Introduction

Channel marketing activities are increasingly valuable within hyper-competitive verticals like technology and software. For companies that rely on partners to generate the lion’s share of revenue, this is the perfect time to create new channel marketing strategies.

The objective of any channel partner marketing campaign is to generate awareness, gain trust, and acquire more customers. As a channel leader, you can accomplish these goals by highlighting how your partnership adds value to the end customer.

The following guide details best practices for creating and improving your channel partner marketing materials and promotional campaigns.

Chapters in this Ebook

Why Channel Partners Benefit from Dedicated Marketing Materials

There may be plenty of Direct Sales marketing materials that channel partners can repurpose. However, don’t jump to the conclusion that this will always be the case. Consider the following:

To learn more, we recommend our article Channel vs. Direct Sales.

Prerequisites to Creating Your Channel Partner Marketing Strategy

If you have yet to complete the actions below, you’re not ready to have your channel partners market your products. Each listed best practice will provide essential guardrails which prevent your messaging from veering off-course.

Create Brand Guidelines to Consistently Reinforce Amongst Partners

Knowing the products’ end-users forwards and backward is essential to creating a comprehensive marketing strategy. Do your due diligence to apply this same line of thinking to your channel partner program as well.

To further flesh out your audience personas, consider the following tactics:

Explore the Many Vehicles for Channel Partner Marketing

Our Favorite Types of Content for Channel Partner Marketing

In the expansive sea of blog posts dedicated to generic how-tos, unique data will make your brand voice ring the loudest. You’re providing new value that can inform even your most educated audiences while providing fresh tidbits they can leverage within their own messaging. Such statistics can enhance diverse kinds of marketing—from social blasts to white papers—that channel partners can share with their followers.

Take this strategy one step further by involving channel partners in the initial research. By combining forces, you can near-double the number of survey participants or data points to yield even richer results.

For more insights into how to promote your original research, check out White Paper Marketing Strategies to Promote Your Thought Leadership.

The events of 2020 forced B2B technology sales to pivot away from tradeshows and conferences towards webinars and online events. As of 2023, many of these in-person gatherings are returning in prominence, but don’t expect their digital counterparts to fade into the background.

Today, webinar hosts enlist multiple speakers to offer their expertise in order to provide differing, valuable perspectives. So why not invite valued partners to share their expertise? Not only will you both be able to elevate your individual brands (and briefly mention how the two products integrate), but you can further nurture the relationship through this interaction.

We know that “video” pertains more to the medium than the marketing message, but it’s too impactful not to highlight. Performance data across multiple industries show that audiences choose to interact with video more than any other type of medium. They are more likely to click and interact on social; web pages with video receive longer time-on-site and reduced bounce rates; viewers will retain information more easily; and associated conversions are higher.

Arm channel partners with video-based marketing assets, such as case studies, product demonstrations, and educational how-tos. You can even consider co-branding a video that highlights the power of your technologies combined.

Consider How You Can Repackage Existing Content to Amplify Its Message and Value

Harkening back to the idea of original research, a new statistic can be leveraged in dozens of different ways. Write a white paper, create a press release, spotlight it in social media posts, and make it the focal point of a digitized partner round table discussion. Similarly, if you create an in-depth “how-to” video, why not divide it into multiple bite-sized snippets you promote across social media, in your newsletter, on your partners’ paid search landing pages?

Such channel partner marketing strategies will ultimately help you stretch your budget and enable you to explore new avenues without heavily investing in new content. It also enables you to amplify the potential of messaging you know resonates with audiences.

Create a growth path with clear benefits, expectations, and resources throughout the entire partner journey.

Fernanda Pires

Partner Marketing Manager

Find the Right Messaging for Channel Partners to Deliver

A hard truth all marketers must face is that what we want to talk about may not always align with audiences’ interests. This could be due to a lack of education on their part or, more likely, they simply don’t place as high of a premium on a subject as you do. Your company’s internal communications may be flaunting the latest product feature as the coolest thing since sliced bread, but outsiders may not agree.

Continually Finesse Your Content Partner Marketing

If you google the phrase “content is king,” this phrase appears word-for-word in an estimated 5,830,000 search results. Why? Because everyone knows it and prioritizes it within their channel partner marketing strategy. With this in mind, you must always be in pursuit of improvement, or else your competitors may leave you in the dust.

Always Have a Clear Audience and Purpose in Mind

As a best practice, ask yourself the following about each piece of partner marketing content prior to creation:

The more specific your answers, the better the piece will become. After all, B2B marketing is not about casting a wide net and pleasing everyone; it is about crafting targeted messaging that speaks directly to the niche needs of a limited (but powerful) group.

Embrace Local Preferences and Priorities

Localizing a marketing resource for partners means more than merely translating the text. You’ll want to account for cultural preferences, differences in priorities, and potentially unique pain points.

For instance, marketing techniques intended for Americans could come across as aggressive and self-centered to European audiences, as detailed in Expanding Your US Channel Into Europe. Another example? Prospects coming from countries with stricter privacy laws may be more focused on these talking points than their international counterparts.

To ensure marketing materials have the intended effect on unfamiliar audiences, collaborate with trusted partners to shape the messaging and pinpoint appropriate distribution strategies.

If you and your organization are committed to customers for life, then you better be committed to having partners for life.

Dan O’Leary

Director of Partnerships

Leverage Partners’ Perspectives and Authority to Strengthen Messaging

Why not turn select channel partners into hands-on collaborators by pooling your collective expertise (and brand awareness). Opportunities include co-branded studies and white papers, co-hosted webinars, integrated product demonstrations, and co-authored articles. In many cases, the two brains (and voices) will outshine the one to make content truly stand out.

What’s more, there may be scenarios in which your partner has a larger loyal following than you do amongst niche audiences. Placing their logo beside your own can lend immediate credibility to the messaging.

Lose the Zeroes and Stick With the Heroes (and Learn)

Perhaps co-written blog posts don’t attract readership, or an email blast doesn’t deliver traffic. In such scenarios, do the following:

In short, embrace change and don’t drag your feet when determining what channel partner marketing activities aren’t working.

Keep an Eye on the Competition

Truly one-of-a-kind ideas are few and far between nowadays. If you are focusing on new marketing mediums or revitalizing old copy, chances are that your competition is doing the same. You can only hope to execute the various partner marketing best practices more effectively.

Staying aware of competitors’ marketing content and techniques can give fresh ideas or move the goalposts for what to consider “the bare minimum.” If they recently invested in a high-production video that they prominently place on their Become a Partner page, it may be time to revisit your 2015, low-budget equivalent.

To learn more content marketing best practices, we recommend our article Strengthen Your Partner Program with Content Strategies for 2023 and Beyond.

Think About Promotion as Much as You Think About the Messaging

Welcome ideas and encourage brainstorming.

Create an Omnichannel Promotional Strategy to Maximize Results

Back in the days of Mad Men’s Don Draper, options for media consumption were much more limited than they are now. With professionals’ eyes never far from a computer screen and their phones within arm’s reach, your channel partner marketing practices should account for the many possibilities for digital touchpoints within the user journey.

Let’s use the scenario that you are releasing a new product that solves a common problem.

The collective of these actions ensures that you have targeted messaging for audiences at all legs of the buying journey, and that you chose appropriate mediums for each stage.

For more tips on coordinated content distribution, visit Co-Marketing Activities and Ideas for Joint Promotion.

Equip Channel Partners With Various Marketing Templates & Best Practices

Content marketing takes on many forms, from email blasts to social media posts to landing pages. Help your channel partners maximize their effectiveness by passing along best practices. For example, if they’re creating a landing page promoting your product packaged with theirs, share ideas for PPC keywords from which you’ve seen results.

Use Marketing Development Funds to Further Boost Visibility

Marketing development funds (MDF) are the budget you assign to partners that they can put towards promoting your products and brand. It’s best described as a win-win; you help with the upfront promotional costs and, in turn, both you and your channel partners emerge with greater revenue.

To ensure you make the most of your partner marketing development funds, keep the following best practices in mind:

To learn more, we recommend our article MDF Program Management Best Practices.

Track and Analyze Data to Better Understand Your Channel Partner Marketing and ROI

Throughout this guide, we alluded to the value of data time and time again. Well-defined KPIs will prevent you from flying blind as you shape (and re-shape) your channel partner marketing strategies.

It’s considered best practice to track:

For the best results, organize and assess the data through the lens of:

This enables you to understand which audiences respond the most to which materials, as well as the preferred vehicle for delivery.

Marketing ideas that seem brilliant on paper don’t always deliver the expected results. On the flip side, I’ve been blown away by runaway successes. Performance data allows me to remove personal biases to make sound decisions about which practices to evolve and which to discard.

Tori Barlow

Head of Partnerships

Another point to remember is that not all channel partner marketing strategies will have the same goal. Obviously, an activity with the objective of introducing the brand to new audiences should not be directly compared against an initiative to upsell current customers. Make sure that you are using the appropriate KPIs when grading the success of a campaign.

To learn more, we recommend our article How to Measure the ROI of Your Partner Marketing Campaigns.

Make Channel Partner Marketing Scalable With Next-Gen PRM Automation

When executed correctly, channel marketing involves cohesive omnichannel campaigns, active participation from partners, and a thorough analysis of the impact. It’s impossible to manually coordinate the many moving pieces while enforcing marketing best practices. A first-class PRM (partner relationship management) tool balances automation with customization to maximize efficiency and make scalable growth sustainable.

Examples of how a PRM is vital to channel partner marketing best practices include:

The more you automate key partner marketing functions, the more you free channel managers from having to complete menial tasks on behalf of program participants. This contributes to quicker turnaround times and scalable channel growth without a bloated budget.

You have to build alignment, that’s the important thing. Start with the C-Level and work your way through Sales, Marketing, and CS.

Brandon Lytle

VP of Marketing at Allbound

Learn More About How Allbound’s Partner Portal Software Elevates Channel Marketing

Free Channel Partner Templates Free For Your Marketing & Sales

The Allbound team created a series of channel partner management templates you can apply directly to your marketing and sales program, re-branding them as your own:

Click here to view the full list of free templates Allbound offers channel partner programs.

Bottom Line About Channel Marketing Best Practices

Channel partner marketing activities strengthen partnerships and grow awareness around your collaboration. Highlight the benefits that the end customer receives as a result of your partnership. By creating brand guidelines, you set parameters for all marketing efforts, which makes them consistent and streamlined. By creating shared content that resonates with both of your audiences, both companies can grow their reach. Digital marketing is the most effective method for joint promotions like webinars and landing pages. Implementing these tips and best practices allows you to receive the most ROI on your channel marketing activities.