Leadership at a Global Scale: ServiceNow Partner Marketing

The landscape of technology and partner ecosystems has undergone a profound transformation over the last two decades, driven by monumental shifts like the rise of the internet and digital transformation. In the early 2000s, the emergence of email and widespread internet adoption began to reshape how businesses operated, laying the groundwork for more interconnected global markets. This initial phase of globalization saw the lines between hardware, software, and services begin to blur, setting the stage for more complex channel strategies. For Meaghan Moore, her early career at companies like Veritas, involved in technical alliances, sparked a passion for partnering, realizing the immense potential when companies combine their technologies and efforts for joint market success. This collaborative mindset was a significant departure from the traditional "customer is always right" sales approach, highlighting the nascent power of ecosystems.

A pivotal moment in this evolution was the acceleration of digital transformation, a concept that was already being discussed in 2019 but experienced an unprecedented compression due to COVID-19. What was once projected as a three-year transition for companies to move their operations online was thrust into completion within 12 months, if not less. This rapid shift forced all businesses, including partners in the ecosystem, to embrace digital channels overnight. Prior to 2020, many partners were still catching up with the idea that buyers were researching and making decisions digitally, long before engaging directly with vendors or coming to events. The pandemic fundamentally altered business models, mandating a digital-first approach to finding buyers and driving demand generation, turning online presence into a non-negotiable for all players in the ecosystem.

This rapid digital pivot profoundly impacted partner marketing. The emphasis shifted from traditional events to ensuring partners had strong digital footprints, including optimized websites, compelling content, robust landing pages, and effective SEO strategies. The realization that peer reviews and social influence were heavily swaying buyer decisions, sometimes 12 to 36 months before a purchase, underscored the need to empower partners with social media presence and digital marketing capabilities. The post-2020 era demanded that partner marketing enable partners to proactively find buyers in the digital world and bring them back, rather than passively waiting for leads. This forced adaptation highlighted the critical need for a new era of strategic, digitally-focused partner marketing that could operate at scale and meet buyers where they were already making their decisions.

Stepping into a leadership role, especially in a complex organization like HP or ServiceNow, demands a structured yet adaptive approach. Meaghan Moore's consistent 30-60-90 day plan serves as a foundational blueprint for success. The first 30 days are dedicated to a "listening tour," emphasizing internal engagement. This critical initial phase involves meeting every single person on the team, regardless of the organization's size, dedicating 15 to 30 minutes, or even an hour for senior leaders. The goal is not to immediately implement changes but to absorb information, understand existing dynamics, and identify individual "superpowers"—what truly drives each team member's passion and unique skill sets. This approach ensures that the past efforts and contributions are honored, fostering trust and enthusiasm among the team, which is vital for gaining buy-in for future initiatives.

Following the internal listening phase, the next 30 days (Day 31-60) focus on external engagement. This involves extending the information-gathering process to analysts, customers, and particularly partners. By combining internal insights with external perspectives, a more comprehensive understanding of the market, competitive landscape, and ecosystem dynamics begins to form. This dual perspective is crucial for identifying opportunities and challenges that may not be apparent from an internal view alone. The final 30 days (Day 61-90) are dedicated to synthesizing all gathered information. This culminates in presenting a strategic plan to leadership, outlining the current state, identifying talent and budget realities, and proposing a vision for building a "best in class" organization over the next 12 to 24 months. This detailed plan outlines necessary resources, strategic plays, and anticipated outcomes, providing a clear roadmap for transformation.

Throughout this 90-day process, continuous consensus-building is paramount. Rather than delivering a finished plan at the end, Meaghan emphasizes bringing key stakeholders along the journey. This involves regularly soliciting input, testing ideas ("Am I on the right track?"), and ensuring alignment with broader business objectives. Collaboration is a core belief, as "five brains are always better than one," reinforcing the idea that broad input leads to stronger strategies. This collaborative approach extends to building the team itself; Meaghan has a history of bringing successful team members from previous organizations (e.g., HP to SAP to ServiceNow), recognizing the value of established talent and shared experience in accelerating growth and achieving ambitious goals in global partner marketing. This iterative and inclusive leadership style ensures that strategic plans are not only well-conceived but also have strong internal support for execution at scale.

The evolution of partner marketing has moved beyond standalone events to an integrated, end-to-end management approach that focuses on continuous demand generation and pipeline nurturing. In the past, events were often seen as isolated activities: organize, attend, and then move on. Today, the strategy at ServiceNow emphasizes extensive pre-event curation, including digital marketing campaigns, Account-Based Marketing (ABM), and leveraging customer success stories to drive interest. During events, the focus shifts to creating a high-quality experience, effective lead collection, and intimate executive roundtables for top customers. Post-event, the critical phase involves nurturing leads through the entire funnel to pipeline closure, ensuring a measurable return on investment for the campaign. This integrated approach, often spanning six months or more, is essential for allowing campaigns to gain traction and succeed, particularly in the longer sales cycles of the enterprise market.

ServiceNow's approach to keeping partners focused on longer-term initiatives is rooted in a culture of "focus, focus, focus," prioritizing quality over quantity in activities. This involves aligning partner marketing efforts with the company's "big bets"—key strategic initiatives for the next 12 months. For top partners, a highly targeted "one-to-one" or "one-to-few" approach is adopted. This involves co-creating differentiated value propositions and integrated go-to-market plans, complete with shared budgets and co-funding. This bespoke level of engagement ensures that the most strategic partners are deeply invested in driving ServiceNow's key objectives, leveraging their unique positioning in the market noise.

For the broader partner ecosystem, ServiceNow has invested in a "partner marketing experience" portal, which acts as a comprehensive marketing university. This portal offers over 30 modules covering essential topics like value proposition creation, demand generation strategies, and event execution best practices. A groundbreaking feature is the "campaign creator," which utilizes a proprietary ServiceNow LLM (Large Language Model) model. This AI-powered tool allows partners to quickly generate co-developed campaigns in any language with high accuracy in minutes and at no cost. This innovative solution empowers a vast number of partners to create and launch personalized marketing efforts at scale. Additionally, for partners with larger budgets or MDF eligibility, a "demand center" provides access to white-glove concierge services, connecting them with agencies for bespoke, fully integrated, multi-month campaigns, further emphasizing the tiered support model for partner marketing excellence.

Tracking the true impact of partner marketing is widely acknowledged as one of the hardest challenges in the industry, particularly for companies focused on partner-led demand generation where partners retain their own leads and sales. While capturing 100% of the influence remains elusive, ServiceNow employs a multi-faceted approach to measure effectiveness. Key metrics include partner-sourced net new ACV (Annual Contract Value), which directly ties partner efforts to revenue growth. Additionally, they track marketing influence on the pipeline at every stage, identifying which campaigns and partner touches contribute most to pipeline progression. This blend of art and science in measurement allows them to tag campaigns and gain insights into their effectiveness, even if a complete capture of all activity isn't possible. The focus is on demonstrating tangible value back to the business and validating the strategic investments in the partner ecosystem.

The role of AI in transforming partner marketing is "phenomenal," particularly in data aggregation and driving strategic insights. AI fundamentally changes how marketers approach predictive analytics, ABM (Account-Based Marketing), and personalized targeting. It offers immense potential for uncovering goodness in marketing that was previously unimaginable. This necessitates a shift in the skill sets required for modern marketers; they must be not only data-driven but also proficient in leveraging AI tools to analyze, cut, and utilize data effectively for strategic decision-making. The ability to understand and work with AI is becoming an essential competency for any marketer aiming to succeed in today's rapidly evolving landscape. AI agents, though not fully orchestrating across all systems yet, hold immense promise for the future of partner marketing, enabling seamless communication and strategic execution between various platforms and stacks.

For partners themselves, AI represents both an opportunity and a challenge. While many partners are still "dabbling" or even apprehensive about AI, the clear advice from ServiceNow is to "get on the train." The analogy of standing on a platform watching a fast-moving train (AI) versus being on the train itself illustrates the importance of active engagement. By "getting on the train," partners can learn as they go, reducing the perceived overwhelm and leveraging AI to enhance their own marketing and sales efforts. This proactive adoption of AI is crucial for partners to remain competitive and differentiate themselves in the market. The ultimate vision is to lead the market and innovate with AI tools, doing things that nobody else is doing yet, creating a competitive advantage and driving engaging conversations about the future of partner marketing at scale.

Leading a global marketing organization, particularly in a dynamic sector like technology, demands a blend of strategic vision, continuous collaboration, and an unwavering focus on the future. Meaghan Moore's career trajectory, marked by transitions from HP to SAP and now ServiceNow, highlights her expertise as a "builder" of large-scale ecosystems and indirect businesses. Her leadership philosophy emphasizes a structured 30-60-90 day entry plan for new roles: a listening tour for the first 30 days, external stakeholder engagement for the next 30, and finally, a strategic plan for the subsequent 12-24 months. This systematic approach ensures deep understanding before significant action, fostering internal buy-in and external alignment. It also demonstrates the importance of bringing key stakeholders along the journey, recognizing that "five brains are always better than one" and that collaboration is key to achieving consensus and successful implementation.

Building effective global marketing teams involves not just strategic planning but also tactical execution. Meaghan is a self-professed note-taker and list-maker, relying on "old school" methods like notebooks and sticky notes to organize complex ideas and track progress. This meticulous approach to data collection and idea formulation underpins her strategic thinking, allowing her to visualize the desired organizational structure and operational flow. A critical aspect of her leadership is viewing sales as the "customer" of marketing. This mindset ensures that marketing initiatives are always aligned with the business's overarching goals, providing the necessary fuel and support for sales success. This tight alignment ensures that marketing efforts are not isolated but are deeply integrated into the company's revenue-generating activities, maximizing impact and efficiency.

Looking ahead to the next 12 to 18 months, Meaghan expresses immense excitement about the transformative potential of AI in marketing. While acknowledging the debate around AI's role in job displacement, her perspective is that AI will primarily handle 80% of administrative tasks, freeing up marketers for the 20% that requires strategic thinking, human touch, and relationship-driven engagement. She sees a "phenomenal" future where AI agents will orchestrate seamlessly between different systems and stacks, enabling a level of precision and scale in marketing previously unimaginable. Her ambition is to lead the market in innovating with these tools, doing things that nobody else is doing yet to create competitive advantage and drive new conversations. This forward-looking perspective, coupled with a passion for her role and a belief in continuous innovation, defines her approach to partner marketing leadership at scale.