Platform marketing strategy guide: make the business model matter

A strategy guide for platform businesses, builders and owners.

The platform marketing strategy challenge we see most often is a gap between the ambition of the word and the clarity of the proposition. Across our technology marketing work, we see SaaS companies adding integrations and partner networks, service businesses packaging specialist workflows into technology-led offers, and established technology firms repositioning products as platforms to support expansion. These shifts reflect a market search for recurring revenue, broader participation and growth beyond a single product or service. Yet buyers still need a direct answer to a basic question: what does this business model help me do?

The word has travelled from consumer platforms such as Uber and Airbnb into B2B propositions. Amazon Business connects business buyers with sellers through a marketplace and procurement tools. Shopify describes an ecosystem of developers, designers and service partners that extends its commerce platform. Salesforce positions its platform as a base for building workflows, applications and AI agents. The models differ, but each makes a claim about how value moves between participants.

At The Rubicon Agency, we have experienced the practical demands of that shift first-hand. Fooji’s Fan Experience Management platform story shows what happens when a business with established promotions, loyalty and fulfilment capabilities needs to articulate the role of its core technology platform for its next phase of growth. First Resonance needed to articulate a rapidly evolving industrial platform, its product components and its place in a wider manufacturing shift. Across these engagements, we have seen a recurring market pattern: platform capability can advance faster than the language, proof and commercial understanding buyers need to adopt it.

A platform connects capabilities, people, services, data or transactions in a way that can create value beyond a single product sale. Airbnb describes its technology platform as powering a two-sided marketplace. Shopify talks about its partner ecosystem extending functionality. Salesforce describes a platform on which customers can build business applications and workflows. These are related ideas, but they are not interchangeable business models.

In our work, we see “platform” used to signal ambition: scale, recurring revenue, customer self-sufficiency or ecosystem potential. Those may be real strengths. But the word can also create distance from valuable human expertise, managed delivery or specialist services that remain central to the offer.

The question is not whether the business can call itself a platform. It is whether customers and partners can see the value of participating. Who joins? What do they contribute or receive? What becomes possible as the platform grows? If the answer is only that it brings everything together, the buyer still has to do the strategic work.

Our experience is that platform propositions become clearer when they describe the exchange, not simply the technology. That is the thinking behind our platform marketing work and our earlier article on participation and purpose.

There is no single platform marketing playbook because there is no single platform business model. We find it useful to distinguish three broad flavours. They can overlap, but each asks marketing to make a different commercial story clear.

A transaction platform connects distinct groups that need to find, evaluate or transact with one another. Amazon Business is a B2B example: business buyers can discover products from sellers and use procurement features such as hosted catalogues and purchasing workflows. The marketing challenge is to make participation valuable for both sides, while showing how the transaction experience fits a business buyer’s process.

A software ecosystem platform gives customers a core product while partners, developers or other providers extend its use. Shopify’s annual reporting describes partners and apps as extending the functionality of its platform. This model needs a clear story for both the core product and the value others add around it.

A connected-services platform coordinates people, systems or services around an outcome. The platform may make specialist work more visible, repeatable or easier to manage, while still depending on human delivery. The proposition has to explain how responsibility, quality and customer experience hold together across those connections.

SaaS describes a software delivery and commercial model. A platform describes a role in an ecosystem or a base on which other products, participants or services can create value. A SaaS business can become a platform, but changing the label alone does not create network effects, partner value or customer self-sufficiency. The difference is strategic: what can customers or other participants do because the core product exists?

We see SaaS companies move towards platform positioning for several reasons. They may be adding integrations, opening developer access, coordinating services or trying to signal a larger role in the customer’s business. The label can also be tempting because it sounds more expansive than software.

That shift needs care. Platform can imply independence and self-service. If customers value guidance, managed services or expert judgement, a message that suggests people are no longer needed may weaken the offer. In our work with Fooji, the challenge was to articulate how its technology, operational processes and physical fan experiences worked together under the Fan Experience Management proposition. With First Resonance, the work had to make evolving product components and a broader industrial proposition intelligible together. Both experiences show why platform language needs to be grounded in what the market can understand and use.

• Name the model before you build the campaign. Be clear whether you connect buyers and sellers, extend a core product or coordinate services.
• Describe the exchange. Show what each participant contributes and receives, not just the technology that connects them.
• Treat “platform” as a claim that needs proof. Explain what customers or partners can do that a standalone product would not support.
• Make maturity visible. Separate current capabilities from planned ones so buyers can assess the offer accurately.
• Keep the human role explicit. If expertise, implementation or assurance improves the outcome, show where it fits.

In our experience, platform vendors can explain architecture at length and still leave buyers unsure what changes for their business. Marketing needs to translate capability into a conversation about outcomes, participants and reasons to act.

Start with the commercial motion. A transaction platform may need to attract enough supply to make buyer demand worthwhile. A software ecosystem may need to win the core customer, then give partners a reason to extend the product. A connected-services platform may need to show how technology and people work together without creating another coordination burden.

This is where segmentation matters. The economic buyer may care about cost, growth or risk. The technical evaluator needs to understand integration, security and ownership. Users and partners need to know how the platform changes their work. A single generic proposition rarely answers all of those questions.

Our work with Fooji illustrates why category definition and market education can be commercial necessities. Fooji had built a strong reputation in managed incentives, promotions, loyalty and physical gift experiences, but saw that its core technology platform needed clearer articulation to support commercial growth and diversification. We developed a positioning system around Fooji leading the movement for Fan Experience Management, then applied it across product and sales collateral, its website, social communications and promotional videos. The launch generated high levels of inbound opportunity, media conversations and agency partner discovery workshops within a month. The point was not to make the technology sound bigger; it was to give audiences a clearer way to understand how the platform, people and fulfilment capabilities combined to create value.

Start with a business problem and the people who need to solve it. Show how the platform changes the work, economics or choices available to each relevant participant. Support that story with a specific use case, a credible implementation path and evidence that the model works. If partners or third parties contribute, explain why they would participate and how the customer benefits.

Generic claims about scale or a single source of truth rarely do this job. A CFO may care about unit economics and operating cost. A technical leader may focus on integration and data control. A partner may want to know whether the model creates new revenue or simply shifts control upstream.

We recommend building the conversation around specific use cases rather than feature collections. Explain who initiates the use case, what they need, what the platform enables and how the outcome can be assessed. Then make the boundary of the offer clear: what the platform does, what the customer does and where a partner or service team contributes.

• Lead with the change in the customer’s business. Put the effect on revenue, cost, speed, access or control before the component list.
• Map the buying group to the model. Include economic buyers, technical evaluators, users and ecosystem participants where they affect the decision.
• Build demand around a use case. Show the problem, interaction and result rather than asking buyers to infer value from a product tour.
• Make the buying path tangible. Explain onboarding, integration, migration, governance and support in terms buyers can use to assess risk.
• Match proof to the claim. A product demo can prove a feature; it cannot by itself prove an ecosystem or business outcome.

The word ecosystem can make a strategy sound expansive. It can also hide the work required to make participation worthwhile. Partners need a reason to invest. Customers need confidence that integrations will be supported. Developers need access and clear rules. Buyers need a consistent experience when several parties contribute.

Shopify’s public reporting links its partner ecosystem with extending platform functionality and helping drive growth in its merchant base. That is a useful commercial logic to examine, not a template to copy. Each platform business needs to explain what participation improves for the customer and what each participant gains by contributing.

At The Rubicon Agency, we see ecosystem claims become more persuasive when the participation is concrete. Fooji’s Fan Experience Management positioning brought together technology, operational processes, brand owners, agency partners and technology partners around a clearer market proposition. First Resonance’s platform story needed to connect product articulation with a broader industrial proposition. For other platform businesses, the challenge may be a marketplace with limited supply, an integration network with uneven coverage or a partner programme that exists on paper but has not yet created customer value. The underlying marketing task is the same: show how participation works in practice.

Marketing should not promise that an ecosystem will solve every customer need. It should explain platform boundaries, partner roles and quality standards. The go-to-market plan also needs to answer which participant group must come first, what level of participation makes the proposition credible and how contributors will be enabled and retained.

A useful ecosystem has a clear purpose for its participants and enough governance to make participation dependable. Customers should understand what the core platform provides, what partners add and who is accountable when something goes wrong. The company should make participation easier through access, enablement and incentives, then measure whether those contributions improve customer outcomes and business performance.

The metrics need to reflect the model. Sign-ups can flatter a business with little meaningful usage. Marketplace listings may not indicate transactions. App counts may not show adoption. Partner announcements may not translate into sourced pipeline or successful delivery.

Our experience is that the message and the mechanics must agree. If the proposition depends on partners, the commercial model, onboarding and customer experience have to give those partners a credible reason to take part.

• Make participant value explicit. Show why customers, partners, developers or suppliers would join and remain active.
• Prioritise the side that unlocks the next use case. Do not spread launch effort evenly if one group is the current constraint.
• Give partners a route to value. Define onboarding, enablement, referrals, incentives and their role in customer success.
• Show how the platform governs quality. Explain standards, support, data handling and accountability.
• Measure useful participation. Track active use, repeat transactions, integrations used, partner contribution and customer outcomes, not registrations alone.

We see platformisation reaching beyond pure software. Businesses in areas such as marketing technology and cybersecurity are packaging more of their operating process into technology-led offers. The market is also seeing new propositions built around specialist workflows, from fan experience management to continuous security testing and exposure management.

That can strengthen a business, but it changes the story customers hear. They may wonder whether the platform replaces the people they value, reduces service quality or simply repackages existing work at a higher price. Inside the company, teams may be unsure whether they now sell software, services or a managed outcome.

Our work with Fooji and First Resonance has reinforced the value of making this transition legible. Fooji had built a business around managed promotions, loyalty and fulfilment, then needed a market-facing story for how its core technology platform could lead a new category: Fan Experience Management. First Resonance needed to express a changing platform and its component parts clearly as the product evolved. In both cases, the platform story had to connect capability to the customer’s world rather than rely on the word itself.

The answer is rarely to pretend the human role has disappeared. If specialists interpret results, prioritise action or provide assurance, that expertise may be what makes the platform commercially credible. The positioning should explain what becomes more repeatable or self-service and where people still contribute value.

Position the platform as a change in how value is delivered, not as a rejection of the service that built the business. Explain which parts become more repeatable or self-service, which still rely on expertise and what customers gain from combining them. Make the commercial model, responsibilities and service boundaries easy to understand.

A software layer does not automatically erase the economics of a service business. If the company depends on people to configure, monitor or interpret the platform, those costs remain. Marketing that promises effortless scale while delivery stays labour-intensive creates a credibility gap between the sales narrative and customer experience.

• Explain what becomes repeatable. Show which steps the platform standardises and where customer-specific expertise remains essential.
• Protect the service value. Present human judgement, implementation and assurance as defined parts of the offer where they improve outcomes.
• Be precise about economics. Clarify whether the customer pays for software, services, transactions or a combination.
• Make accountability clear. State who operates the platform, supports users, manages data and owns the customer relationship.
• Connect the platform to a real customer change. Show how the model improves the customer’s work, choices or outcomes.

Platform ambition attracts attention because the model appears to offer scale beyond headcount. But scale is not a message in itself. It becomes commercially compelling when customers can see what improves as the platform grows, when participants have a reason to contribute and when the company can deliver the promise without hiding the work behind a fashionable noun.

That is why platform marketing strategy has to begin with the business model. From there, it can shape the proposition, buyer conversation, ecosystem plan and proof. Our SaaS marketing strategy guide and Cloud marketing page explore related commercial questions.

An outside perspective can help test the model, challenge the language with buyers and work alongside your team to build a demand-oriented agenda. A platform earns its name when participation creates value. Marketing has to make that value visible.

If you are working through the position, the model or the next demand agenda, book a call with The Rubicon Agency.

By The Rubicon Agency