Microsoft has long supported the innovation of industry-leading online marketplaces and is focused more than ever on ensuring our partners know how to leverage Microsoft commercial marketplace to reach customers and drive sales more effectively and efficiently.

Simply creating a listing in the marketplace gives you access to over 4 million active visitors per month across 140+ geographies. In addition, you can scale your sales force through Microsoft field sellers and partner-to-partner co-sell while earning upwards of $300K in benefits through Marketplace Rewards.

Publishing is easy – set up your account, prepare your offer, create your offer, publish, and go to market!

1.     Set up your Partner Center account

Partner Center is your home base for managing your partnership with Microsoft. It facilitates transactions, promotes relationship building with Microsoft sellers and other partners, and offers analytics.

If you’re new to Partner Center, create your account. If you are already enrolled with Partner Center, you can use an existing Microsoft Partner Network enrollment or use an existing developer program enrollment.

Your Marketplace dashboard in Partner Center is where you will:

• Create and manage commercial offers
• View engagement
• Submit support requests
• Find value collection/payout info

The Marketplace dashboard is also where you’ll manage important administrative tasks.

2.   Prepare your offer

Before you create a new offer in Partner Center, work with your sales and marketing team to define the essential characteristics of your offer.

Align your offer with marketplace customers

Microsoft commercial marketplace offers two storefronts designed for two diverse audiences. Microsoft AppSource targets business solutions (e.g., SaaS apps) and consulting services as well as direct app extensions. Azure Marketplace is intended for IT professionals and developers, and hosting solutions built on Azure.

To ensure your offer reaches the right audience, consider the target customer you are trying to reach – business or technical – as well as customer size, industry, geographic region, and the business needs driving cloud adoption. Use these characteristics to define your key messaging and present your feature set and packaging.

Choose your listing type

Choose which listing type best suits your offer:

• Contact me – prospective customers are directed to connect with you about the offer
• Free trial – customers can use your service as SaaS, IaaS, or Microsoft in-app experience for a specific duration
• Test drive – users gain access to your app for a preconfigured duration
• Get it now – users choose from a range of options including Get it now (free), subscription, bring your own license (BYOL), and usage-based pricing

Choose your offer type

After you choose your listing type, you’ll select your offer type. The offer type will correspond to the type of solution, app, or service offer that you wish to publish, as well as its alignment to Microsoft products and services.

Offer types include:

• Azure Application
• Azure Container
• Azure virtual machine
• Consulting service
• Dynamics 365
• IoT Edge module
• Managed service
• Power BI app Microsoft 365
• Software as a Service (SaaS)

Prepare a strong offer description

Creating a robust offer listing in the commercial marketplace requires planning. Have your company’s marketing collateral ready, including logo, description, contact information, and public-facing description of your offer.

Since your listing is your single most important lead generator, it’s highly recommended that you review best practices for drafting a strong offer description.

3.    Create a new offer

Now you’re ready to create your offer!  Access the Commercial Marketplace dashboard in Partner Center. On the Overview page select + New offer.

Select your plan and pricing

Depending on your offer type, you may be directed to choose a plan, which defines an offer’s scope and limits and associated pricing, when applicable.

Select the solution area and sub-areas

When selecting a solution area to align your offer to, carefully consider how customers and/or Microsoft sellers will search for your offer. In the customer-facing Properties tab, you will select a primary solution area (e.g. Azure, Modern Work & Security, Business Applications) as well as solution sub-areas (e.g. Adoption & Change Management, Meeting Rooms for Teams, Workplace Analytics), that describe the business need.

The “Properties” tab is where you choose what shows up in the customer-facing marketplace

In the Co-sell with Microsoft tab, you’ll select a primary solution as well solutions sub-areas with descriptions relevant to sellers (e.g. Advanced Networking, Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery, Hybrid Cloud Solutions).

The “Co-sell with Microsoft” tab is where you choose what Microsoft sellers will see.

Choose your publishing channels

Through Partner Center, you can create an offer once and publish to multiple audiences and platforms. All offers must be published Direct to customer via AppSource of Azure Marketplace. You may also have the option of publishing To Microsoft sellers (field/co-sell) or Through CSP or P2P (partner-to-partner).

 4. Publish your offer & go to market

Publish your offer

Once you’re ready, submit your offer by selecting Review & publish. From there, you’ll get an update status. After all pages are marked Complete and any applicable testing documented, select Publish to begin the validation process.

Next, it will be reviewed by Microsoft and placed on the appropriate storefront – AppSource or Azure Marketplace. Once your offer lands, you will receive a link to your published offer.

Keep it fresh

Remember, you own your offer listing and are responsible for keeping it up-to-date and optimized over time.

Get your offer featured

Azure Marketplace and AppSource have featured apps sections, where you can get your app featured. Learn how to get your offer featured.

Next steps: keep evolving

• Learn more at Microsoft Learn: Intro to commercial marketplace
• Join commercial marketplace webinars on the marketplace opportunity and developer office hours
• Visit aka.ms/joinmarketplace to publish your app today!
• Learn about the next steps Co-sell with Microsoft, after publishing your app

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Marketplace Rewards: Benefits for Azure Marketplace or Microsoft AppSource publishers

Tags: Microsoft Commercial Marketplace, Microsoft Partner Network, Sales Enablement