5 Steps To Maximizing Your Channel Marketing ROI

"You have to find partners that demonstrate a willingness to work with you. If they're willing to take the steps that lead toward a successful outcome, you should double down on them and help them take those steps." – Peter Thomas

It’s difficult for a vendor to manage all their channel partners on a one-on-one basis, especially with a large and diverse ecosystem of partners. And it’s even more difficult to get all partners to engage in marketing campaigns and drive a meaningful return on your marketing investments.

I discussed these challenges with Peter Thomas, author of Marketing Multiplied and founder of Averetek, on my Channel Journeys podcast. Peter shared 5 steps you can take to maximize your channel marketing ROI.

Key Take-Aways

5 Steps to Maximizing Your Channel Marketing ROI

1. Use a data driven approach to channel planning.

Look at data for the entire life cycle of your products from production to the end customer to see which channel routes are the most successful.

2. Segment your partners and then align incentives accordingly.

Lifestyle partners and growth partners are motivated by drastically different incentives. Many partners will value experiences like enablement over monetary incentives.

3. Offer packaged marketing services and either minimize or eliminate proposal based MDF entirely.

There is no guaranteed ROI with one-off marketing proposals from partners lacking marketing expertise. Rely on proven marketing activities with more predictable outcomes.

4. Be fun and interesting.

It can be difficult to keep partners interested in your campaigns. Keep it fun and interesting by mixing things up every quarter to keep partners actively engaged.

5. Inspect what you expect.

Look back and audit your marketing program to see if you are getting the ROI you expect and make sure there is no abuse or fraud taking place.

Take Action — One Thing You Can Do Today

Order a copy of Peter's book, Marketing Multiplied, and listen to the entire Channel Journeys podcast where we go more in depth on each of the 5 steps to maximize your channel marketing ROI.

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.