Tell me about channel marketing
Discussion
I have an interview for marketing manager role that is related to the education sector and part of it looks like a channel marketing role. I know most areas of marketing in detail but channel marketing is less familiar to me. As there are quite a few marketing professionals on here I wondered if anyone could help clarify this aspect:
"Establish effective working relationships with ....vendors, key resellers & end users (as appropriate)" - So, how is this achieved in practice?
"Establish effective working relationships with ....vendors, key resellers & end users (as appropriate)" - So, how is this achieved in practice?
Me again.....
It's a piece of piss. Imagine a pyramid. At the top you've got the vendor, underneath that you've got a couple of distributors, underneath that you've got a few hundred resellers, underneath that you've got 10,000 end customers.
That's a two tier channel (reseller and distributor). You can have single tier channels (vendor/reseller/end user).
If you're working for a distributor, you sell to resellers, and they're bothered about how much GP they can make, whether it adds something to their portfolio of products, and whether they can tie in an end customer for a bit.
If you're selling to end users, they're bothered about operational benefits, ROI, cost, impact and some features.
The vendor will already have their messaging, their USPs and their intended market together with their price structures for education. You've got to punt it either into resellers or to the education sector. You'll need to follow their brand guidelines and figure out how and who in your base is a likely target for it.
It's a piece of piss. Imagine a pyramid. At the top you've got the vendor, underneath that you've got a couple of distributors, underneath that you've got a few hundred resellers, underneath that you've got 10,000 end customers.
That's a two tier channel (reseller and distributor). You can have single tier channels (vendor/reseller/end user).
If you're working for a distributor, you sell to resellers, and they're bothered about how much GP they can make, whether it adds something to their portfolio of products, and whether they can tie in an end customer for a bit.
If you're selling to end users, they're bothered about operational benefits, ROI, cost, impact and some features.
The vendor will already have their messaging, their USPs and their intended market together with their price structures for education. You've got to punt it either into resellers or to the education sector. You'll need to follow their brand guidelines and figure out how and who in your base is a likely target for it.
In terms of support materials it depends on whether it is predominantly a push or pull strategy - do you push the product/service through the channel (in which case they will expect lots of supporting collateral) or do you pull it through from the end users (which needs less support directly as they respond to customer demand. That is quite a simplistic approach as generally it is something of a combination between the two.
One important point is the relationships and ensuring no conflict of interest by selling directly to end customers rather than through the channel - or ensuring very clear and understood rules where this can happen.
One important point is the relationships and ensuring no conflict of interest by selling directly to end customers rather than through the channel - or ensuring very clear and understood rules where this can happen.
Undirection said:
Ok, thanks, so what do 'you' do for the resellers in terms of marketing? I guess first you have to locate them. generate reseller leads for sales, give sales some sales tools. Is there any support marketing materials for resellers that I'd need?
If you're a distributor for example, you'll probably have a base of about 6000 resellers. I'd be worried if they didnt have anything already. Out of that, there'd be say 3000 who've had some kind of contact, 1000 who've bought regularly, 100 who're good trading regular accounts. It'd make sense to have some kind of attack plan to get the regulars onboard with a new portfolio product, but have a different plan for the ones who've not bought anything for a while. For example, you could create a plan where if the resellers already buy 3 product lines, adding a fourth adds on an extra 7 days credit. Or increases the overall margin by 5% across all products, given back as marketing development funds. Or a sales incentive.
Many vendors product documentation (product brochures, white papers, case studies, references) fully branded and there's likely one spot somewhere on the back page for someone to add the partner details, so I wouldnt necessarily get too hung up on that. This is about who you're looking for, how you're going to attract them, where you've going to engage them (events, social, sales callouts, mailshots) when you're going to do that (ie dont run two campaigns for new biz dev in the same week because sales will have to do that calling out to the same people) and what you're going out with.
Quite often a good mailer and a follow up can be used for the end plan of getting 25 people on a webinar that the vendor runs, for example. We used to give away Starbucks cards for people who attended webinars. Amazon gift cards worked as well.
Once you get the buy in of the resellers in this example, then you need to look at how you can work with them together to go out to their end customers, although the chances are they'll have that machine whirring away already and there should be a drag and drop of your content in and away you go.
The hardest bit about recruiting new resellers is that they're lazy and they'll sell what they know. Getting them to do something else usually comes down to margin and backfilling deals for them with end users. There's a small selection of resellers who if you tell them they're not getting great margins from larger vendors, and there's this new disruptive vendor doing something roughly similar that's offering double the margin, they'll generally take a look.
Edited by andy-xr on Tuesday 1st December 08:51
Channel level conflict is huge these days, maker / importer sells to disty, disty sells to wholesaler, wholesaler sells to retailer, retailer sells to end user except they dont - distys are starting to sell to retailers bypassing wholesalers who are now selling to end users bypassing retailers.
If I interviewed a person who understood this I would be very impressed as most SD`s and MD`s dont appreciate how it screws your business.
If I interviewed a person who understood this I would be very impressed as most SD`s and MD`s dont appreciate how it screws your business.
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