The Power of Thinking Like a Channel Marketer

Episode 23 of Twinning Strategy live-streamed yesterday with our guest Heather K. Margolis of Channel Maven. First question: What is 'channel marketing'? It turns out, for many of us in industry, we have been participating in the channel for much of our careers without knowing it. In my past role where I led an IT function this was a commonplace phenomenon--I get on a call with my excellent IT service provider and they are not only helping out with the specifics of what is needed to achieve the IT goals, but they are also making recommendations on equipment and software providers. This IT space is in fact where Heather started her career in channel-marketing while working for companies like EMC, EqualLogic, and Dell. The service provider partners with their equipment and software counterparts, hopefully because they believe in the products, and become preferred/value-add resellers, co-branding partners etc. The channel marketer is the intermediary between the partner companies that establishes the business propositions for the downstream partner to sell along with marketing material, educational materials, the financial incentives, etc. that facilitate the reselling partner to achieve the win-win scenario for both companies, i.e. sell the upstream product to land the deal and the incentive for the downstream service provider. Sound too narrow? Not really. This is a a tried-and-true approach that can work for everything from  B2C food sales (think supermarkets advertising and product placement) to my own experience B2B in biotech consulting (bringing software and CRO services to clients to enable paid projects).

Why does this matter to small, startup businesses? On the upstream side, it is because what is better than spending money advertising your product and hiring an army of business developers and cold callers? Getting the downstream partners to spend their time and money getting the deal for you. On the downstream side, these partnerships can provide lucrative commission payments while reducing the cost for your client and enabling you to bring the best products to the table when building solutions. 

One of Heather's key points resonated with me, summed up with the overused acronym KISS (keep it simple stupid). The upstream provider is often better capitalized and resourced. The channel marketers job in supporting the upstream provider is to remove as much friction as possible while meeting the needs of the reseller. In Heather's work spanning a couple of decades now, the channel approach is evolving. What this friction reduction used to mean was providing ready-to-go packages of materials, e.g. predesigned web pages where the downstream partner just dropped their logo in. However, that relatively simpler model hasn't stood up to the market. As a service provider, you might have dozens or more of these relationships with each one sending its own pre-packaged material. In other words, the service providers' marketing nightmare of each package having a different look and feel and approach was blowing up the hard work on service provider brand alignment. The answer, 'snackable' pieces of content that are ready to deploy. 

Also driving the shifts, you guessed it AI. AI is helping to drive the content generation from copy and images to analytics that tell the channel marketer what levers to pull with the downstream partners to maximize the relationship. Just as in any industry, knowing how geography, company size, selling history, target client companies can be optimized to improve the rate of sales and reduce the rate of channel relationship fails, i.e. where the partner doesn't sell your products because it isn't driving their numbers. The other angle with AI, is to leverage it's use to aligning and unify the process.  The 'six-legged meeting' as Heather calls it, i.e. where the client, the service provider and the product provider are all on the call, is confusing to the client. Can a better approach simplify this to break-through the already complex sales resistance? 

A lot to snack on in the episode. If nothing else, it is providing a helpful new vocabulary and framework to understand the businesses I am working with.