What’s new and what’s working, in B2B channel partner marketing

Channel partner marketing means efforts to recruit and support third-party partners to expand a vendor’s market access.  Traditional support methods include training, data-sharing, co-marketing campaigns, rebates, MDF (market development funds), and sales enablement, like content, events and sales playbooks.  

But times have changed, what with digital marketing, marketing automation, adjustments in buyer behavior, and the increased speed and complexity of business today.   

Let’s examine these changes and how partner marketing has changed with it.  These ideas are organized into three categories: strategies, tools and tactics.   

1. Strategies

Partner segmentation

A major development in channel marketing, according to Rick van den Bosch, founder and CEO of automated partner marketing platform Channext, is the heightened complexity in the types of partners involved.  Vendors may be dealing with as many as ten different partner types, from alliance partners, to managed services providers, systems integrators, resellers and more.  Each has its own target audience expertise and product preferences.  To scale their value, suppliers must segment partners by type, understand the differing needs and interests of each partner category, and provide the marketing support services they need. 

Get organized

After years of going to market through channels, suppliers are finding that they are offering too many, or too complicated, partner support offerings.  At that point, it’s time to take a pause to review and ensure that it’s easy for partners to find and access what they need to be most effective.  Amazon Web Services has done just that, under the management of John-Marc Clark, global distribution leader.  

AWS goes to market through a two-tier channel system, beginning with about 30 worldwide distributors like Ingram Micro and TD SYNNEX.  This tier recruits and manages over 100,000 VARs and resellers globally who help their clients with cloud migrations.  No surprise, complexity and duplication began to creep in.  So, AWS analyzed the partner journey, and developed a Partner Profitability Framework, within which to deliver services efficiently. 

The most popular is the Distributor Development Fund, which helps the distributors recruit, activate and grow net new resellers.  Distributors are assigned a team to help them develop an annual marketing plan and get the most out of the programs, using the Partner Central website.    

Cooperation between direct reps and partners

In the SaaS business, customer retention rates are higher when a partner is involved throughout the customer journey, from discovery to post-sale. So John Murphy, partner development manager at HubSpot, looks to remove barriers to cooperation between the vendor’s direct sales reps and the channel partner, for example, consulting with partners on lead generation and educating them on successful co-selling methods.  This approach allows for a smooth sales process for the customer, and generates cross-sell and upsell opportunities for partners. 

The marketing basics

With all the complexity marketers face today, it’s sometimes easy to get lost in the weeds.  Dror Liwer, co-founder of Coro, an Israeli cybersecurity solution, believes that the key to success is concentrating on the marketing basics.  Number one in partner marketing importance, he says, is ensuring that partners understand your product and your ICP (ideal customer profile).  Can your partners articulate the value of the product to the target audience, what the product can and cannot do, and explain that value proposition clearly and truthfully to the ICP?  “Without that, the sale will be a failure, which not only demoralizes the partner, but also leads to a poor reputation for your product and company among the partner community,” he explains. 

After that, Dror names the number two and three essential focus areas as a robust partner portal, filled with market-tested content and templates, and an MDF program that operates on pre-agreed metrics, like leads, revenue, growth, number of seats and other success drivers.  With these three elements in place, suppliers are 90% of their way to channel marketing success.  

More marketing automation

Martech has become an essential part of channel marketing, with channel-specific tools in several categories, among them:

1. Partner “ecosystem” platforms (PEP), like Crossbeam, Impartner and PartnerStack. 
2. “Through-channel” platforms, like MindMatrix and Channext, used by both sales and marketing staff to manage the partner relationship day to day.  
3. Product data transfer tools, like Distributor Data Solutions, where manufacturers can syndicate up-to-date product information to their partners—data that is especially critical to their ecommerce sites.  

AI (which you knew would be on the list)

Rick van den Bosch recommends that marketers let AI handle the repetitive tasks of channel marketing, like data analysis and campaign optimization, and free up your team’s time to focus on human interactions.  Examples:

• Have generative AI rewrite your content items in different versions for each partner type you work with. 
• Use predictive AI to identify partners whose productivity is falling short, so you can understand their issues and give them more tailored help.  

Tactics

Joint campaign messaging

Unlike the co-marketing of old, when the vendor and the partner stated their value propositions side by side in marketing messages, smart vendors today present a joint value message. As Daria Cuda, a partner marketing leader in healthcare IT, explains: “Suppliers are being more selective today, choosing partners where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  That way, instead of co-marketing with parallel messaging, the message can tell the story of why ‘we’re better together,’ and explain the expanded value we provide as partners.”  

For a good example of this strategy, have a look at the story of how Zebra and Imprivata improved hospital operations with a fast mobile sign-on solution.

The importance of training 

Sales people don’t sell what they don’t know, goes the old adage.  It’s the job of the vendor to provide product knowledge to their partners.  This means demos, content, case studies, and especially knowledge about applications.  These days, education is being delivered both online and in person.  

Sales enablement lives

Of all the traditional partner marketing tactics, sales enablement still thrives in the modern world.  It needs some adjustments, but the concept is still the same.  In short, partners need marketing help.  They are mostly made up of sales teams, and often have zero marketing staff in the first place.  So, the supplier must step into the breach.   

While there are a few distributors who “get” marketing, especially modern marketing, most simply don’t.  “Many are family businesses, who still do what they’ve always done,” says Lindsay Young, founder of 3 Aspens Media, which advises distributors in industrial categories like electronics and construction.  “Many of these partners have great stories to tell.  They are passionate, they love their work, and they’re highly experienced.  It’s just that they’re not telling that story.” 

Susan Merlo, founder of The Digital Distributor, reminds us that modern customers don’t want to talk to sales reps—they prefer researching online.  Which means suppliers and partners must provide training and product information online, but also be prepared for end-customer calls when they come in.  

Susan recommends “The Building Blocks of Sales Enablement,” a book by Mike Kunkle, who also runs a weekly newsletter, “Sales Enablement Straight Talk.”  Mike wisely includes sales hiring, management, readiness and training in the mix, an indicator of the importance of cooperation between marketing and sales.  Mike offers, “Getting sales and marketing aligned is akin to greasing the gears of a machine, or getting everyone rowing a boat in the same direction.  It produces better results for the sales force and its buyers and customers.”

Video, video, everywhere

Like all B2B marketing communications today, partner marketing has embraced video.  Keith Reynolds, founder and CEO of the content agency Publio, recommends that suppliers interview customers and partners and use the material to create “mini content ecosystems” comprising long-form and short-form video, with blog posts, social media and email content, all set up in a workflow tool like Asana. He says, “This is a great way to feature your channel partners while also yielding valuable thought leadership both partners can share.”

Dig deeper: What is sales enablement?

What hasn’t changed

Like many areas of business, partner marketing success depends on relationships.  Reliability, trust, even friendship can enhance collaboration and smooth the path to shared goals.  “Distributors want suppliers they can count on for product knowledge, application training, and troubleshooting,” says Lindsay Young. “They want someone who answers the phone.” 

But at the same time partners and their suppliers are in some respects competitors.  As explained by Mark Dancer, a distribution and supply chain expert, as much as suppliers and distributors need each other, they are sometimes at odds, and even dislike each other.  Their cultures, and values, are often different.  

But businesses are recognizing afresh the value of partnerships. According to a Pavilion/Crossbeam study in late 2023, the top change GTM (go to market) leaders say they have made in the year was an increased focus on growth through partnerships and co-selling.  

Structurally and historically, the partner-supplier relationship is complex, and remains so.  As noted in one of the earliest and most influential academic texts, “Marketing Channel Strategy” by Louis W. Stern et al., channel partnerships are fundamentally difficult because “they don’t trust each other.”  But co-opetition is the new normal in business today, and channel partner marketers are embracing the notion of overlooking differences and recognizing the value of cooperation and shared interests.  It’s an exciting time to work in this category.