Welcome to the first-ever edition of the Marketing with Intent newsletter, by Resultful.
This newsletter exists to give you the no-nonsense take on Microsoft partner marketing, straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. We speak to and work with dozens of partners each and every week, which gives us a unique and unrivalled perspective.
I’ve been sharing insights across my own LinkedIn profile for some time now, and the feedback is ace. So, we’re packaging those insights into a newsletter.
I hope you enjoy! (and if you don’t, just say you do...)
- Nathan Selby
Director & Founder, Resultful
Key takeaways
- The partners seeing the best results in the Microsoft ecosystem are the ones investing seriously in strategy rather than making off-the-cuff marketing decisions.
- Many partners still have only one internal marketer and fail to properly support them with time, direction or training.
- The best marketing results come from a mix of brand awareness building first, followed by more action-based or sales-driven tactics.
- Personal accounts and thought-led posts from individuals tend to outperform company page content, since net-new prospects rarely follow a company page.
- Partners should focus on a small number of niches, since specialists are remembered more easily than generalists and niching produces more qualified leads.
Microsoft Partner marketing: the state of play as I see it
It’s an exciting time to be a Microsoft partner. Microsoft continues to lead the way as the go-to business solutions vendor. Copilot is creating new opportunities, security is becoming a real contender, people are “getting” Azure, and we’re seeing more mainstream engagement with the Dynamics 365 range.
The partners who are reaping the best rewards? You guessed it: the ones who are investing in proper marketing.
No off-the-cuff decisions, but those putting some serious thought into what they’re doing and why they’re doing it.
Here are the key things I see partners do wrong:
Not being strategic enough
Being tactical and responsive will only get you so far in life. You’ve got to get serious about strategy and vision (both business and marketing strategy). Go back to basics: what are you trying to achieve? What efforts are needed to get you there?
Think about your ideal customer. What are they interested in? Where are they? (For example, are they on LinkedIn? Are they Facebookers?). These things matter. It brings the goal posts closer together and provides some real focus to what you do.
The result? Better marketing and less wasted time, effort, and money. If we can reduce the cost per lead, marketing suddenly becomes much more scalable.
Not investing in marketing resources
When you come from a technical background, marketing can seem alien. It’s the same for me: the thought of delivering a technical project gives me the heebie-jeebies.
In 2025, many partners still lack internal marketing resources, and quite often, those who do have only one marketer.
Marketing can have a significant impact on a business, from boosting organic efforts to driving brand consistency and managing lead gen activities.
Where partners often fall down, though, is not supporting their solo marketer. Just having somebody in place isn’t enough. You need to support them – either with your time and direction or through training and development opportunities.
An early career marketer will absolutely smash it out of the park for you if you take the time and make the effort to support them in the early days.
Forgetting the importance of “brand”
The best marketing results come from a mix of brand awareness and lead generation. If you’re doing any targeted marketing, think about building brand awareness first. For example, you could target a specific list of businesses with top-level ads about your business, with no hard sell. This would get them familiar with your brand name, logo, and broader brand.
Then, when you decide to hit them with more action-based tactics (i.e., sign up for webinar, download an eBook, etc.) or sales-driven activities (get in touch, sign up for workshop, and so on), they’re already familiar with your brand and may be more likely to engage in a way you’d like.
Don’t forget, though, it can take dozens (if not more) individual interactions before somebody is willing to engage meaningfully with you. That’s why building brand awareness is so key.
Focusing too much on a company page
People buy from people. I’ve said it enough times now, and it still rings very true. The likelihood of a net new prospect following your company page is slim. Your page followers are typically already advocates of your business who, if they had a need, would get in touch. So, with that in mind, why focus all your efforts on creating content for that page?
Don’t get me wrong, it’s important to have regular content as a validation point when somebody does come across your website, email or ads. Many individuals will seek out your company page to check that you’re legit.
Instead, invest more time in your personal accounts, bringing your experience and insights to the table. Thought-led posts are smashing it now. But it must be done right. You can’t share Chat GPT-generated content. It needs to add value to the reader. What insights do you have that Google can’t give them? That’s where you truly leave a lasting impression.
Not using data in the right way
Partners need to stop focusing on vanity metrics. Impressions are great, but are the impressions from the right people? I’d be more interested in increasing the volume or percentage of impressions that match your ICP (see definition below in “making marketing jargon make sense”). Similarly, reporting on web visits is great, but what if they come to our website for irrelevant keywords? Your blog(s) will be filled with random words that will “rank” (show in Google). Not all will be related to things you care about, but you may still be
Take the time to review the data you report on: what does it mean? Are you interpreting it the right way? Is it informing your next steps?
If you just report on data but don’t do anything with it, you’re frankly wasting your time. Take a data-driven marketing approach and you’ll see results in no time.
Niche down, please!
The partners scaling right now are the ones known for being experts in a vertical. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. It won’t work. Instead, think about where your expertise truly lies and amend your messaging and offer (across everything you do) to talk to these people. Note: It’s OK to have multiple focuses but try to cap it to four.
We’ve made a very strategic decision to only proactively engage with Microsoft partners. Our content talks to Microsoft partners only and easily helps channel partners understand what we’re about. Yes, we might put off Citrix partners and that’s OK. It means that when we get a lead through, it’s already somewhat qualified. Not to mention, Microsoft is a beast and working with a generalist marketing partner is going to cause headaches – they won’t know the products as well as we do, they won’t understand how MCI works, and they won’t be able to advise on strategic alignments to Microsoft incentives as a result.
Working with someone who knows your industry inside and out has many benefits.
Making marketing jargon make sense
Each edition we’ll make sense of marketing jargon. In this edition, we’re uncovering the “ICP”.
“ICP” refers to “Ideal customer profile” – the makeup of the sort of new customer you’d like to engage. For example, a CTO at a business of 500 staff, which turns over £50M+ annually.
Also sometimes referred to as a “marketing persona”.
It’s Resultful, not Restful..!
The number of times we get referred to as Restful… It’s just funny at this point. You spend all of this time building a brand, investing time and effort in creating a logo and the human subconscious just shortens it.
If anybody tells you working in an agency is “restful”, they’re lying! Every day goes by at 100mph.
Spotlight: Noteworthy Support
You’ve probably heard of the Microsoft Partner Pro’s by now. If you haven’t, where have you been? Noteworthy are experts in helping partners navigate their Microsoft relationship. From operational support to how to strategically align yourself with the Mothership, they do it all.
Check them out: Noteworthy Support / noteworthy.support
About us
We’re Resultful, a Microsoft-focused marketing agency. We’re passionate about three core areas:
1. Supporting partner growth
2. Increasing partner marketing capability
3. Making marketing accessible
Frequently asked questions
What are the most common marketing mistakes Microsoft partners make?
The newsletter highlights several recurring mistakes: not being strategic enough and instead acting tactically, under-investing in marketing resource and support, forgetting the importance of brand awareness before pushing sales-led tactics, over-focusing on company page content instead of personal accounts, not using data properly beyond vanity metrics, and refusing to niche down to a specific vertical or focus area.
How should Microsoft partners think about marketing strategy versus being tactical?
Being tactical and responsive only gets a business so far. Partners need to get serious about strategy and vision by going back to basics: what are you trying to achieve, and what efforts are needed to get there? Thinking clearly about the ideal customer and where they spend their time brings the goal posts closer together and provides real focus, which leads to better marketing, less wasted time and effort, and a lower cost per lead.
Why does brand awareness matter before running lead generation activity?
The best marketing results come from a mix of brand awareness and lead generation. Building familiarity first, for example through top-level ads with no hard sell, means that when you later introduce action-based tactics like webinar sign-ups or sales-driven calls to action, prospects are already familiar with your brand and more likely to engage. It can take many individual interactions before someone engages meaningfully, which is why brand awareness matters.
Should Microsoft partners focus more on their company page or personal profiles?
People buy from people, and a net-new prospect is unlikely to follow a company page, since page followers tend to already be advocates who would get in touch anyway. It's still worth having regular company page content as a validation point, but more time should go into personal accounts, sharing genuine experience and insight. Thought-led posts perform well, provided they add real value rather than generic AI-generated content.
Why should Microsoft partners niche down instead of targeting everyone?
Partners scaling right now tend to be known as experts in a specific vertical rather than trying to be everything to everybody. The advice is to focus messaging and offers around where your expertise genuinely lies, capping this to around four focus areas. Resultful itself only proactively engages with Microsoft partners, which means leads that come through are already somewhat qualified, and working with someone who knows an industry well brings real benefits.
What does ICP mean in Microsoft partner marketing?
ICP stands for ideal customer profile, describing the makeup of the sort of new customer a business wants to engage, for example a CTO at a business of 500 staff turning over ÂŁ50 million or more annually. It is sometimes also referred to as a marketing persona, and getting this definition right underpins clearer messaging and more effective targeting across campaigns.