Partner Content - Building growth through partnerships: How AvePoint is redefining partner marketing

AvePoint’s Brenda Castiglioni Pedroza explains how strategic, experience-led marketing is helping the channel move from transactional activity to long-term growth

What prompted you to sponsor the Sales and Marketing Awards this year?

For us, the channel is everything. And within that, marketing plays a much bigger role than it sometimes gets credit for.

Sponsoring the Sales and Marketing Awards felt like a very natural extension of how we want to show up in the industry. It’s about recognising the people behind the strategies, the campaigns, the ideas that actually make things happen.

On a personal level, it also means a lot to be part of something that celebrates growth and creativity in the channel. Especially coming from a non-traditional background into marketing, I’ve seen first-hand how much impact you can have when you’re given the opportunity and support to step into the space.

What would you say is your company's proudest achievement over the past year?

I would say our proudest achievement has been the way we’ve strengthened and grown our relationships across the channel.

Over the past year, we’ve seen a real increase in partner engagement, not just in volume, but in the quality of those relationships. More partners are attending our events, more are engaging with what we’re doing, and we’ve also seen a strong increase in new partners wanting to be part of the AvePoint ecosystem.

That didn’t happen by chance. It came from being much more intentional in how we show up. We’ve focused on creating meaningful touchpoints, whether that’s events, roundtables or more strategic conversations, where partners feel heard and genuinely supported.

For me, the biggest shift is that we’re no longer just seen as a vendor. We’re seen as a partner invested in their growth. And that’s what’s driving the engagement we’re seeing today.

What have been the biggest challenges of the current year so far and how have you overcome them? How have your people/partners helped with that?

One of the biggest challenges has been moving away from a reactive approach to marketing and building a more proactive, strategic way of working with our partners.

In a channel environment, it’s very easy to fall into a pattern where marketing just responds to requests. What we’ve really focused on this year is being clearer on what we want to achieve together with each partner, and how we support that growth in a structured way.

That means taking the time to understand where they are in their journey, where the opportunities are, and where we can actually add value. Instead of waiting, we’re going to them with ideas, recommendations and plans on how we can grow together.

It’s also a mindset shift. It’s not just about how partners grow with us, but how we grow with them. That’s what builds trust.

And honestly, that shift only worked because of collaboration. Our sales teams were open to working more closely, and our partners were willing to have more strategic, honest conversations. It changed the dynamic from something quite transactional into something much more collaborative.

What lessons do you think the industry has learned over the past year and what changes do you think it still needs to make?

I think one of the biggest lessons over the past year is that technology alone is not what makes you stand out anymore. Relationships do.

Since the pandemic, there’s been a real shift in behaviour. People are more selective with their time, less willing to attend in-person events, and overall harder to engage face-to-face. You can feel that across the industry.

That’s forced us to rethink how we approach marketing. It’s no longer enough to invite someone to an event and talk about your product. If we want people to show up, we need to give them a reason that actually matters to them.

Where I think the industry still needs to evolve is moving from promoting solutions to creating experiences. Something that feels valuable, relevant and genuinely worth their time.

That’s something we’ve been very intentional about. For example, with our technical bootcamps, we don’t just deliver training. We think about the full experience. The environment, the energy, how people connect with each other. We’ve even aligned sessions with moments like the World Cup and hosted them in more engaging venues to make it feel different.

At the end of the day, people remember how you make them feel.

What do you see as the main opportunities for the industry in the coming 12 months? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?

AI is definitely the biggest opportunity ahead, but I think the conversation is still a bit incomplete.

Everyone is talking about AI, but not enough focus is going into what actually enables it, which is data. The quality, structure and security of that data will define how successful AI adoption really is.

That’s where I see the real opportunity. Helping partners and customers not just adopt AI, but actually be ready for it.

At AvePoint, that’s exactly where we play. We focus on data across its full lifecycle, from governance and security to management and optimisation, so organisations have the right foundation in place before layering AI on top.

From a channel perspective, our role is to make that practical. Not just talking about AI as a trend, but helping partners understand how they can turn it into a real opportunity for their business and for their customers.

Which technology trend currently still in hype stage are you placing your bets on?

AI is still very much in the hype phase, but for me, the real bet is on how it becomes operational, especially for MSPs.

There’s a big opportunity for managed service providers to evolve what they offer, but to do that, they need the right level of automation, visibility and control across their environments.

That’s where AvePoint Confidence Platform - Elements Edition comes in. It helps MSPs manage security, governance and operations at scale across multiple tenants, which becomes even more important as environments grow and AI adoption increases.

So for me, it’s not just about AI itself. It’s about the foundations behind it. The MSPs that can automate, standardise and scale will be the ones that really take advantage of what AI can offer.

This article is sponsored by AvePoint.