Channel marketing can be a faster and more efficient way for B2B businesses to grow sales compared to traditional business expansion and growth models. It’s typically more cost-effective to achieve the same reach by tapping into local partners — whether they are dealers, distributors, wholesalers, or independent agents — to amplify your brand.
But the “channel” in channel marketing is quite varied, so one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to your strategy. Some dealers are multi-million-dollar operations with multiple locations and marketing budgets that can rival your own. Others are mom-and-pop businesses that likely aren’t staffed by anyone with a marketing or communications background. Some dealers and distributors will sell only your brand in a certain line of products while others sell your products and your competitors’.
One key factor that unites them all: customers who view the channel as an extension of your brand.
How Channel Marketing Enhances the Customer Experience and Sales
Our customer persona work spanning more than a decade shows that 42% of B2B customers in industries like construction, manufacturing, and utilities (among others) emphasize the importance of dealers, suppliers, and/or distributors in their decision-making process. For final decision-makers, this number jumps to 66%.
Today, more companies are seeing the value of channel marketing, according to research from Foundry: 88% of marketers view dealer marketing as a necessary tactic that provides great/some value, and more than two-thirds of marketers at companies with documented channel strategies described the value of their programs as great, compared to 38% at companies with no written plan.
Priorities for Your Channel Marketing Strategy
The research makes it clear that a documented channel marketing strategy and plan is important to successfully engaging your channel in selling your products or services. To create a winning channel marketing strategy, focus on these four priorities:
1. Ensure Product Knowledge Among Your Channel Partners
A foundational element of any channel marketing program is to make sure your dealers, distributors, and sales reps/agents know what they’re selling. While this may seem like common sense, a lack of product knowledge is one of the common pain points that comes through in our research, particularly among distributors who may be selling more than one brand or a wide variety of solutions. Common challenges cited by channel reps include understanding product lines, lack of training, understanding industry lingo, and learning about new products before customers ask for them.
Your channel partners need to understand not just the basics of your products and services, but also the support, data, and other differentiating factors that set your brand apart.
Key Questions To Address:
- Are you providing your channel with the information they need to sell your product?
- Is that information easy to find and use?
- Is it delivered in a way that resonates with dealers and clearly communicates what they need to know?
- Does the information you provide differentiate you from the competition?
2. Build Trust Through Support, Not Just Pricing
While price will always be a factor in the B2B decision-making process, maintaining a good dealer relationship before and AFTER the sale can be the difference between a loyal customer and one who picks a competitor for their next purchase. Trust is important throughout the buying process, but after-sale support is where the rubber meets the road and turns customers into brand loyalists. Customers often see dealers and suppliers as their first call for critical support. Unfortunately, customer service is often where channel partners fall short.
Making sure dealers understand and use tools like remote data monitoring, telematics, and preventive maintenance schedules can also help build trust with end users. Training dealers to use tools that help them anticipate customer needs before they become a problem can pay dividends.
Key Questions To Address:
- Are you providing the training your partners need to support the customer experience after the sale?
- How can you better support the channel so they can focus on relationship-building?
3. Strengthen Your Channel’s Digital Marketing Capabilities
While B2B customers vary widely in when and how they go to dealers for support during the buying process, one thing is clear — their decision on what to purchase is not based solely on what their sales or dealer rep tells them. According to a Demand Gen Report, B2B buyers progress more than 70% through the decision-making process before ever engaging with a sales representative. Plus, research from McKinsey & Company showed that two-thirds of B2B buyers and sellers say they now prefer digital, self-serve, and remote human engagement over face-to-face interactions.
Does that diminish the importance of the distributor or dealer network? Not necessarily. Instead, it suggests that the channel needs to provide or enhance the digital tools buyers use as they research their options. In today’s cluttered marketplace, standing out online and driving conversions is more important than ever. And that’s where your channel marketing strategy and co-op dollars (if you offer them) come into play. It’s important for companies to prioritize digital marketing and make it easy for their channel partners to get noticed by potential customers.
Key Questions To Address:
- Do you provide your channel partners with tools and materials to help them localize your brand’s national marketing strategy and messaging?
- Do you provide plug-and-play digital marketing tools and tactics for easier implementation?
- Are you using local SEO/SEM strategies to drive traffic to channel partners’ websites?
- How are you supporting your channel partners with their social media presence?
4. Prioritize Clear and Responsive Communication
This final takeaway is a key building block for all the others — clear and responsive communication. It supports product knowledge among channel staff, builds trust and supports partnerships, and meets customers where they are, online or off. This is also where more in-depth audience research for your specific company can be especially useful, since the what, how, and when of “clear and responsive” can differ drastically by industry and customer. For example, some customers prefer a phone call with a channel rep — especially when it’s support-related — while others want to send a text or email and receive a response within 24 hours.
Key Questions To Address:
- Does your training and sales collateral support your channel partners’ ability to clearly communicate value propositions to the customer?
- How can you enable more responsive communications through tactics like self-service resources, customer service, online chat features, or training?
- Are your corporate sales reps/field staff aware of the channel communications and aligned with the messaging to help connect the dots for dealers?
The Bottom Line: A Strong Channel Marketing Strategy Drives Sales
Channel marketing is ever-evolving, but when it’s done strategically it delivers measurable sales growth and stronger customer relationships. However, it can be hard to know where to start or, for those already investing, to coordinate all the moving pieces. Our channel marketing experts can help you market to, and through, the channels that connect you to your end customers.
Are you ready to elevate your channel marketing with a content strategy that strategically assesses the needs of your dealer audience? Contact us today and we’ll work with you to engage, educate, incentivize, and motivate your channels to advocate for your products, services, and brand.
By Patti Griffith
By Two Rivers Marketing