The IBM Cloud Marketplace refers to a pivotal online hub in the realm of B2B SaaS partnerships, offering a curated array of software solutions and services meticulously tailored to seamlessly integrate with the IBM Cloud ecosystem. This platform serves as a catalyst for fostering collaborative ventures between B2B SaaS vendors and businesses, enabling them to explore, deploy and manage specialized applications that augment their cloud-based endeavors. By facilitating strategic alliances, the IBM Cloud Marketplace empowers enterprises to access innovative technologies, thereby optimizing growth and efficiency within the expansive IBM Cloud framework.

An ideal partner profile (sometimes called an ideal partner persona) is a research-based profile that describes the traits and characteristics of your best-fit partners. It can be a valuable tool for recruiting more high-value partners and catering to their needs to enable them to succeed.

An ideal partner profile is similar to an ideal customer profile. It involves a detailed description of a partner that would benefit most from your program and who would be the most engaged and successful. Attributes to consider include company size, industry, their customers, their culture and values, and their product. Once you have a sense of who your ideal partner is, you can tailor your program and its marketing to this kind of partner.

An inactive partner is a partner who has joined your program, but has not performed activities that drive value for your business or has not done so in a long time. Inactive partners fail to send leads and traffic or make sales and do not actively engage with your program.

There are several potential reasons for partner inactivity and a few different ways you can attempt to reactivate inactive partnerships, which you can learn about here. Inactive partners may never activate, or they may go inactive after a period of activity.

Inbound recruitment, formerly referred to as passive recruitment, is the process of attracting new potential partners to your program that arrive as inbound traffic. This means they find your business and program on their own, rather than through you going out and pitching your program to them.

An essential part of inbound recruitment is an excellent landing page for your program, which is where potential new partners will learn about its benefits and see how they can apply. Partners found through inbound recruitment may not be a perfect fit for your program, but they come with an established level of interest. It's important to vet them through an application process to only establish partnerships with the right counterparts.

In marketing, incrementality is a metric of how marketing and advertising increase desired conversion rates, such as revenue, website traffic, and profitability. It refers to growth, traffic, and revenue that can be attributed to marketing efforts.

Incrementality can point to how much a certain campaign, channel, or project affected metrics like revenue and traffic. The point of incrementality is to prove the impact of a marketing variable by isolating it. Incrementality can be measured in a few ways, including holdout tests and multivariate tests.

An independent software vendor (ISV) creates, markets, and sells software that runs on one or more computer operating systems (OS) or cloud platforms. In other words, an ISV is a company that distributes its own software. ISVs often distribute their software on marketplaces. Hardware providers, operating systems, and cloud platforms can all offer ISVs on their marketplace, but they'll only accept, or ISV certify, the ones with the best or most relevant software.

Independent software vendors build software for human use, which distinguishes them from original equipment manufacturers (OEM) who normally develop software for backend use. Computer hardware and operating system companies (for example, Microsoft, Apple, and Google) often include ISVs in special partnership programs. This is because the more applications that can run on a platform, the more value it can generate for the platform provider.

When it comes to cloud computing, ISVs often sell their software on a software as a service (SaaS) basis, through platforms like SalesForce AppExchange and Microsoft Azure.

An indirect channel is a sales channel in which goods and services are sold indirectly from the producer through independent middlemen to final users. If there is any intermediary between the producer and the end user, the sales channel can be considered indirect. To contrast, direct channels involve purchasing by the consumer directly from the producer.

Reseller programs are a kind of indirect channel wherein partners sell a producer's product on their behalf. Indirect channels allow producers to sell more product by reaching a wider audience through their partners and outsource the sales process to their teams.

A marketing method products and services  are not directly sold to customers, but rather through partnered organizations, like a reseller, agency, or affiliate marketing partner.

Indirect sales are often used in conjunction with direct sales channels. Utilizing indirect sales can increase scale rapidly for B2B SaaS companies since they tap into the reseller or partner's existing network while also decreasing overhead costs.

In marketing, an influencer is someone who can influence potential buyers into conversion through their promotional efforts. Promotion is usually done on social media, through blog sites, or other means.

Influencer marketing may involve a one-time payment for the influencer from the brand directly or ongoing revenue through affiliate marketing. Influencers can be a powerful marketing tool and can be utilized by brands in both the B2C and B2B spaces.

Integrations, in B2B SaaS, are third-party applications that enhance the functionality of other existing hardware or software. Integrations leverage already existing technology and help to improve it. In the partnerships world, SaaS businesses will often partner together to sell their software and integrations to their overlapping customer base.

An integration partner, synonymous with a technology partner, connects its B2B SaaS technology with yours to bring more value to end users. Integration partners benefit your partner program by expanding your target audience reach and enabling access to new customers and prospects. They are typically incentivized to bring you new deals through a revenue-sharing model.

Read more: How to prioritize integration partners.