What do you wish your internal org understood about your role?

Everything. Just kidding!

It’s really important to communicate the impact you’re making with your partners across your internal teams. It's not always easy to find time to plan, execute, and then have to report out on all of the campaigns and activities you're driving. But if you don't advocate and promote what you're doing, no one else in the company is going to do it for you - and most likely they'll ask "what does partner marketing do?"

From the outside looking in, partner marketing looks a lot easier than it is. "It's just a demo in a partner exec keynote", "it's just us getting featured in the partner's blog", "it's just another press release". I believe that partner marketing is the one team within your company that can drive integrated marketing, because they're exposed to all of the internal GTM processes, while being always take an 'outside-in' approach to all of great co-marketing driven with partners. My remit ranges from anywhere from strategizing on how to boost brand equity through partnerships all the way through product adoption, and identifying what activities drove customers to turn on an integration. 

In addition to all of the 'influencing without authority' that marketers do within their own orgs, partner marketers have to influence stakeholders in their respective partner orgs. You have to earn the right to be included in your partner's broader marketing initiatives. I've found that hosting a weekly meeting with your partner team is extremely helpful to connect on short-term deliverables and while also planning for broader campaigns. The best partner marketers don't complain or surface the complexity of their partner orgs within their own companies, they bring various stakeholders together across different functions and generate results.