Once upon a time, in a technology industry far, far away, vendors did marketing, and channel partners did selling. The vendors generated the demand, resellers fulfilled it. But times have changed. Channel businesses have evolved, and so has the buying landscape.
Channel partners now have a critical role to play in creating demand – utilising their local market knowledge, their relationships and their solution-oriented approach to stimulate interest and influence customer thinking. As a result, through-channel marketing has become an important discipline for any vendor or service provider serious about maximising its growth potential.
To support the growth of through-channel marketing a new category of technology platform has emerged – often referred to as through-channel marketing automation (TCMA) – and a new breed of vendors have sprung up focused on this requirement. The Forrester Wave for TCMA platforms, published in Q3 2015, identified 14 significant vendors in this space, and Forrester have forecast double-digit growth over the next couple of years.
TCMA enables vendors to market through their partners by equipping them with the tools and content they need to generate interest and pipeline, but with controls that allow the vendor to protect their brand integrity.
TCMA platforms offer many potential benefits to vendors, but there is a significant effort involved in setting up and managing a platform, with no guarantee that channel partners will actually utilise it. So how do you decide whether or not to implement a TCMA platform to support your channel partners?
OneGTM are not a technology company, but we do specialise in helping companies create and deliver through-channel marketing programmes. So based on our experiences, here are four areas we suggest you should think about when considering whether to invest in a TCMA platform:
1. The level of marketing sophistication and resource within your partner base
If you work with very small partners that lack any level of marketing awareness, and don’t have anyone internally to manage the implementation of a campaign, then it is unlikely they’ll make use of your TCMA platform, however well-designed your campaigns are.
At the other end of the spectrum, if you work with large, sophisticated organisations, that have their own marketing automation platforms and well-defined marketing processes, you’re also unlikely to get take-up. These partners might welcome content and tools that they can customise and utilise within their own marketing campaigns, however they’re unlikely to see much value in your TCMA platform as they’ll have too much invested in their existing systems.
Therefore, you need to think about the profile and sophistication of your channel partners. The sweet spot is between those two extremes – partners that are big enough, or ambitious enough, to commit resource to using your system, but not so big that they’ve already invested in their own systems.
2. Your own marketing capabilities and resources
It is one thing investing the time to set up a TCMA platform, but unless you create high quality campaigns and content to populate the system then it won’t get used. And that’s not just a one-off activity; it you’re not regularly refreshing the system with new campaigns and new content then partner enthusiasm will soon fade. So as well as considering your partners’ marketing resources you also need to think about your own. Have you got the capabilities and the resources to create a continual flow of great quality content? If not have you got the budget to pay someone else to do it for you? (If the answer to the first question is no and the second one is yes then please speak to us J)
3. Your channel partners’ business model and proposition
The relevance of a TCMA platform will also depend on your partners’ own business models, and the nature of their proposition to end-customers. If your partners are essentially a reseller of your product or service, with minimal tailoring of your proposition, then a TCMA which allows them simply to add their own logo and contact details and top and tail the messaging will probably work well.
However, if your partners are primarily solution- or services-led, and your product is simply one element in a much broader proposition that they’re offering to end-customers then a TCMA system may be of limited value unless it supports a very high level of customisation.
4. Current levels of engagement and commitment within your channel
The final area to consider is the current levels of engagement and commitment that you have from your channel. A TCMA can be a great tool for increasing partner engagement, but there needs to be some level of commitment in place already or it’s unlikely to be successful. If your target channel partners don’t believe in your proposition, or aren’t convinced they can make money with you, then the greatest TCMA platform in the world isn’t going to change their minds. So make sure you correctly diagnose the problem you need to fix before investing a huge amount of time and money in a new platform.
I hope this article provides some useful food for thought if you’re investigating the potential value of a TCMA platform. If you’d like to discuss how OneGTM could help you build an effective through-channel marketing programme then please don’t hesitate to contact me at phil@onegtm.com.
