Heather Margolis: The Channel Journey Of Channel Marketing

Instead of speeds and feeds and pretty pictures of storage arrays, we're talking about content and talking about business outcome. – Heather Margolis

Channel marketing continues to evolve with the changes in the market, taking yet another twist with business and social impacts of the Coronavirus. I discussed the journey of Channel Marketing, what works, and what is no longer effective in a recent Channel Journeys podcast, with Heather Margolis.

You probably know Heather as the Channel Maven. She’s also the founder of her startup called Spark Your Channel where she’s introducing a powerful new marketing automation platform.

This interview was pre-COVID-19, but her recommendations are still very valid in our current stay at home world.

Key Take-Aways

If you’re looking to get a greater return on your channel marketing investments, here are five tips from Heather you need to consider:

1. Our traditional co-branding doesn’t work for MSPs. They don’t want to slap their logo on something that is 90 percent of the vendors' content. They want to talk about their services and value proposition.
2. Stop the 10-series canned email campaigns. You’re just training your prospects to delete your emails.
3. Email marketing no longer works for top-of-the-funnel campaigns. Leverage social media first to build a reputation, form relationships and earn some trust before sending your email campaigns.
4. Content is still king – but think short blogs, podcasts, and videos. Provide your partners with short audio and video clips and let them add their own custom intros and outros to the clips.
5. Target the new decision-maker: the line of business manager. Talk about business outcome, not speeds and feeds and how great your product is.

Take Action - One Thing You Can Do Today

Compare your current Channel Marketing program with the tips above. It may be time for a refresh.  Then listen to the complete Channel Journeys podcast to learn more about these channel tips and Heather’s new venture, Spark Your Channel

About The Author

Rob Spee is founder and CEO of Channel Journeys Consulting and host of the Channel Journeys podcast. Rob applies his channel expertise to help clients create and execute channel strategies to accelerate revenue growth. His global channel experience spans from building channels at startups to vendors and distributors like Arrow, BMC, Carbonite, and SAS. Follow Rob on Twitter and LinkedIn.