In hyper-competitive verticals such as technology and software, channel marketing activities are becoming more and more crucial. This presents an ideal opportunity for companies that heavily depend on partners for a significant portion of their revenue to develop fresh channel marketing strategies.
As a channel leader, the primary aim of any channel partner marketing campaign is to create awareness, establish trust, and increase the customer base. To achieve these objectives, it is vital to emphasize the value your partnership brings to the end customer.
Collaborating with a related vertical business to join forces in marketing endeavors can be highly profitable and beneficial in acquiring new customers. By pooling resources and utilizing knowledge about the wants, needs, and challenges of both target audiences, your outreach to connect with potential clients becomes more cost-efficient and successful.
This guide provides recommendations for creating and enhancing your channel partner marketing materials and promotional campaigns, highlighting the most effective approaches.
Prerequisites to Creating Your Channel Partner Marketing Strategy
If you haven’t finished the tasks mentioned below, it means you’re not prepared to allow your channel partners to promote your products. Each mentioned best practice serves as important boundaries to ensure that your messaging doesn’t deviate from the intended path.
1. Do Your Homework On Potential Partners
Before entering into a partnership, it is crucial to conduct thorough research. This process is akin to dating: inquire, familiarize yourself with the prospective partner, and inquire about their past undertakings. Subsequently, consider implementing a trial period. Establishing professional connections, forming partnerships, and embracing risks are imperative for a company’s growth and triumph. However, it is vital to exercise prudence in decision-making and recognize instances where collaborating may not be advantageous.
2. Ensure Your Combined Skills Deliver More Value
The key to a successful partnership lies in having shared objectives and principles. It is not merely based on favoring a brand or having similar customers, but rather the potential for a significant influence of the partnership. In simpler terms, the question is whether the combination of your skills will enhance your ability to provide value to customers. Once determined, you can proceed to select suitable projects to collaborate on.
3. Set Goals And Make Ownership Decisions As A Team
To ensure a successful partner marketing campaign, it is essential to have transparent communication. Work together as a team to document your goals, determine a strategy, and assign responsibilities for execution. By having clear objectives, defined roles, and shared expectations, you are more likely to achieve success.
4. Partner With Complementary Brands On Product Collaborations
Direct-to-consumer and e-commerce companies can extend their reach by identifying complementary brands to partner with on product collaborations. Partners benefit when they both bring a healthy audience to the relationship and have a plan to build excitement around the product. To build excitement, create limited-release collaborations and give your customers an opportunity to buy something unique.
5. Determine Business Objectives Up Front
Partnerships offer a valuable opportunity to expand your reach if you have a shared target audience. It is important to establish business goals from the beginning to ensure that both parties benefit equally. To maintain organization and progress throughout the planning and execution stages, frequent status calls should be held and a single project plan should be followed. Effective partnership requires equal contribution and timely completion of tasks by all involved parties.
6. Create Brand Guidelines to Consistently Reinforce Amongst Partners
To develop a thorough marketing strategy, it is vital to have a deep understanding of the end-users of the products. Similarly, you should employ this same level of careful consideration to your channel partner program.
7.Determine Whether Your Marketing Strategy Aligns With Your General Partner Program Objectives
Consider conducting a sales funnel audit to identify any weaknesses that channel partner marketing strategies could help address, as certain marketing activities focus on bolstering brand authority and others on generating leads.
8. Consider How You Can Repackage Existing Content to Amplify Its Message and Value
Referring to the concept of conducting original research, one can utilize a new statistic in various ways. This includes composing a white paper, generating a press release, featuring it in social media posts, and highlighting it in a digitized partner round table discussion. Likewise, if you produce a comprehensive instructional video, why not break it down into smaller segments that can be shared on social media, included in your newsletter, and placed on your partners’ paid search landing pages?
9. Find the Right Messaging for Channel Partners to Deliver
All marketers must confront a harsh reality that the topics we wish to discuss may not necessarily correspond with the interests of our audiences. This disparity could stem from their limited knowledge or, more commonly, their lower level of significance placed on a particular subject compared to our own. While your company’s internal communications may proudly showcase the newest product feature as an exceptional innovation, external individuals may not share the same viewpoint.
10. Embrace Local Preferences and Priorities
When localizing a marketing resource for partners, it involves more than simply translating the text. It is important to consider cultural preferences, variations in priorities, and possibly distinct challenges.
11. Set The Tone For A Healthy Working Relationship During Onboarding
The effectiveness of partner marketing best practices varies according to the specific phase of the process. In my opinion, during the onboarding phase, teams can position themselves for success by determining individual responsibilities, establishing effective communication methods between teams, and fostering a positive working relationship to handle conflicts, if they occur.
12. Ensure The Mutual Audience Can See Both Brands’ Benefits
For partnerships to be highly successful, it is crucial that the shared audience recognizes the advantages offered by both brands. This entails not only attracting a similar audience, but also guaranteeing equal reach and visibility for both partners in order to maximize the effectiveness of the collaboration.
Bottom Line About Channel Marketing Best Practices
Partner marketing activities enhance alliances and enhance awareness of your collaboration. Emphasize the advantages that the end user gains from your partnership. Establishing brand guidelines will create a framework for all marketing endeavors, ensuring consistency and efficiency. Generating shared content that resonates with both target audiences enables both organizations to expand their outreach. Utilizing digital marketing, particularly for joint promotions such as webinars and landing pages, proves to be the most impactful approach. Employing these tips and adhering to best practices will maximize the return on investment for your channel marketing efforts.
