After 10 years working with tech partners, I’ve seen just about every approach to marketing. This isn’t a rant, and it’s not about calling anyone out, but I do think there’s real value in sharing some of the patterns, pitfalls, and lessons we’ve seen across the industry. If you’re hiring (or thinking about hiring) a marketer, this is for you. 

Common setups 

• Juniors hired with no support or direction – and burning out fast. 

• Seniors brought in to “own” marketing - only to hire an agency to do the actual doing. 

• Unicorns who actually can do it all - but honestly, I’ve only ever met a couple. 

There’s nothing wrong with any of these setups in theory - but they often don’t work in practice. 

Why? Because they often start without clarity - and without leadership alignment. 

The real gap: direction, not headcount 

When partners say, “We need a marketing person,” what they often really mean is: 
“We want more leads, better brand presence, and someone to take vendor stuff off our plate.”  

So they hire someone, often without answering the bigger questions first: 

• What direction is the business going in over the next 12–24 months? 

• What are the sales priorities? 

• What markets are we targeting, and why? 

• What products or services are we focusing on? 

• Who do we actually want to attract? 

If leadership isn’t aligned on that direction — no marketer, no matter how skilled, will succeed. 
They’ll try to do a bit of everything. They’ll become reactive. 

And they’ll eventually burn out or lose impact. 

The vendor trap 

Even with good intentions, I’ve witnesses many partner marketers falling into a familiar pattern: 

1. Vendor offers an MDF program 

1. Campaign needs to go live next quarter 

1. Marketing is asked to execute it 

1. The QBR is coming, so results need to be shown 

1. Rinse and repeat 

Instead of building brand awareness and pipeline, your marketing function becomes a vendor asset loader. 

Again, this isn’t the marketer’s fault. It’s the system they’ve been dropped into. 

Let’s talk structure 

Modern marketing is broad. It spans strategy, messaging, content, design, automation, analytics, and more.  

Expecting one person to do all of it - from developing your value proposition to building nurture journeys and analysing campaign data - is unrealistic. Great marketing takes a mix of creative thinking, technical skills, and commercial insight.  

That’s not a single hire. That’s a team. And unless you're building a full internal function (with time, budget and leadership support), that model will always hit a ceiling. 

What we see working 

In our experience, what works best is when marketing is built on solid foundations with clear leadership direction, realistic expectations, and the right mix of capability and capacity. 

Often, partners bring us in to help define the direction - aligning on business goals, sales priorities, and target markets. From there, we help shape the messaging, productise services, map out personas, and develop a strategy that reflects where the business is going. And then we support the delivery - across content, digital, design, automation and more - working alongside internal teams or as their outsourced marketing arm. 

A model worth thinking about 

We’re not saying don’t hire in-house. And we’re not saying “just outsource everything.” 

But if you're expecting one person to do it all - without strategic clarity, leadership backing, or a support structure - you're setting them up to fail. 

There’s no one-size-fits-all approach, but there is a need to think more critically about how marketing is resourced, supported, and expected to deliver. Whether it’s in-house, outsourced, or somewhere in between, what matters most is that you’ve built a structure that actually sets your marketing up to succeed. 

Melanie Unwin is the Co-Founder of Mogrify, a strategic marketing consultancy with end-to-end execution services. Mogrify focuses on helping tech companies translate vision into execution. With 15+ years working with tech partners, vendors and distributors, she specialises in helping teams sharpen their message, define their audience, and build marketing that actually moves the needle.

Melanie is also a member of the Channel Guru advisory team. Visit channelguru.com and register your interest to lock in early access and a special introductory offer when Channel Guru launches.