Referral
Agree what constitutes a useful introduction and who takes ownership afterwards. Preserve the reason for the introduction and the buyer context.
B2B channel marketing agency UK · partner marketing · a buyer’s guide
B2B channel marketing agency partner marketing, and the rules that limit it
Channel marketing is the only marketing discipline whose ceiling is set by competition law rather than budget.
The two things a partner programme most wants (one price everywhere, and control of where partners advertise) are the two things a UK statutory instrument names as hardcore restrictions.
GTM Quest is not a partner-programme agency.
We recruit partners, run joint campaigns with them and track the pipeline they bring.
This guide covers what any channel marketing agency should know before you brief it, and who does the rest.
Reviewed by Dan Keegan, GTM Quest · 28 September 2026 · 11 sources linked below
Your decisionExplore the working brief
Module 01 / 03
Referral
Agree what constitutes a useful introduction and who takes ownership afterwards. Preserve the reason for the introduction and the buyer context.
Module 02 / 03
Reseller
Specify who qualifies, quotes and contracts. Give the partner usable offer information and a clear route for commercial questions.
Module 03 / 03
Delivery
Explain implementation responsibilities and support boundaries. Align marketing claims with what the delivery partner can actually provide.
£4.5m
fined to Fender Europe for preventing online discounts, the largest UK RPM fine at the time
01/ our partner work
Channel marketing what we do, and what we don’t
We are a go-to-market agency.
Partners are one of the channels we build: mostly finding them and running campaigns with them, not administering a programme.
01
Partner recruitment
A written partner profile (resellers, integrators, consultancies, software vendors whose customers are yours) and signal-led outreach to the ones that fit.
The same method as our lead generation, aimed at partners.
02
With-partner campaigns
Joint webinars, co-authored content and account-based plays to shared target accounts, with both names on them and a lead-routing agreement written first.
03
Partner-ready content
Messaging, one-pagers and email copy a partner can use, shipped with the evidence behind every claim, so the partner is not publishing claims it cannot support.
04
Partner-sourced pipeline
Partner, account and opportunity in one data layer above your CRM, so you can see which partners bring pipeline and which only bring logos.
not us
What we don't run
Partner portals, through-channel marketing platforms, MDF and co-op fund administration, and distributor programmes across dozens of countries.
See specialists.
02/ the basics
What is channel marketing? selling through someone else
Channel marketing is marketing that works through partners who sell, recommend or deliver your product: resellers, distributors, managed service providers, systems integrators, consultancies and other software vendors.
You do not sell to the end customer directly.
They do.
Every hop between you and the end customer costs control and signal.
A distributor's reseller's customer may never see anything you wrote, and the partner who did the selling had commercial reasons to change it.
That is not a failure of the programme; it is what a channel is.
So the job of channel marketing is to decide which parts of the message are worth protecting all the way down, make those easy for partners to use, and accept that the rest will not survive.
Channel marketing vs partner marketing
The terms overlap.
"Channel" usually means partners who resell or distribute; "partner marketing" is broader and includes referral, technology and co-selling partners who never touch the invoice.
The rules on price below matter most where a partner resells.
03/ the category
Three different jobs, one word and who is the advertiser in each
"Channel marketing" covers three motions with almost nothing in common operationally, and they differ in who is legally the advertiser.
Which motion are you buying?
To-partner
Recruiting and enabling partners
Marketing aimed at the partner: recruiting resellers, distributors, MSPs and integrators, then enabling them.
You are the advertiser and you control every claim.
- ✓ Partner profile and recruitment
- ✓ Onboarding and enablement kit
- ✓ We run this
Closest to our outbound work.
Through-partner
You fund it, the partner publishes it
Campaigns running in the partner's name, to the partner's list, funded by you, often from market development funds.
The partner publishes; the evidence behind the claims is usually yours.
This is where the legal weight sits.
- ✓ Partner is the publisher
- ✓ Your claims, your evidence
- ✓ MDF rules matter
Usually a specialist's work; see specialists.
With-partner
Both names, costs split
Joint demand generation with both names on it.
Cleanest legally, because both parties are visibly advertisers.
Hardest commercially, because it needs a lead-routing agreement before the campaign.
- ✓ Joint webinars and content
- ✓ Shared account lists
- ✓ We run this
Works well alongside our ABM agency UK programmes.
An agency that does not ask which of the three you mean in the first meeting will sell you the one it is set up to deliver.
The CAP Code attaches to whoever publishes a marketing communication, and only one of these motions leaves that as you.
04/ the hard limit
You may recommend a price you may not hold one
The instrument is The Competition Act 1998 (Vertical Agreements Block Exemption) Order 2022, in force since 1 June 2022.
Article 8 lists the hardcore restrictions: the things that take an agreement outside the block exemption entirely, rather than merely making it risky.
The first is price.
Article 8(2)(a) names "the restriction of the buyer's ability to determine its onward sale price".
This is without prejudice to a supplier imposing a maximum price or recommending one, "provided that any such provisions do not amount to a fixed or minimum sale price as a result of pressure from, or incentives offered by, any of the parties".
That proviso is the sentence that catches partner programmes.
Rebate tiers are incentives.
So is market development funding, and so is preferred-partner status.
A programme can arrive at an unlawful price floor without anyone writing down a minimum, by attaching something a partner wants to the price it holds.
Calling it MAP does not change the analysis
A "minimum advertised price" policy is a different name, not a different test.
If the effect is that a partner cannot decide the price at which it advertises or sells, that is the restriction article 8(2)(a) describes.
The block exemption also only applies where each party's market share is 30% or less (article 6).
05/ the proviso
How a recommendation becomes a floor four places to check your own programme
Answer these from your own programme.
It is a reading of one article, not a compliance assessment, and a clean answer is not a clean bill of health.
Do rebate tiers depend on price?
If a partner earns a better tier by selling at or above your recommended price, the recommendation is being enforced by an incentive.
- ✓ Tier on volume or capability, not price
Is fund allocation tied to pricing?
Market development funds that go to "partners who protect the brand" (meaning partners who don't discount) are an incentive attached to price.
- ✓ Write allocation criteria down
- ✓ Leave price out of them
Can partners lose status for discounting?
A Dar Lighting reseller told the CMA its account would go on hold or be closed if it sold below list price.
The CMA quoted it in its case study.
- ✓ Status on service quality, not price
Does lead flow follow price?
Routing your best inbound leads to partners who hold price is another incentive.
Route on geography, capability or capacity instead.
- ✓ Document the routing rules
Where any answer is "yes", that is the question to take to a competition lawyer.
This page exists to tell you what to ask them, not to replace them.
06/ the consequence
What it has actually cost four UK resale price decisions
None of these companies set out to break competition law; all four ran what they thought was a pricing policy.
Together the four fines total £12.4m.
CompanyWhat happenedFine and source
Fender EuropeRequired guitars to be sold at or above a minimum price, 2013 to 2018; staff tried to record as little as possible in writing. Fine discounted 60% for leniency and a further 20% for settlement.£4.5m · CMA, Jan 2020
CasioSimilar behaviour on digital pianos and keyboards, fined months before Fender.£3.7m · CMA, Jan 2020
National Lighting CompanyImposed a minimum price on online sellers of its light fittings; the fine included an extra penalty for ignoring a CMA warning letter.£2.7m · CMA, June 2017
Dar LightingRestricted resellers' online discounts, 2017 to 2019, after two CMA warning letters. Fine increased 35% for ignoring them; 20% off for settlement.£1.5m · CMA, 2022
Dar is worth reading in full: the CMA published the company's own messages, and they read like ordinary channel correspondence: "No one should be advertising 40% off… in their header.
We are not a discount brand." The CMA also says it can observe e-commerce for signs of restrictive pricing, with online monitoring tools, and that several of its RPM investigations began without any warning letter.
07/ the second restriction
You may not close an advertising channel brand bidding and comparison sites
Article 8(6) says a restriction of selling online includes one whose object is "the prevention of buyers or their customers effectively using the internet for the purposes of selling their goods or services online or from effectively using one or more online advertising channels".
Article 8(7) then defines "active sales" to include targeted advertising and promotion in "online media, digital comparison tools or advertising on search engines".
So a partner agreement that bans resellers from search advertising or comparison sites is not simply a brand-protection policy.
It is close to what the Order describes.
Narrower arrangements may be defensible; selective and exclusive distribution have their own conditions in the Order, and meeting them is the work.
That is a question for a competition lawyer, and it is the right question to bring them.
08/ the money
MDF is a compliance control not only a finance one
Market development funds and co-op money are usually administered by finance against a claim form and a receipt.
Two things make that insufficient.
First, the Bribery Act.
Section 7 makes a commercial organisation guilty if a person associated with it bribes someone to win it business, with one defence: adequate procedures.
Section 8 defines an associated person as anyone who "performs services for or on behalf of" the organisation, and says the capacity in which they do so "does not matter".
A partner spending your money in your product's name can fall inside that.
Second, the advertising rules.
In a through-partner motion the partner publishes claims whose evidence you hold, and CAP Code rule 3.7 requires documentary evidence before publication.
Most partner portals ship the artwork and not the proof.
Ship the proof with the asset.
Partner emails and PECR
If a partner emails its own list on your behalf, the PECR rules still turn on who is receiving it: the electronic mail rule does not apply to corporate subscribers, but sole traders and some partnerships need consent.
Make the partner responsible for its list in writing.
09/ who to hire
Channel marketing agency or something else? three alternatives
Channel agencyDemand generation agency
AudiencePartners, and customers through partnersEnd buyers directly
Main workProgramme management, enablement, MDFCampaigns, content, paid media
Legal weightCompetition law, Bribery Act, CAP CodeMainly CAP Code and PECR
Brief whenMost revenue flows through partnersYou sell direct
→ If you sell direct and want partners as an extra channel, a GTM agency like us can recruit them; see B2B demand generation.
AgencyThrough-channel platform
What you getPeople who plan and run campaignsSoftware partners use to run campaigns
Best forA few important partnersHundreds of small resellers
Evidence handlingCan be contractedDepends on the portal
→ Many large programmes use both. Ask either how substantiation travels with each asset.
AgencyIn-house partner marketer
RelationshipsBorrowedOwned and long-lived
Speed to startWeeksMonths to hire
Best whenLaunching or testing a channelThe channel is proven
→ Partner relationships are personal. Use an agency to launch, and hire before the relationships depend on the agency.
10/ buying it
How to buy channel marketing in the UK five questions for any agency
01
Which motion, in writing?
To-partner, through-partner or with-partner need different teams, assets and contracts.
An agency good at one is often poor at another.
02
How much is programme management?
In most channel retainers, running the programme takes more of the fee than campaigns do.
That is fine, but it should be visible before you sign.
03
What in the proposal touches price?
Any partner benefit (rebate, fund, tier, status, lead flow) contingent on the price a partner sells at is the mechanism article 8(2)(a) describes.
04
How does evidence travel?
When a partner publishes your claim, how does the proof reach the partner at the same time as the artwork?
05
What happens in 2028?
Ask how the agreements they draft would handle the Order expiring on 1 June 2028.
There is no UK channel marketing rate card, MDF benchmark or partner-sourced-revenue percentage we could trace to anyone who does not sell the service, so we don't print one.
Ask any agency for a written scope and a three-month price.
11/ specialists
Channel specialists worth knowing for the partner work we don’t run
Checked on the firm's own site on 28 September 2026.
Not a ranking; nobody paid to appear.
AgencyWhat they do, by their own siteSite
tmpA B2B marketing agency working brand to demand for large technology and professional brands; its site features partner-programme work such as "Driving return on partner investment".tmpb2b.com
Many vendors also run through-channel marketing through their partner portal provider.
For UK B2B agencies more broadly, see the B2B marketing agency UK guide.
GTM Quest editorial guide · Updated 10 October 2026
Brief a B2B channel marketing agency on partner activation, ownership and shared demand.
Practical guide · 01
Define the partner’s commercial role
Channel marketing is work with and through partners, rather than simply another distribution channel for your own advertisements. A reseller, referral partner and implementation partner need different support. Define what the partner is responsible for and what the customer expects before planning a campaign.
Your decision
Reseller
Specify who qualifies, quotes and contracts. Give the partner usable offer information and a clear route for commercial questions.
Delivery
Explain implementation responsibilities and support boundaries. Align marketing claims with what the delivery partner can actually provide.
Practical guide · 02
A partner campaign needs an activation agreement
Co-branded assets do not establish that a partner will use them. Ask the agency to agree the audience, operating responsibilities and follow-up before production. Include how both organisations inspect outcomes without creating conflicting account ownership.
- 1
Audience
Select a shared customer problem and relevant account segment. Check the overlap with each partner’s existing relationships.
- 2
Enable
Prepare messaging, evidence and a seller guide. Identify who approves local changes and who answers product questions.
- 3
Follow up
Agree enquiry routing, ownership and feedback. Make the campaign’s operational handoff as clear as its creative assets.
Practical guide · 03
Worked example: a partner introduces an existing account
Fictional example: a technology partner introduces a company already in the supplier’s CRM. The channel programme should resolve ownership and preserve the partner’s contribution before a seller starts a parallel conversation.
- Stage 101
Match
Check the account, current opportunities and known stakeholders. Keep the introduction attached to the relevant commercial record. - Stage 202
Coordinate
Agree the lead seller and partner role. Tell the buyer who will follow up and how the partner remains involved. - Stage 303
Review
Record the useful next step and share an agreed outcome with the partner. Use exceptions to improve the referral process.
15 minutes · video or phone
Book 15 minutes on your partner programme
Tell us who sells for you today and who you would like to. We come back with the partner profile and outreach we would start with, or which kind of specialist to brief.
- 0115 minutes, video or phone
- 02We look at your partner mix and pipeline
- 03A written next step after the call
- 04Partner work inside a wider GTM engagement
Pick a day that suits · live availability
12/ questions
Channel marketing FAQ
What UK B2B teams ask about partner marketing, and what competition law says about it.
Marketing that works through partners who sell, recommend or deliver your product (resellers, distributors, MSPs, integrators and other vendors), rather than selling direct.
Three different jobs under one word: recruiting and enabling partners (to-partner), funding campaigns that run in partners' names (through-partner) and joint campaigns with both names (with-partner).
See the three motions.
Partly.
We recruit partners with signal-led outreach, run joint campaigns and track partner-sourced pipeline.
We don't run partner portals, MDF administration or large distributor programmes.
See what we do.
No. Restricting a buyer's ability to set its onward sale price is a hardcore restriction under article 8(2)(a) of SI 2022/516.
You may set a maximum or recommend a price, as long as pressure or incentives don't turn it into a fixed or minimum price.
Renaming it "minimum advertised pricing" does not change the test.
If partners cannot decide the price they advertise or sell at, that is the restriction the Order names.
The CMA has fined Fender £4.5m, Casio £3.7m, National Lighting £2.7m and Dar Lighting £1.5m.
Take legal advice.
Article 8(6) covers restrictions on buyers effectively using one or more online advertising channels, and article 8(7) counts search engine advertising and comparison tools as active selling.
A blanket ban is close to what the Order describes; narrower terms are a question for a competition lawyer.
Businesses that break the Competition Act 1998 can be fined up to 10% of annual worldwide group turnover.
Fines can rise for ignoring CMA warning letters.
Dar Lighting's rose 35%.
It can.
Section 8 treats anyone who performs services for or on behalf of an organisation as associated with it, whatever their capacity; section 7 makes the organisation liable for their bribery unless it had adequate procedures.
CAP Code rule 3.7 requires evidence held before publication.
In a through-partner campaign the partner publishes and the evidence is usually yours, so both have a problem.
The fix is procedural: ship the proof with the asset.
No independent rate card exists.
Ask for a written scope and a three-month price, and ask what share of the fee is programme management rather than campaigns.
The Order came into force on 1 June 2022 and ceases to have effect on 1 June 2028.
Keep price and online-advertising clauses severable so they can be replaced.
Campaigns that run in a partner's name, to the partner's customers, usually funded and supplied by the vendor, often through software that lets partners co-brand and send them.
The partner is the publisher, so evidence and PECR responsibilities need to be agreed in writing.
Book 15 minutes · London · UK and Europe
Bring your partner list. We’ll show you who to recruit next.
A 15-minute call, a written next step, and partner recruitment and joint campaigns run alongside your direct pipeline.
14/ sources
Every source on this page
Each figure links to its source. Original source checks: 28 September 2026. The practical guide was updated on 10 October 2026.
- CMA, Guitar maker fined £4.5m for illegally preventing price discounts (Jan 2020)gov.uk
- CMA, Lighting company fined £2.7 million for restricting online prices (June 2017)gov.uk
- legislation.gov.uk: Competition Act 1998 (Vertical Agreements Block Exemption) Order 2022, SI 2022/516legislation.gov.uk
- legislation.gov.uk: SI 2022/516, article 16 (expiry)legislation.gov.uk
- legislation.gov.uk: SI 2022/516, article 8 (hardcore restrictions)legislation.gov.uk
- CMA, Dar Lighting fined £1.5 million for illegally preventing online price discounts (2022)gov.uk
- legislation.gov.uk: Bribery Act 2010, section 7legislation.gov.uk
- legislation.gov.uk: Bribery Act 2010, section 8legislation.gov.uk
- CAP Code: Section 3, Misleading advertisingasa.org.uk
- ICO, Business-to-business marketingico.org.uk
- tmptmpb2b.com