I recently sat down with Lucy Greenaway, Global Partner Marketing Manager at XM Cyber, on Marketing in Progress, and I walked away feeling equal parts validated, fired up, and honestly… relieved. Relieved that someone else is saying out loud what so many partner marketers have known for years but struggled to articulate in boardrooms and budget meetings.

She said, “Partner marketing gets underfunded because it’s really hard to track success. But if you get it right, it can scale your brand and revenue faster than any single campaign could.”

That hit home for me. Partner marketing is where I grew up professionally. I’ve seen firsthand how powerful it can be, but also how quickly it gets dismissed as “just logos on a slide” or “events and swag.” 

The reality? Real partner marketing is deeply cross-functional. It’s demand gen, content, enablement, field marketing, sales alignment, and relationship management, all wrapped into one role. 

But the magic of partner marketing isn’t in co-branding for the sake of it. It’s in building a joint value proposition that actually makes sense for both the business and its customers. It’s telling a shared story that sales teams can confidently sell because it fits naturally into the conversations they’re already having. And it’s doing the unglamorous work—the enablement, follow-up, alignment—that rarely gets celebrated but drives real revenue.

Lucy is one of those rare people who combines sharp strategic thinking with real-world honesty. She has been recognized as a Future B2B CMO, named a CRN finalist for Marketer of the Year, and—perhaps most importantly—she actually understands how partner marketing works in the wild, not just on slides. 

It’s probably not a surprise, then, that one of my favorite parts of our conversation was how grounded it was in basics. Not trends. Not shiny new tactics. Just fundamentals done well. 

Lucy laid out the three things that actually work in partner marketing:

1. A clear joint value proposition

2. Always-on enablement that partners can actually use, and 

3. Real follow-up with defined ownership and accountability. 

   
   

Logical? Yes. 

Easy? Not always. 

Effective? Absolutely.

We also talked about something more personal: what it’s like being the youngest person in the room, often the only woman, and having to prove your credibility over and over again. 

From Lucy’s perspective, to be successful and to prove credibility, you need curiosity, a strong work ethic, and the confidence not to shrink yourself. The truth is that consistency builds credibility, results speak, and you don’t need decades of experience to deliver value.

My biggest takeaway from this episode is one I keep coming back to lately: we all need to calm down a bit. 

Marketing is changing fast. Technology is changing fast. But the things that work—clear strategy, good storytelling, strong relationships, and consistent execution—haven’t changed. And that holds especially true in partner marketing.

If you’re a CMO, a marketing leader, or anyone responsible for growth, here’s my gentle nudge: stop treating partner marketing like a support function. It’s not a cost center. It’s a growth engine. And when it’s funded, respected, and run well, it can scale your business faster than almost anything else you do.

Much love, 

Gayle