Discussion Series: Marketing Strategies for Your B2B Technology Channel—What Elements Make a Winning Formula?

Renee Yeager - November 16, 2009

Companies with channel strategies often question how or if to handle marketing and demand generation efforts for their value-added resellers (VARs). It’s a good question. After all, if partners are reselling your product and are being paid on sales, shouldn’t they be responsible for generating their own leads?  Not necessarily.

Element 2: Suppliers Create Demand and Value-Added Resellers Sell

Both suppliers and resellers will achieve more from a channel relationship if the supplier not only funds, but manages marketing efforts on behalf of their partners.

Here’s why…

1) Brand Consistency and Integrity
Creating marketing materials and implementing programs on behalf of your resellers provides greater consistency in your visual identity and messaging than if you passed this on to your individual partners to replicate. Reseller sales efforts benefit from this consistency as well; when demand generation efforts are aligned with supplier messaging and branding efforts, it adds cohesion to marketing at all levels which supports buyer confidence. From a solutions standpoint, creating marketing materials that enables partners to customize with their own value proposition and messaging helps partners differentiate against competitors in an often overcrowded market, as well as build their brand as an expert partner.

2) Efficiencies and Cost Savings
The initial cost to develop marketing materials—ad, direct mail, email campaign, etc.—is a sunk cost, meaning you have to pay it whether you use it once or multiple times. By developing materials on behalf of your partners, you are able to leverage the development cost across your network of resellers to maximize your investment. If you then implement a program or campaign on behalf of numerous partners, you can dramatically cut costs and negotiate better rates due to larger volume purchases. For companies with co-op or MDF programs in place for channel partners, the benefit still remains. From the VAR perspective, they can use their accrued dollars far more cost-effectively to participate in a marketing program that is supplier-developed, meets all co-op or MDF guidelines and relieves them of the marketing burden—their focus then is on selling and serving customers. 

3) Partner Focus
Most VARs sell a variety of complementary—and sometimes competing—products and solutions.  Often the success of a channel relationship depends on the resellers’ interest in the product and desire to sell it.  From a marketing standpoint, promotional support and supplying qualified leads can fast-track sales efforts and give your product priority over others the reseller may also be selling.  Without support, resellers can quickly find your product more challenging to sell and focus their efforts elsewhere.

4) Lead Management
By controlling the demand generation process, suppliers have a better understanding of the quantity and quality of leads that are uncovered and can better manage—and maximize— those opportunities.  If suppliers work in partnership with their VARs, they can are able to nurture longer-term opportunities that otherwise might be lost. They can also gain critical insight on challenges their resellers face in the sales process and provide the necessary support that can result more closed deals .

5) Tracking and Measurement
Scattered activities owned by various partners can make it nearly impossible to track and monitor the effectiveness of your marketing. A centralized approach not only ensures access to critical response data, but it also provides the ability to create standardized measurements—greatly simplifying reporting and analysis, as well as how you quantify the return on your marketing investment.
 
One last suggestion, skip the portal. It sounds good in theory: a self-service portal where partners can do some sort of on-demand marketing program whenever they want. The reality is that portals rarely get the level use you expect they will (and need them to) for an adequate return on investment. 

>> Element 1: Mindful Segmentation