Demand generation has been and always will be a top priority within the channel. Even as the IT landscape constantly evolves, increasing sales and brand visibility are priorities that have not changed. So, what has changed? As a marketer in this space, the #1 question I ask my clients who operate within the channel is how they want to position themselves and their services among their audience, and 9 times out of 10 they tell me that they aren’t just providing a service, they are telling their story, intertwining it with their partners, and in the end selling a solution. It’s not just about selling products; it’s about sparking innovation, collaborating for success, and most importantly, solving problems.
In an ideal world, channel partners would seamlessly integrate the vision of the vendor into their service offerings and sales pitches, encapsulating the narrative of each vendor, creating a cohesive story that resonates with clients to drive demand. However, the reality is far more complicated. Channel partners often work with multiple IT vendors, simultaneously, each with its own unique value proposition, messaging, and target audience. Expecting a partner to not only remember but also fully embody the intricacies of each vendor’s narrative is simply not realistic.
This complication gets increased when vendors face challenges at their end to help partners run successful demand generation strategies. Here are some of the five prevalent challenges that vendors face:
1. Internal Skill and Resource Constraints
One of the primary reasons for not effectively driving demand through channel partners is the failure to identify the necessary skills required from internal teams as well as from partners. Without a clear understanding of what is needed from both internal and external entities, coordination and collaboration become challenging.
Another common pitfall is the lack of a proper cadence to align internal resources with partner initiatives. This leads to disjointed efforts and misses opportunities in leveraging channel partnerships for demand generation.
Silos within teams further exacerbate the issue, hindering seamless communication and alignment on strategies to drive demand through channel partners. It is, however, imperative for organizations to break down these barriers and foster a more integrated approach towards partner-driven demand generation.
2. Ineffective Content Strategy
To drive demand through partners, vendors must understand that a one-size-fits-all approach to content development is ineffective. Creating standard templates or generic campaigns in a box will not yield the desired results. Different partners have unique needs and preferences when it comes to marketing content.
Efficient and personalized content development is key to engaging partners and driving demand effectively. Vendors need to tailor their content strategies to cater to the specific requirements of each partner. By recognizing the individuality of partners and partners’ customers and providing them with relevant, targeted content, vendors can create impactful marketing campaigns that resonate with their audience.
3. Inefficient Partner Communication Strategy
To drive demand through partners effectively, it is crucial to have a well-thought-out and strategic partner communication strategy in place. Winning partner mindshare has become more challenging than ever, and failing to deliver key messages to partners can significantly impact the success of partner marketing campaigns.
It is imperative to distinguish among “to,” “through,” “with,” and “for” partner marketing campaigns to ensure that the right message reaches the right audience through the most appropriate channel. Without a clear understanding of these distinctions, companies risk diluting their messaging and missing out on valuable opportunities to engage partners effectively.
Regular communication with partners is essential for maintaining a strong relationship and ensuring alignment on goals and objectives. Not establishing a consistent cadence with partners allows for discord, cumbersome partner experience (PX) and ineffective collaboration that are vital for driving mutual success in partnership initiatives.
4. Failure to Understand Partners’ Solutions and Ideal Customers
Understanding partners’ solutions and ideal customers becomes critical in creating demand through partners. Since PWC finds that 75% of partners have more vendor choices today than three years ago, it is essential to remember that partners will only sell products effectively if they serve the needs of their end customers.
Failure to create a joint solution around partners’ customers’ needs can lead to disappointed results and missed opportunities. It is imperative to prioritize understanding partners’ solutions and ideal customers to achieve successful collaboration and drive demand effectively through partnerships.
5. Underestimating Partner Marketing Data
Not consolidating and analyzing partner marketing data is a critical mistake that many vendors make. This leads to data silos and an ineffective ROI mechanism, hindering the ability to drive demand through partners effectively.
When you don’t know the asset utilization data across partners, you create a blind spot for yourself in optimizing your partner marketing strategy. Campaign reports and asset ratings are crucial for understanding what works and what doesn’t.
Another challenge arises when you fail to incentivize your partners to engage with different campaigns. This lack of motivation can significantly impact the success of your partner marketing efforts. It’s essential to address these issues head-on to maximize the potential of your partnerships and achieve better results. You can refer to this article to understand more why your existing partner marketing campaigns are not effective.
8 Strategies to Overcome Pain Points
Now just because it’s complicated doesn’t mean it’s impossible, or else the channel wouldn’t be as successful as it is; however, generating demand through your channels has to evolve the same way that technology does, with innovation, strategy, and creativity. Here are eight strategies to help vendors maximize their channel partner relationships and drive demand through their partner ecosystem.
1. Identify Successful Sales Strategies
One of the first steps in boosting demand through channel partners is to identify what has worked for them in the past. After all, why reinvent the wheel? By taking the time to understand how your partner has succeeded at selling your solutions, you can tailor your support, and money, to amplify their success.
2. Flexible and Customizable MDFs
It’s no secret that MDFs are a valuable resource for channel partners, heck sometimes I want to set up an MSP for the amount of MDFs that are out there. The problem is, oftentimes the MDF claims process and policies are rigid and actually stunt strategy and creativity. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, work with your partners to design an MDF program that aligns with their unique strengths. According to Mckinsey, personalized campaigns boost revenue by 5-15% and enhance ROI up to 40%. Whether it’s co-branded campaigns, events, targeted advertising, promotional, influencers, incentives, you name it, the personalized approach is guaranteed to get you more bang for your buck.
3. Promote Thought Leadership Content
The market is flooding with information, and random content and posts here and there for a “social media” presence just doesn’t cut it anymore. Stop sharing generic digital media and begin focusing your co-branded assets on education content that promotes statistics, investigations, and trends. In fact, according to a study conducted by Semrush, “47.6% of thought leadership content generates the actual leads and sales.” Help your channel partners go beyond the “mold” and collaborate on white pampers, webinars, workshops, case studies, and expert blogs that address industry challenges and solutions. By positioning your partners as trusted industry experts, you’ll not only attract prospects but also foster long-term relationships, loyalty, and brand credibility.
4. Utilize Data-Drive Tools
Nowadays there’s a platform for everything, and this can be overwhelming to your channel partners. Or maybe you’re running it old school and sharing everything manually, either way, you can’t deny the importance of leveraging the right technology to empower your channel partners with tools that enhance their marketing and sales efforts while giving you valuable data and insights. Implementing a Partner Relationship Management (PRM) platform with advanced partner marketing support, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, and/or incentives programs help drive different marketing campaigns, provide real-time insights, lead tracking, performance analytics, and automated workflows. These tools both streamline collaboration and enable targeted marketing campaigns with a personalized experience.
5. Partner with a Marketing Agency
While IT vendors often have in-house marketing teams, channel partners may lack the resources or expertise to effectively execute marketing strategies required by their IT vendors. Oftentimes, vendors also struggle to align resources to develop effective contents and drive partner marketing campaigns, as discussed above. To help alleviate this gap, it’s important to consider bringing on-board a third-party marketing agency that specializes in supporting channel partners and speaks their language. These agencies can act both as an extension of your team to the channel partner and as their personal team executing campaigns on their behalf. Furthermore, by involving a third-party agency you ensure that your partners receive the tailored support they need to drive demand with creative guidance, and you receive performance analytics and metrics that your partner otherwise may not know how to provide.
6. Embrace Account Mapping in Demand Gen Strategy
To excel in demand gen strategy, embracing an account mapping solution like Reveal is not just beneficial but essential. The account overlap data provided by these solutions offers unparalleled visibility across the partner ecosystem, enabling businesses to uncover new prospects and co-sell effectively with partners. FYI, according to Nearbound, up to 40% of vendors’ prospects are already customers of their partners, creating a lower sales cycle and maximizing the likelihood of closing a sale.
Partners can effortlessly register their most preferred leads with vendors through these solutions, streamlining the lead management process and ensuring that valuable opportunities are not missed. By leveraging account mapping solutions, vendors and partners can collaborate seamlessly and capitalize on each other’s strengths to drive mutual success. This entire process becomes a lot easier with Mindmatrix and Reveal native technology integration that both vendors and partners can leverage.
7. Leverage Influencer Marketing in Demand Generation
Most companies spend 10-20% of their marketing on influencer marketing because the influencers reach customers in different geo and market. Vendors must leverage influencer marketing to help their partners generate local demand. However, providing the necessary funds to run influencer campaigns and helping partners work with and collaborate with local influencers need to be considered beforehand. This will enable partners to drive demand in their respective markets.
To ensure maximum impact, solutions like localized webcasting and localized partner marketing campaigns must be considered and tracked on platforms like Mindmatrix for proper attribution tracking. In the end, customized and hyper-local approaches are essential for driving tangible results at the partner level.
8. Invest in a Robust Partner Marketing Platform
Investing in a robust partner marketing platform is a must-have for any business looking to drive demand through their partner ecosystem. This powerful tool enables you to run a wide range of partner marketing campaigns, including to, through, with, and for. As we discussed making a clear distinction among these different campaign types, it became more critical that the platform let you implement each of these marketing campaigns flawlessly.
With the right platform, you can empower your partners to run these campaigns in their respective markets, ensuring maximum reach and impact. Moreover, you’ll gain valuable insights into partner engagement, campaign ROI, and the performance of your content strategy. This allows you to continuously optimize and refine your approach for even greater success. Don’t settle for anything less than a comprehensive partner marketing platform that can help you maximize the potential of your channel partnerships. If you want to learn more about partner marketing platform, refer to this article.
If you need help building your partner marketing muscles, look no further than registering yourself for a free partner marketing course designed by Mindmatrix while encapsulating its 26 years of industry experience within partner marketing.
Conclusion
Generating demand through channel partners requires more than just sending magnet assets and providing credentials to a platform. Channel partners require a strategic and collaborative approach. The best way to drive success is to identify successful sales strategies, offer flexible MDFs, promote thought leadership content, utilize data drive tools such as PRMs, and partner with marketing agencies. By implementing these strategies IT vendors can empower their channel partners and drive sales growth, in the end achieve a competitive advantage in the market.
Mindmatrix and Marketlogic are here to support your demand generation strategy through and with your channel partners. Book a call with us today to discuss how we can help you generate demand.
This article is co-authored by Mariah Rockwood from Marketlogic.
