What Is Channel Marketing?

What is channel marketing?

Channel marketing is how a brand markets when its customers buy from someone else: a dealer, a distributor, a reseller, a franchisee, an agent or a broker. Those businesses are the brand's channel, and each one is a channel partner with its own name, customers and priorities.

Because the partner stands between you and the sale, your marketing has two jobs. It has to make partners want to sell your product, and it has to help them sell it. A channel marketing program is the plan, the materials, the funds and the support that do both.

You'll hear it called partner marketing (mostly in technology and services), dealer marketing (manufacturing), franchise marketing or local store marketing (franchise systems) and agent marketing (insurance and financial services). The vocabulary changes by industry. The job doesn't.

What is the difference between marketing to partners and marketing through partners?

Marketing to partners is aimed at the partners themselves; marketing through partners is aimed at their customers. Most programs need both, and in our experience the second is the harder one to get right.

To-channel marketing recruits new partners and keeps current ones paying attention: partner newsletters, launch briefings, program guides, partner conferences, incentives and the reasons to stock or recommend your line over the others they carry.

Through-channel marketing is the marketing partners run for you: co-branded ads, emails, social posts, print, signage and events, sent under the partner's name to the partner's customers. The brand builds it, the partner personalizes and launches it. We cover that half in depth in what is through-channel marketing?

What kinds of channels does channel marketing cover?

Any model where an independent business sells, delivers or recommends your product. The common ones:

• Franchise systems. Franchisees run locations under the brand and usually pay into a brand fund, so marketing is split between national campaigns and what each location runs in its own neighborhood.
• Dealers and distributors. Manufacturers sell through dealers who serve end customers, often with distributors in between. Dealers carry other brands, so attention is earned, not owed.
• Resellers, VARs and MSPs. Technology companies sell through value-added resellers and managed service providers, who bundle the product with their own services and often own the customer relationship.
• Agents and brokers. Insurance carriers, financial firms and real estate brands work through independent agents and brokers, where every piece of marketing has to clear compliance rules.
• Two-tier distribution. The manufacturer sells to distributors, who sell to dealers or resellers. Marketing has to work at both tiers, which we cover in marketing in two-tier distribution.

How does channel marketing work?

It follows the partner from signing up to selling. Most programs we've seen run on this sequence:

1. Recruit. Find the partners you want and give them a reason to join: margin, demand, support and marketing they couldn't build alone.
2. Equip. Train partners on the product and the program, and give them the content and tools to sell it. That's partner enablement.
3. Activate. Give partners campaigns and materials they can make their own and launch, and help pay for them with market development funds or co-op.
4. Support. Answer questions, review what needs review, and keep a calendar so partners know what's coming next.
5. Measure. Track which partners are marketing, what they ran and what it produced, then put the next round of effort where it's working.

How do you build a channel marketing program?

Start with what you need partners to do, then work backward to what they need from you. A short list of decisions covers most of it:

• Which partners, and what you want from each. Your largest partners may get joint plans and a channel manager; the rest need marketing they can run on their own.
• What partners get. A campaign calendar, co-branded templates, print and point-of-sale materials, sales tools and funds, grouped by partner type or tier.
• The rules. What partners can change, what needs approval, how funds are claimed and how leads are shared.
• Where it lives. One place partners sign in to, rather than a mix of email attachments, shared drives and vendor sites.
• Who supports it. Channel managers, a help desk, or both, so a partner with a question gets an answer the same week.
• What you'll measure. Agree the handful of numbers you'll watch before launch, so the program can be judged on something.

Resist building everything at once. A few campaigns that partners actually run teach you more than a library nobody opens.

What are examples of channel marketing?

A few patterns you'll see across industries:

• A manufacturer launches a new product line with a dealer kit: co-branded ads, an email, a showroom display and a sell sheet, each with the dealer's name and contact details filled in.
• A software company gives its resellers a campaign kit (landing page, email series, webinar slides) that each reseller sends to its own customer list.
• A franchise brand runs a seasonal promotion nationally, and each franchisee adds its own offer and orders matching window signs.
• An insurance carrier gives agents pre-approved emails and social posts with the disclosures locked, so agents can personalize the greeting but not the fine print.
• A distributor hosts a customer event, paid partly from the manufacturer's marketing funds.
• A brand runs a recruitment campaign to sign new dealers in markets where it has none. That one is marketing to partners.

Is channel marketing the same as partner marketing or trade marketing?

They overlap heavily, and the difference is mostly who's talking. Channel marketing is the older, broader term, common with manufacturers and in franchise and agent networks. Partner marketing is the word technology, software and services companies use, and it often includes partners who don't resell at all, like technology alliances and referral partners.

Trade marketing is the consumer goods version of marketing to the channel: winning shelf space, displays and promotions with retailers and wholesalers. And channel marketing differs from direct marketing, where the brand reaches the customer itself through its own ads, emails and website.

What are the benefits of channel marketing?

• Reach. Partners already have customers, relationships and a presence in markets you'd struggle to reach directly.
• Trust. Customers often trust the dealer, agent or reseller they know more than a brand they know from its ads.
• Relevance. Partners know their market, so a campaign built centrally and personalized by the partner fits better than one sent from headquarters.
• Shared cost. Partners put in time and often money, and your funds go further when they're matched.
• Mindshare. Partners carry many brands. Useful marketing gives them a reason to put yours in front of customers.

What is channel conflict, and how do you manage it?

Channel conflict is when partners compete with each other, or with your own direct sales, for the same customer. Two dealers bid on the same job, a reseller loses a deal to your inside sales team, or a franchisee's ads run in a neighbor's territory.

You can't remove it, but you can make the rules clear before it happens:

• Set territories, account ownership or segments, and write down how exceptions are handled.
• Use deal registration, so the partner who found an opportunity is protected while they work it.
• Route leads from your own marketing to partners by clear rules, and tell partners what those rules are.
• Target partner campaigns to the partner's own market or customer list.
• Be open about where you sell direct, and why.

Most conflict comes from surprises. Partners will live with rules they understand far more readily than with decisions they find out about afterward.

What are the challenges of channel marketing?

If you run a channel program, you've probably met most of these:

• Low participation. Partners are busy running their businesses, and few have a marketer on staff.
• Off-brand marketing. Partners who improvise use old logos, odd colors and claims nobody approved.
• Unused materials. Campaigns sit in a folder because they're hard to find, hard to adapt or arrive too late.
• Unspent funds. Marketing money expires when claiming it takes more effort than it seems worth.
• No visibility. You can't see which partners are marketing, what they run or what it produces.
• Too many places to go. Partners have one portal for deals, another for training, a printer's site and a shared drive.

Most of these come back to effort: the marketing costs partners more time than they believe it's worth. We dig into the reasons, and the fixes, in why partners don't use your marketing.

How do you measure channel marketing?

Measure each half against its own goal. For marketing to partners, watch recruitment (partners signed and onboarded), engagement (who opens your updates, attends training and signs in) and share of attention (how much of their business is your line).

For marketing through partners, start with participation and work toward revenue: how many partners are marketing, which campaigns they run, the leads and sales those campaigns produce, and how much of the available funding gets used. Revenue tied to a partner campaign is the hardest number to get, because deals often close in the partner's systems, and the easiest to argue about. More in how to measure the ROI of partner marketing.

Where does OnBrandify fit?

OnBrandify is the Marketing Hub for brands that sell through partner networks, built for the through-partners half of channel marketing. It brings campaigns, materials, funds, vendors, fulfillment and support into one place, so your dealers, resellers, franchisees and agents can put your marketing to work while you keep the brand in control. Take a look at the platform, or request a demo and we'll show you how it would work for your channel.