What is Channel Marketing? Key Concepts and 6 Best Practices

What is channel marketing, really? It may seem like a natural transition for an experienced marketer — but it’s really a whole other beast.

Because, unlike other forms of marketing, you’re not just trying to convince a buyer to buy something. You’re convincing an organization to center its business around selling your product.

And that’s a big ask.

To help explain the nuances of channel marketing and what it takes to do it well, we shortlisted six best practices for developing a successful channel marketing strategy based on advice from three channel marketing pros.

First and foremost, let’s define channel marketing.

What is Channel Marketing?

In most traditional marketing, the focus is on reaching and influencing an end user to buy a product or service.

Channel marketing still has a product promotion slant. But channel marketing is different because channel partners are intermediaries. So, in this scenario, it’s more about enabling partners to sell your product rather than pushing end users to buy it.

That means channel marketers are involved in:

• Creating enablement materials
• Developing content for training programs
• Running co-branded marketing campaigns
• Brainstorming new partner sales incentives
• Building and maintaining online marketplaces
• Constructing and updating third-party vendor directories
• Setting up co-hosted events
• Organizing booths at trade shows

When done well, channel marketing benefits are multifold:

1. It’s a cost-effective way to increase brand recognition.
2. It maximizes the return on investment of your traditional marketing efforts and existing marketing channels while minimizing overall advertising and marketing spend.
3. It enables partners to gain customer trust and improve the customer experience.
4. It gets your product or service in front of your target audience.
5. It helps you enter new markets, industries, or geographies.

And all of these things ultimately boost sales.

Ana Beatriz Santos, Partner Marketing Specialist at Axur, emphasizes, “My role is to equip and motivate partners to sell our solutions. Supporting them in achieving success is how we achieve our own success as a business.”

6 Channel Marketing Best Practices to Follow

1. Adopt a ‘What’s In It For Partners?’ Mindset

Channel partnerships are supposed to be a win-win. Yet, too often, we think about what we will get out of a specific channel marketing strategy instead of the partner.

As you plan out new content and rewards, always put your relationships with reputable channel partners first. 

Are they worth the time and effort partners have to put in?

Is there enough low-hanging fruit to get partners selling your product or service from the get-go?

Will they care enough about winning a sponsored happy hour to bring in qualified deals, or is there another incentive they want more?

“Think about the various levels of maturity you’ll have in the channel,” Mihaela Filip, Senior Partner EMEA Lead at Brivo, suggests. 

“Some companies may be relatively new to the channel and want a basic starter package with more hand-holding. Others may have several channel relationships already and want to do co-sponsored activities out of the gate. It’s important to get to the point where you have something for everyone.”

If you’re having trouble choosing the right tactics, preview your channel marketing strategies with a few trusted partners and get their feedback.

2. Form Strong Cross-Functional Relationships

Most channel marketers have a sense of what partners need, but they’re not the ones talking to partners day in and day out — partner managers (PMs) are.

Regular touchpoints with your company’s PMs can help you compile ideas and prioritize them based on partner need. “We have weekly meetings with our partner sales managers to make sure we are aligned,” Ana notes.

“Sometimes we invite other teams like customer success, support, and onboarding to get a more well-rounded perspective, too. We have to listen to everyone’s ideas and insights they bring.”

Besides sparking new ideas, PMs can ensure your messages are heard. Mackenzie Wiley, Program Manager at Telestream, leans on her team to promote new training, content, and co-marketing opportunities during their weekly meetings.

Lastly, close collaboration with other teams can help you better communicate your role in driving overall go-to-market revenue every quarter.

“If your company has to hit $1M in sales this quarter, think about the top five partners on your list. How can you engage them to bring in orders that contribute to that large number? If you can help hit the target, you prove the value of using channel,” says Mihaela.

Keep in mind that any content you create may also be useful to affiliates, resellers, and distributors. It could also be used across different channels, like social media, retail stores, and ads, helping you create a multi-touch journey for your target market and keeping your existing customer base in the know.

3. Pair Channel Marketing With the Partner Journey 

Mihaela already alluded to this in best practice #1, but it’s worth repeating: a new partner may not be ready, willing, or able to kick off the partnership by throwing major joint events. So start small with your channel marketing efforts.

We recommend graduating from educational content to co-branded content to MDFs. To get your creative juices flowing, here are some real examples of channel marketing initiatives:

Educational content

Telestream is running a training campaign called Telestream University, which pairs well with the ‘back to school’ feeling everyone is feeling at this time of year. Instead of a bulk release, they’re slowly trickling out lessons over the course of two months with email reminders with each release.

“No one is going to do 10+ trainings in one week, so this is a way for us to break it down for partners into manageable chunks,” Mackenzie says. “It’s also giving partners an opportunity to give us feedback we can use to identify areas for improvement and make every course better.”

She’s found this campaign reduces overwhelm and demonstrates dedication to providing ongoing support.

Co-branded content

Mihaela prefers to create thought leadership pieces (blogs or podcasts) to bring in leads and generate brand awareness. 

“These take some time to develop, but if the partner has an audience, it’s a great way to educate prospects about the market, and if you nurture it, it can be an always-on lead magnet.”

MDFs

Ana: Mostly for lunches and dinners or trade shows. “MDFs show partners you’ve got skin in the game. You’re investing in partner relationships, and you’re willing to take a risk for them.”

Mackenzie: Events, media campaigns with the Telestream logo on it, swag for a trade show. “We’re more flexible when it comes to what we sponsor. We don’t have a blanket ‘This must be done.’ If a partner suggests a marketing activity, we look into it and get approval for it.”

Mihaela: Intimate events (less than 300 people) where there are more one-on-one interactions. “We try to steer clear of big trade show events and focus on smaller audiences who are coming to events because they have a need that our partners can address.”

4. Use AI to Your Advantage

Channel marketers have to create a lot of content. While you may not be comfortable using AI tools to generate all of it, ChatGPT and Perplexity can jumpstart the process:

• Giving you new ideas to explore
• Writing a rough draft of an email outreach sequence
• Researching new trade shows or events to go to
• Scanning the web for useful stats to include across your content
• Finding examples of other successful channel marketing campaigns as inspiration

Mackenzie explains, “ChatGPT acts as a good sounding board. I like to ask it questions about the type of content I want to create or ask it for ideas. I may not use its exact answers, but it saves me time and adds a different perspective.”

Ana tends to use AI for personalization and marketing automation, adding in small touches to help outbound channel marketing campaigns better resonate with the audience they’re trying to target.

“All of our solutions at Axur are based on AI models, so we’re encouraged to lean on the AI solutions that are already integrated into our CRM and the rest of our tech stack. The suggestions it gives us saves us a lot of time in campaign creation and execution.”

5. Make Partners Aware of What’s Available to Them

If partners don’t know that marketing resources, training programs, and incentives exist, they’re not going to use them. Find a way to make it immediately clear what partners have at their disposal.

“We schedule emails to go out to the channel every other week, reminding them of the benefits they have,” Ana shares. “Whenever a partner moves up to the next tier, we send them an email outlining the new benefits they get, like an increased MDF, higher discount on our products, access to new tools, and NFR licenses.”

In addition to mass communications, Mihaela also suggests one-on-one conversations with partners to make sure they understand the value of your channel marketing offers.

“For example, if you find partners aren’t using MDFs, frame it as ‘they’re leaving money on the table,’ or they could be ‘growing their business with someone else’s money.’ At that point, they’ll start thinking of all the possibilities — landing pages, events, marketing on social media.”

6. Track Your Wins

Higher-ups are going to want proof that your campaigns and relationships with channel partners are working — that is, driving revenue.

But in most industries and geos, sales cycles take a long time, so it can be a while before you see actual conversions.

Mihaela says, “It’s critical for the C-level to understand that channel marketing isn’t always so clear cut. The first year or two may be all about brand exposure. It takes time to build trust and awareness.”

So, if you can’t show actual revenue, share signs that you’re headed in the revenue-generating direction:

• Partner training and certification completion rate
• Joint email campaign open and click rates
• Leads from co-marketed events

You should also find ways to build revenue tracking into your workflow so that once the flywheel gets going, it’s easy to see which marketing activities reel in the most qualified leads (and, therefore, are where you should focus your channel’s attention and effort).

For example, in Channeltivity, you can link MDF activities to new Deal Registrations, a feature that Axur uses to nudge folks toward activities that actually move the needle.

“It’s super important to keep track of how events go because some partners like to promote the same event every year. Having evidence that those events haven’t brought in as many leads as other campaigns helps us propose alternatives.”

Automate What You Can

There are so many moving parts in a channel marketing program that it can be tough to keep up — particularly if you’re a one-person team.

One way to stay organized? A centralized partner portal.

Once you’ve identified potential channel partners and onboard them to your program, Channeltivity automatically tracks their activity, compiling channel marketing data into easily digestible reports and dashboards so that you don’t have to.

Plus, it’s completely self-serve. No more one-off emails. No more design requests for co-branded assets, no more live trainings.

Partners can just get what they need and get to selling.

• Upload your co-marketing assets to the Library, and they’re instantly available for partners to download and publicize on LinkedIn.
• Configure the Co-Branded Collateral module once, and partners can add their logo and organization details to one-pagers, slides, or pricing sheets as needed.
• Add lessons and quizzes, and partners can get certified on their own time.
• Set up the MDF module, and partners can request funds whenever they want to.

Want to see our channel marketing, reporting, and automation features in action? 

Book a demo with one of our experienced partner professionals today and start building an effective channel marketing strategy.