Most partners don't go looking for marketing support until something's already gone wrong. The pipeline's thin, the co-op funds are about to expire, or somebody senior has asked why the website still talks about "digital transformation journeys" in 2026.
Then the search starts. And frankly, that's the worst time to be choosing an agency, because everything looks the same from the outside.
Same claims. Same case studies. Same promise to "drive demand".
So here's what I'd actually look for, having sat on both sides of this - buying it badly in a previous life, and now delivering it.
Do they understand the Microsoft partner world, or just marketing?
This is the big one, and it's where most of the wasted money goes.
A generalist agency can write you a nice landing page. What they can't do is tell you why your Solutions Partner designation matters to a buyer who's never heard the term, or how to build a campaign that a Microsoft account team will actually put their name to.
Ask them the awkward questions early. What's the difference between a designation and a specialisation? Who at Microsoft would care about this campaign, and why? What happens to a partner's marketing when the incentive model shifts?
If they wave it away as "we'll pick that up as we go", you're paying for their education.
You want people who know how partner-to-partner works, how co-sell actually behaves in practice, and what a Microsoft seller needs to see before they'll bring you into a deal. That knowledge takes years. It doesn't come from a briefing document.
Can they say what makes you different, without using the word "expertise"?
Here's a test worth running. Take your homepage, take three competitors' homepages, cover the logos, and see if anyone in your team can tell them apart.
Most can't. There are thousands of Microsoft Partners in the UK alone, and a huge chunk of them describe themselves in near-identical language: trusted, experienced, customer-first, end-to-end.
Good marketing support starts by making you uncomfortable about that. They should push you on what you actually do differently - the industries you know inside out, the way you onboard, the thing your customers always mention on a reference call.
That's the raw material for a proposition with a bit of bite. Not a strapline session. A proper strip-back of who you're for, what you fix, and why anyone should pick you over the partner down the road. It's the same work we do in value proposition development.
If the first thing an agency wants to talk about is channels and content volume, they've skipped the hard bit.
Are they honest about what marketing can't fix?
I've got a lot of time for agencies that say no.
If your sales team has no follow-up process, more leads won't help you. They'll just create a bigger pile of ignored enquiries. If your proposition is muddled, a bigger content calendar will spread the confusion further and faster.
Look for people who'll tell you that. Who'll say "let's sort the positioning before we spend a penny on ads", even though the ads retainer would have been the easier sell.
Honest advice up front usually means honest reporting later.
Do they build your capability, or your dependency?
There's a difference between an agency that does marketing for you and one that leaves you better at it.
Both are legitimate. But you should know which you're buying.
The tell is in how they work. Do they explain their thinking, or hand over finished artwork with no rationale? Will they run a workshop with your team, or keep everything behind the curtain? When the contract ends, do you still have the messaging framework, the audience map, the campaign plan, or does it all walk out of the door with them?
For smaller partners especially, capability is the thing worth paying for. You might not have a full marketing team. You need somebody who makes the one person you do have twice as effective, which is why we offer marketing training and development alongside the delivery work.
What do they measure, and do they say it out loud on day one?
Impressions are not results. Neither is a "great engagement rate" on a post that nobody in your target market saw.
Push for the awkward numbers before you sign: qualified conversations, meetings booked, opportunities influenced, pipeline created. Ask what a realistic three-month picture looks like, and what a twelve-month one does.
An agency worth its fee will give you a straight answer, including the bad news. Most B2B tech buying cycles are long, and anyone promising a flood of qualified leads by week six is either inexperienced or hoping you are.
Also worth asking: what would make you tell us to stop? A good partner has an answer.
The practical bit
Three things to do before you brief anyone.
Write down what "good" looks like in a year. Not "more leads" but a number, a market, a type of customer.
Be honest about your capacity. An ambitious plan you can't feed with sales follow-up is worse than a modest one you can.
Ask for a reference from a partner your size, not their flagship logo. The experience is wildly different.
Then judge every conversation on one question: did they make my thinking sharper, or did they just make me feel busy?
Busy is not the same as well directed. If you'd like a second opinion on any of it, there's more on how we work in how to choose a Microsoft Partner marketing agency.
Nathan, Founder & CEO, Resultful