Channel Marketing

Supercharge Your Channel Marketing: 4 B2B-Defining Strategies with DemandScience

Jason Carriere

February 1, 2024

The sales cycle has always been multifaceted, but even more so with B2B tech vendors. Selling technology solutions to businesses requires a thorough understanding of the buyer’s needs, decision-making processes, and potential barriers to adoption. This means that B2B tech vendors need to invest time and resources into building relationships with key decision-makers, conducting in-depth product demonstrations, and addressing potential concerns or objections that may arise.

Now, let us bring a game-changing perspective to that point. Building relationships and finding ideal clients in key decision-makers have always been the point, but what isn’t talked much about is the vital role that channel marketers play in the B2B universe.

With that in mind, this article will explore ways to supercharge your B2B marketing channel marketing efforts.

The Importance of Channel Marketing for B2B Companies

Channel marketing for B2B businesses refers to the strategic process of using various third-party distribution channels to reach and sell products or services to other businesses. It involves the development and management of partnerships with intermediaries or partner resellers who act as the bridge between the tech vendor (e.g. manufacturer or service provider) and the end customer.

This “channel” in subject is responsible for 50% more of sales for many of the world’s most recognized technology companies. Channel marketers responsible for building, strengthening and supporting the channel ecosystems for these organizations have a difficult and demanding job.

In B2B channel marketing, the focus is on building strong relationships with channel partners such as wholesalers, distributors, retailers, or value-added resellers (VARs) who have established networks and expertise in specific industries or regions. These partners play a crucial role in extending the reach of the manufacturer’s products or services and ensuring they are readily available to the target market.

One of the key objectives of channel marketing is to create a mutually beneficial partnership between the manufacturer and its channel partners. This involves providing support, incentives, training, and marketing resources to help partners effectively promote and sell the products or services. By aligning marketing goals, an efficient collaboration will result in maximizing sales, increasing market share, and enhancing overall customer satisfaction.

Differentiating oneself in this crowded marketplace can be a significant challenge unless B2B businesses are empowered with allies to grow their businesses.

Ways to Empower, Fuel, and Ignite Your Channel

Marketers responsible for a tech vendor’s channel ecosystem, and their downstream channel partners responsible for closing sales each play a crucial role in helping B2B tech businesses succeed.

Here’s how these two can be empowered further:

Utilize Content Syndication for Quality Lead Generation

Content syndication plays a crucial role in helping B2B tech vendors and their channel partners attract and nurture high-quality leads. By distributing relevant and valuable content across various platforms and channels, content syndication helps increase brand visibility, shorten the sales cycle, generate more top-of-funnel leads, and build relationships with potential customers.

With content syndication, existing distribution efforts within the sphere of channel marketing network are heavily multiplied with precision.

Content syndication allows channel marketers and partner resellers to leverage the reach and influence of established platforms, such as industry-specific websites, online publications, and social media channels. Republishing content on these platforms allows businesses to tap into existing channel marketing audience base and gain exposure to a wider range of potential customers that fit the ideal customer profile.

This increased visibility results in more leads, expanding the overall reach of marketing efforts, boosts brand credibility, and drives revenue.

Leverage Precision-Targeted ABM Display Advertising

ABM (Account-Based Marketing) display advertising is a highly effective strategy for B2B tech vendors and channel partners to accurately target clients and boost sales. This approach involves identifying and targeting specific accounts or companies that are most likely to be interested in the vendor’s products or services and displaying ads right in front of them.

Whether it’s top of the funnel or mid-funnel, these targeted leads may or may not even know that they are in need of services; ABM display ads pushes these leads straight to the business website.

Traditional display advertising casts a wide net, reaching a large number of potential customers, but with low precision. ABM display advertising allows B2B tech vendors and channel marketers to focus their efforts on a select group of accounts that have a higher likelihood of conversion. By leveraging data and insights about these accounts, such as their industry, company size, and demographics, businesses can tailor advertising messages to specifically address the pain points and needs of these potential clients.

ABM display advertising can also support channel marketing partnership by providing resellers with valuable marketing assets and resources. For example, creating co-branded ads that feature both the technology brand solutions and the partner channels’ brands. This not only helps to establish credibility and trust but also enables resellers to leverage marketing materials and messaging to effectively promote the product to their own client base.

Through ABM display advertising, creating customized ads is possible, and this personalization emphasizes the cost savings and scalability benefits of services and tailor the messaging to resonate with the reseller’s target audience. This strengthens the distribution and channel marketing efforts from start to finish.

Harness the Power of Data-Driven Decisions

Quality B2B data is at the heart of all lead targeting campaigns. Having access to accurate and robust B2B data plays a crucial role in helping B2B tech vendors and their partner resellers develop more informed marketing strategies and targeting, including:

Comprehensive customer profiling

By analyzing the data, businesses can identify key characteristics of their ideal customers, such as industry, company size, job title, and purchasing behavior. This information then allows partner networks to craft highly targeted marketing campaigns that resonate with the specific needs and pain points of their specific target audience.

Up-to-date insights on industry trends and customer preferences

By monitoring data sources such as social media, industry publications, and online forums, businesses can gain insights into emerging technologies, shifting customer demands, and the competitive landscape. Is the trend for the business services doing well? Do they need to reposition their solutions in the market? B2B data provides information that is invaluable when it comes to developing marketing strategies that are in line with the latest industry trends and customer expectations.

Facilitate effective targeting

Armed with accurate B2B data, businesses can segment their audience based on various criteria. By dividing their customer base into smaller, more manageable segments, channel partners can then create personalized marketing messages that are tailored to the specific needs and interests of each. For example, segmenting audience based on geography and empowering channel partners to create localized marketing campaigns that reflect regional preferences and market conditions.

Expand channel network

Tech vendors, especially those who have been tasked with creating or expanding their channel ecosystem, can identify and target potential channel partners, including distribution partners, system integrators & professional services, value-added resellers, national solution providers, and managed solutions providers.

Powerful Analytics Helps Channel Marketers Optimize Allocation of Resources

Channel marketers–like all marketers–need comprehensive analytics and reporting capabilities that deliver real-time data and insights into the performance of their lead generation activities. This is a crucial “must-have” for tech vendors who need to track and measure the ROI of their channel marketing investments and channel partners who need to evaluate the effectiveness (and ROI) of their campaigns.

By understanding which channel marketing initiatives are generating the most leads and sales, channel marketers can optimize their marketing strategies and allocate resources more effectively.

Whether it is to scale-up programs, to reward high-performing resellers, or to provide additional support and guidance to partners, tech vendors who make data-driven decisions have a competitive advantage over those whose visibility is limited. And, similarly, channel partners are able to maximize their Marketing Development Fund budgets when they can pinpoint what strategies work best and maximize sales and revenue for the products and services in their portfolios.

Supercharge Your Channel Marketing with DemandScience

Building and growing a channel marketing network in a highly competitive landscape is complex and challenging. However, DemandScience’s suite of award-winning demand generation products and services can simplify your channel marketing operations. These solutions help streamline the entire process, from lead generation to sales enablement, and empower both tech vendors and channel partners to collaborate effectively and bring sales and revenue to new heights.

Let’s talk about how DemandScience can help you.