The 5 Elements Of An Award-Winning Channel Marketing Program

"The first key to a successful Channel Marketing program is content because content is king." — Tricia Atchison, WW Director of Channel Marketing and Enablement, Citrix

Building a successful channel marketing program that drives a strong return on investment is no easy feat. One of the biggest challenges is the lack of partner marketing skills and resources in the channel. Many partners don’t have the time or the know-how to execute even the best campaigns.

I discussed this challenge with Tricia Atchison and David Pereira on my Channel Journeys podcast. Trisha Atchison is the worldwide director of channel marketing and enablement at Citrix, and David Pereira is the founder and president of Get Lift, a full service B2B marketing agency. Together, they created an award-winning channel marketing program called Kicksart that is helping partners create a new source of pipeline generation.

Key Take-Aways

There are five components to the Citrix Kickstart program:

1. Content

Content is king. It’s the foundation of an award-winning program.

2. Planning

Many marketing programs don’t focus on enough on planning. This includes joint business planning and creating quarterly or six-month marketing plans.

3. Budget

Find ways to make it easier for your partners to access marketing funds. Integrate funding into your marketing planning process to fund a series of campaigns rather than a single activity or event.

4. Resources

Many partners don't have sophisticated marketing, or even a dedicated marketer within the team. Offer marketing agency support where the agency executes on the partners’ behalf. This provides more consistent execution and tracking of results.

Enablement

Enablement is a foundation for success, and not just partner enablement. First you need to enable your partner managers on your marketing program, what it means for partners, and the ideal profile of partners who can benefit most from it.

Take Action — One Thing You Can Do Today

Compare your channel marketing program against the 5 award-winning components above. And listen to the complete Channel Journeys podcast for more tips.

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.