The 2021 Guide to Channel Marketing Optimisation – Let’s SMASH it!

Based on research with more than 15 IT vendors and resellers throughout the Americas, our partner MarketLogic recommends 5 ways to optimise your channel development in 2021

1. Personalized Strategy

Most IT vendors’ have a channel partner development strategy that includes partner portals, multi-language campaigns-in-a-box, and sales enablement materials to integrate their messaging with each partner’s value proposition. However, resellers also want to build their own brands and want a more nuanced approach to reaching their clients’ via through-partner campaigns. They need support in weaving your messaging and theirs into a full-fledged solution for a client’s business problem or opportunity.

Furthermore, over the years we have learned that although partners might have the potential to improve their sales and marketing performance, they often do not have the necessary resources to make this happen. In other words, they have the technical expertise and the drive to succeed, but they lack the resources and capabilities to do so.

Adding a partner specialist capability to your team can help you get the best of both worlds: the integration of key messages between you and each reseller, with a Partner Relationship Management (PRM) platform to execute customized co-branded campaigns.

This allows you and your partners to see lead generation and development on a partner-specific dashboard, so you can measure your ROI on marketing development funds (MDFs) in real-time. The PRM (Partner Relationship Management) platform also allows you to syndicate up-to-date content to your partner’s website and social channels from a central location.

2. Marketing: Must do

A dedicated sales and marketing consultant can help your partners improve their digital positioning through a website and content audit that optimizes messaging for funnelling and SEO. The coach can also recommend strategies to augment reseller databases since the success of your campaign amplification depends on database health. Although this may sound obvious, we find that database size and obsolescence are usually the resellers’ Achilles’ heel.

3. Sales Acceleration

Your dedicated sales and marketing consultant can also support your partners’ commercial transformation through “always-on” best-practice training. Having these periodic conversations with individual partners not only improves channel engagement and development; it also boosts partners’ deal registrations by improving their use of multi-channel prospecting, appointment setting, and opportunity development. We find that this tactic has a 25x ROI on average, thanks to its contribution to developing sustainable habits and keeping sales and marketing activities in your partners’ top of mind.

4. Engagement and Incentives

We suggest three key ways to engage your partners. First, build a partner community that matters and that they can feel proud to be part of. This can be achieved by developing a brand for the partner program with its own key messaging (a combination of motivation and meaning), and its execution tactics to connect with your partner community from a rational and emotional perspective. Second, offer sales-based incentives and develop healthy competition among participants. Third, reward partner behavior to create healthy habits. This includes rewarding your partners for earning certifications, participating in your “always-on” training, and for each lead generated through co-branded marketing campaigns.

5. Affordability

At first, the above program may appear to be an expensive proposition. Thankfully, MindMatrix and its leading PRM platform have partnered with MarketLogic, a channel marketing agency specialist, to offer S.M.A.S.H (Sales and Marketing Achievement through Sustainable Habits), an integrated solution for partner marketing opportunities.  Offered in a portfolio of subscription models to fit multi-tier partner needs, S.M.A.S.H. will reduce overall costs to you and your partners, implement metrics dashboards aligned to your specific pre-established KPIs and ensure internal compliance with MDF management policies.

If the above sounds like something your partner ecosystem needs. Let’s schedule a free assessment call right now to get you started. We’re ready – Let’s S.M.A.S.H it!

About the author Marcelo Castro’s professional and academic experience has allowed him to learn from industry leaders such as Apple, Adobe & MasterCard. These experiences have allowed him to develop and execute effective marketing strategies across dynamic and complex business contexts.