely campaign that blends your Microsoft offer with a third-party product, includes a direct mail drop and leans on syndicated content, and then watch most of the claim disappear. You might get Copilot messaging built around selling seats when Microsoft has moved the goalposts to usage. The work might look great, but the money behind it quietly leaks away.
What should a Microsoft partner marketing agency know without being told?
When you're comparing agencies, these are the areas a genuine specialist should be able to talk about without any notes:
- Your designations and solution areas, and how your marketing supports them, rather than simply promoting whatever you happen to sell.
- This year's Co-op rules, including what they'd recommend, what they'd avoid and how they'll keep the evidence your claims need. Invoices that say "campaign services" with one figure get queried.
- Where Microsoft is investing. This year's Co-op guidance points roughly 30% to Cloud & AI Platforms, 30% to Copilot, 20% to Security, 15% to AI workforce and 5% to AI business process. That shape affects what your PDM cares about and where co-sell conversations go more easily.
- How to make you sound different from the hundreds of other partners selling the same Copilot or Azure offer, often with the same vendor content and their logo slapped on top.
- Marketplace, co-sell and your distributor, and how all three fit into your go-to-market plan.
Does it matter that you're in the UK?
It does, more than people think. The UK&I market has its own Microsoft subsidiary team, its own distributor relationships, its own events calendar and its own buyers, who don't respond to American-sounding copy. It's also a relatively small market where reputations travel quickly.
UK founders also tend to wear several hats at once, and Co-op often funds a sizeable chunk of their marketing. Working with an agency that's based here, writes in British English and knows how UK&I partner teams operate saves you a lot of translating.
Why we only work with Microsoft partners
Now, you might think we'd say all of this, and to be fair, we would. We made a very strategic decision to only proactively work with Microsoft partners. Yes, that means we turn some work away, and that's OK, because it's the only way to stay as close to the ecosystem as our clients need us to be.
In practice, that means keeping on top of every Partner Center announcement and every Co-op guide. It's why we run our monthly Microsoft Partner Marketing Meet-Up for marketers inside Microsoft partners and our annual research into how partners on both sides of the Atlantic market themselves, and why we run sessions like our FY27 Co-op webinar. Keeping up with all of it is our whole job, so your team can focus on selling and delivering.
The result? Your marketing is built around how Microsoft works today rather than how it worked two fiscal years ago, and your Co-op ends up working much harder for you.