Channel and partner specialist Coterie is setting up a vendor-agnostic forum for the channel community after receiving £194,000 in funding through a Knowledge Transfer Partnership with Innovation UK, the UK’s national innovation agency.
The Coterie Community aims to unite partner marketers from vendors, ISVs, resellers, SIs and service providers to share exclusive research, training, tools, templates and create safe, friendly discussion forums.
By working in collaboration with the University of Huddersfield, Coterie will design and develop the framework for the community while developing research and training for the industry.
“We wanted to do something proactive about the lack of knowledge in B2B marketing and partner marketing and provide training and research to raise its profile and support this community,” said Helen Curtis, founding director at Coterie. “This isn’t about just another general B2B marketing community, this is about developing innovative ideas, underpinned by sound academic research that helps to take partner marketing to the next level and finally get it noticed.”
The need for a Coterie Community comes after the firm released a 2021 research report, Ecosystem 2.0, conducted in partnership with the University of Huddersfield, which identified a lack of support for specialist partner marketers and B2B marketers.
With the funding, Coterie has invested in business development manager Dorin Cernat, professor Shona Bettany from Huddersfield Business School, and experts in organisational change and project management, Dr Nicola Stenberg and Dr Jim Bamford.
“This community will be an invaluable space where global B2B marketers can come together for credible, research-informed support and feel confident that the industry and marketing knowledge they are receiving is academically rigorous as well as practical and useful,” added Bettany, the author of the Ecosystem 2.0 research report.
The community also aims to drive new thinking and help partner marketers with how to devise the right strategy to drive leads, business planning and developing marketing skills for new areas of the discipline.
“We look forward to expanding our relationship with Coterie into an area where we believe we can drive real innovation and change to help partner marketers thrive in this generation and the next,” added Laura Forester-Green, KTP manager at the university.
