Many tech companies establish alliance partnerships with complementary products, but they fail to monetize these alliances to their full potential because they focus on joint activities rather than the bigger opportunity – activating their joint channel ..read more

While discussing plans for the year ahead with a channel-focused tech company, their global channel marketing leader talked about how their team was incredibly focused on using their channel marketing platform as the destination for all their programs and initiatives. That’s not an uncommon goal that I hear when talking to channel marketing leaders. What was uncommon is that this leader referred to their company’s use of the platform as a key piece of their noise-reduction strategy ..read more

Unless you have no contact with the outside world, you’ve at least heard of Fortnite. The online phenomenon is a “free-to-play battle royale game where up to 100 players fight to be the last person standing.” The game has gained “more than 125 million players in less than a year and (it’s) earning hundreds of millions of dollars per month” for its creator, Epic Games. As a father of a 12-year-old boy who plays Fortnite daily with his friends and as a Fortnite player and channel marketer, I think there are many ways we can use Fortnite to inspire our work with partners since we ofte ..read more

As we prepare to end the year, it’s always interesting to look at the year in review and see what content on our website was most popular with channel marketers like you. Our most popular blog posts, eBooks, and webcasts of 2018 appear below ..read more

Channel partners, many of whom are launching digital marketing activities for the first time, can often put too much thought and planning into their campaigns which can lead to delays or a complete failure to launch. They often overthink marketing because of their inexperience. There's very little risk to launching a variety of activities and then waiting to see what prospects respond to. In your planning, you should consider how you can help partners move forward. By addressing common concerns and issues, brands can help channel partners create more marketing activity and start to ..read more

As you plan for next year, you may find that there are large, blank stretches on the calendar where nothing much is happening. Product launches, customer and partner conferences, and industry events dot the calendar, much like holidays did for you as a child (and likely still as an adult). So, what do we have to look forward to? How do we break up the time? The answer is simple. There are three types of channel marketing programs you’re going to want to run next year. But before we get into the programs, it’s important to consider the needs of channel partners and how best to engag ..read more

The way brands and channel partners think about marketing together is changing. The change is being led by the modern digitally-driven buyer who does much of their research online rather than through sales engagement, as has been the case previously. Brands continue to get a ton of traffic on their websites through their own marketing as well as receiving contributions from their channel partners' efforts.. Brands collect leads but generally don't share them with channel partners as many sell direct as well as through-partners ..read more

For many channel partners, their entire marketing strategy is based on hosting events. Steakhouse dinners, golf outings, and sporting events account for the majority of their "marketing" activity. There are at least two ways to evaluate this approach. From an optimistic point of view, the events can be looked as a fun way to engage prospects. From a more pessimistic point of view, these events can be seen as a huge waste of money and time on an unqualified audience. Whichever side you sit on, these events don't support scalable growth because of several fundamental flaws ..read more

To assist with planning for next year, SiriusDecisions, a global business-to-business research and advisory firm, has published the research brief, Channel Marketing: Planning Assumptions 2019 ..read more

Attendance for monthly partner update calls is at an all-time low. And it’s no wonder. Channel partners, like everyone else, have many priorities competing for their time. Why should they spend an hour with you once a month or even once a quarter? Why not just wait for the recording? We’re all so used to Netflix binge watching and other on-demand content that there’s very little need to gather together for live experiences. But when people do gather together, live, there’s an opportunity to share energy and that’s the number one thing you should be trying to do with your partners ..read more