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By doing this beforehand, it is possible to monitor progress later on and make adjustments as needed to improve outcomes. This is why it's crucial to establish trackable KPIs and measurable goals before beginning any campaigns or initiatives supported by your marketing development funds. When you're working with funds, having clearly defined objectives is essential. With the right investment in Marketing Development Funds, the program can give channel partners a competitive advantage by allowing them to create more comprehensive marketing campaigns that reach new customers while also retaining existing ones. Let's take a deeper look at some of the benefits of marketing development funds. As Justin Zimmerman, founder of Partner Playbooks, recently stated in a LinkedIn post, "The future of marketing, especially product marketing, is probably going to be partner marketing."

Where possible, request supporting materials like screenshots from ad dashboards, CRM reports, or webinar attendance logs. Focus on key objectives by ensuring campaigns align with the most important activities and partners. As a best practice, partners should follow a structured process involving a partner contact portal, validation, activity proposals, and verification for fund release.

On the other hand, to improve member use of the MDF, stand out from the rest by providing benefits that draw in and keep top partners. Finally, a well-established MDF campaign can improve your brand visibility thanks to better leads and more conversions. These funds, set aside specifically to boost partner performance, play a key role in driving growth and building strong relationships and can bring great results if implemented properly.

This operational drag not only hinders efficiency but also limits the ability to scale and improve the program over time. Channel marketing, sales, and partner management teams often find themselves buried in spreadsheets, chasing documentation, and manually auditing MDF claims. In highly competitive IT and SaaS markets, poor local activation isn’t just a missed opportunity—it’s a competitive vulnerability. Every roadblock, whether it’s a cumbersome reimbursement process, unclear rules, or slow approvals, sends a message that the program isn’t built for them. Over time, unspent or misallocated funds erode the perceived value of the MDF program itself, leading to shrinking budgets and skepticism from finance, sales leadership, and partners alike. When MDF programs are poorly structured or inconsistently executed, the losses stack up fast, affecting both vendors and their partner ecosystems.

Understanding Campaign Management

An MDF program (market development fund program) allows brands to provide partners—such as franchisees, dealers or distributors—with funding to run localized marketing campaigns. Pinch stepped in and, within three weeks, launched a multi-channel program including LinkedIn ads and a lead-capture landing page. While these funds are a powerful tool for B2B lead generation, they often come with strict "use-it-or-lose-it" quarterly deadlines. An MDF payment is a reimbursement made to a partner for eligible marketing activity—typically after proof of execution is submitted or verified. GearBox® by IRIS helps brands connect their co-op funding to real execution—so every dollar spent is backed by compliant, brand-approved marketing. MDF channel programs only create impact when partners launch the campaigns you intended—not when forms get filled.

Best Practices for Utilizing MDF

MDF is often pre-allocated, while co-op is reimbursed after execution. If your MDF marketing funds aren’t tied to structured campaign rollout, they become just another budget line. This gave Fiberon full control over brand execution—while dealers had access to easy, fund-eligible marketing tools. MDF funds are a key part of their partner strategy—but only when they can verify what’s used. Fulfillment Happens Outside the System Teams email PDFs, upload to separate vendor portals or manage shipping manually.

Before You Start, Some Strategies for Improving Partner MDF Use

Rather, it requires active engagement and planning between vendors and their partners to identify opportunities where the deployment of MDFs can yield a significant impact. Marketing development funds can be utilized for a variety of marketing activities to enhance brand visibility and drive sales. This multifaceted approach allows for a tailored application of market development funds to directly support the unique objectives of each partner while aligning with the overarching goals of the vendor.

360insights is a partner engagement and business optimization company, enabling brands to better influence, manage, and engage with their complex channel ecosystems. Ansira fuels brand-to-local growth by helping brands synchronize their distributed ecosystems. Laura Cooling Braasch is a channel marketing leader with over 15 years of experience helping global brands design and optimize partner programs that drive measurable growth. As President & Co-founder at AscendX Digital, Sherry Foster empowers brands to reimagine partner marketing, turning technology, automation, and proven frameworks into ecosystems where partners thrive, buyers engage, and growth accelerates. You’ll learn how to structure MDF programs that are scalable, easy for partners to participate in, and aligned to sales goals—not just marketing activities.

That design discipline improves the quality of the activity and the credibility of the proposal. Campaign management enables partners to optimize marketing activities within approved requests while maintaining detailed documentation and status tracking for each individual marketing initiative. Partners can manage multiple campaigns within MDF requests through comprehensive campaign-level controls including editing campaign details, managing campaign-specific attachments, monitoring individual approval status, and coordinating campaign execution timelines. Show the vendor exactly how each quarter of spend moves buyers forward in their decision cycle, and tie every dollar to a pipeline outcome , opened accounts, warmed committees, and influenced opportunities. MDF can fund webinars, paid media, events, content, and integrated demand generation programs.

Poor Program Communication and Unclear Expectations

MDF marketing refers to the channel marketing activities that vendors fund through market development funds — enabling channel partners to execute co-branded demand generation programs including email campaigns, webinars, field events, and digital advertising that extend the vendor’s market reach through the partner’s own customer channels. Eligible MDF marketing activities vary by vendor program but typically include co-branded email demand generation campaigns, digital advertising programs targeting the vendor’s buyer personas, webinars and virtual events featuring the vendor’s products, in-person field events such as roundtables and lunch-and-learns hosted in the partner’s local market, content development such as co-branded solution briefs or customer case studies, social media promotion using vendor-approved content, and trade show or conference participation. MDF marketing refers to the channel marketing activities that vendors fund through market development funds (MDF) — enabling channel partners to execute co-branded demand generation programs that extend the vendor’s market reach through the partner’s own customer relationships, email lists, events, and digital channels. In a typical MDF program, partners submit a request for funding through the vendor’s partner portal, specifying the marketing activity they plan to execute — such as an email campaign, an event, a webinar, or a digital advertising program — along with the estimated budget and expected outcomes. MDF (market development funds) are budgets allocated by brands to help partners run co-branded, approved marketing campaigns.

What MDFs Can Fund: Eligible Marketing Activities

• They are signs that the campaign motion is asking busy teams to do too much manual assembly.
• This frees up internal resources for core activities and strategic initiatives, while providing access to expert skills.
• This level of visibility empowers both vendors and partners to make informed decisions and continuously improve.

Market Development Funds (MDFs) are essential for companies working with sales partners. Discover how Market Development Funds (MDF) help your sales partners and why they’re key to growing sales. When structured and executed well—and powered by the right platform—MDFs can transform your partner engagement efforts.

The fund reserves money based on a predetermined budget or as a share of revenue to be used by the channel partners to improve their marketing position. Market development funds (MDF) play a strategic role in cultivating stronger relationships with vendors and business partners, and they serve as an essential catalyst for collaborative marketing efforts and business expansion. It’s time to rethink your strategy, focus on what truly moves the needle, and work together to create marketing that matters. By taking an integrated, longer-term approach, you can create campaigns mdf campaign execution that resonate deeply with audiences and drive sustained growth for both you and your partners.

Who is eligible for market development funds

Selecting the right MDF model offers significant advantages, such as expanded market reach, increased partner engagement, and improved mutual profitability. It can be tailored to support a variety of marketing activities, helping partners reinforce brand recognition and strengthen their connection to the vendor. MDF also provides partners with additional resources, such as access to promotional tools and support, enabling them to execute more impactful marketing initiatives. The problem isn’t the idea of MDF itself—it’s the lack of strategy, guidance, and measurement behind it. Some examples include lead-generation campaigns, podcast episodes, social media posts, website blog articles, webinars, and in-person events. Marketing Development Funds can be used for a wide range of purposes, including market research, marketing campaigns, product design and development, customer acquisition and retention strategies, strategic partnerships, and more.