2. Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: Role and importance of channel partners in digital
marketing amplification
Page 3: Challenges of partner enablement
Bottlenecks faced by vendors and partners to become digital ready
Page 4: Digital resistors vs. digital enablers
Page 5: Industry-proven Practices for digital enablement of
channel partners
Page 6: Tips for Enterprises to enable their partner
marketing system
Page 7: Conclusion
Index
3. Brushing the basics
It is well-established that sales and marketing as a business process complement each
other where sales have their own gestation cycle. Whether a brand is looking to enter a
new market, a new product launch, or expanding reach in the existing geography, all of
these require correct and consistent marketing efforts. This is where the role of channel
partners becomes crucial to deliver a head-start to vendors in launching their marketing
campaigns. Channel partners have the bandwidth that allows brands to get established in
the market, maximize visibility, and increase sales.
Traditionally, channel partners were deemed as last-mile distributors contributing only to
sales and revenue generation. Today, the scope of partner marketing goes beyond sales
and includes strategies such as digital demand generation, lead generation, upselling, and
cross-selling. With the advancement of online commerce, it is imperative for vendors to
collaborate with partners and make them digital-ready. Being digital-ready helps partners
to expand their reach and engage meaningfully with the target audience.
• However, almost 40% of leaders revealed
that their current channel stack was
insufficient for ongoing marketing needs.
• Today, around 92% of b2b
leaders expect to increase
revenue in association with their
partner ecosystem.
BRUSHING THE BASICS
©Denave
4. ROLE AND IMPORTANCE OF CHANNEL PARTNERS IN
DIGITAL AMPLIFICATION OF MARKETING CAMPAIGNS
Planning for partner marketing is essential to deliver coherent brand messaging of the
vendor vis-à-vis the products and services to target customers. It significantly enhances a
company's ability to scale and expand its reach across countries and even globally. Done
the right way, it presents unique opportunities for making more meaningful partner
journeys and connections with customers. The importance of partner marketing
enablement can be understood in the light of the following statistics:
• High-performing vendors allocate 17% of their marketing budget to channel marketing.
• With 67% of the total buyer's journey done digitally, understanding the value of the
digital enablement of partners is a must.
• 54% of the companies say partnerships drive more than 20% of their total revenue
Brands must design their marketing campaigns for digitally-enabled tactics keeping buyer's
journey in mind. They must ensure a harmonized relationship with their partners to execute
campaigns along the buyer's journey. The partners' and vendors' thinking should be
aligned with buyer journey thinking across digital and non-digital touchpoints for better
outcomes. They must work together to create product awareness in the market for end
consumers and tap into the potential demand. Beyond the customer journey, brands also
need to emphasize the partner journey. This gives partners an impetus to recognize how
and why to be digital-ready and orchestrate a winning buyer's journey campaign.
©Denave
5. ©Denave
Some channel partners need more help than others, while some are already up to speed with
the growing digital ecosystem. It is a nested process of a buyer's journey and partner's
journey.
Channel partners can no longer rely only on the traditional business models to increase sales.
They must inculcate a robust digital-native environment to boost their visibility and target
customers across multiple channels. They must leverage digital demand generation
techniques such as content development, social media marketing, and search engine
marketing. A unified digital marketing program will help them scale their campaigns and
build a long-lasting relationship with target customers.
6. Brushing the basics
DIGITAL ENABLEMENT BOTTLENECKS
ENCOUNTERED BY CHANNEL PARTNERS
Channel partners primarily battle challenges with designing the digital campaign structure.
The conundrum that most channel marketers face is that their channel partners don't have
the capabilities or resources to create original, engaging, and relevant content on their own. It
rests on vendors to create content and marketing kits for the channel partners to use.
Most channel partners lack maturity in terms of basic infrastructure like a website with proper
SEO/SMM integration. They face challenges in hosting their website on platforms that
support integration with the latest digital marketing communication. Furthermore, traditional
channel partners face issues in organizing databases to facilitate seamless integration into
campaigns to track the outcomes, measure KPIs, etc.
• Almost 84% of channel partners do not have a dedicated digital marketing resource.
• Less than 15% of partners actually engage in the digital marketing programs of their
vendors.
• 75% of partners say that content marketing is crucial to expanding digital marketing
campaigns and boosting organic traffic.
• However, around 53% of channel partners identified existing content provided by vendor
companies as mediocre or worse. As a result, a big gap emerges between digital
enablement and digital readiness of channel partners in industry verticals like consumer
electronics, retail, telecom, and SMB segment.
©Denave
7. Big technology brands are ahead in driving channel partner enablement. On the contrary,
other industry verticals like construction, manufacturing, etc., particularly the ones focusing
on SMBs, are confronting a lot of digital resistance. They are unable to unify the processes
required for amplifying campaigns in their channel ecosystem. Many of them have a strategy,
but they don't have platform readiness, campaign management tools, and think-through
focus on amplification on a continuous basis.
©Denave
8. DIGITAL RESISTORS VS. DIGITAL ENABLERS
Primarily, there are two kinds of channel partners in the market currently. Some have
implemented a digital-first approach and leveraged digital tools and infrastructure to build on
their sales quantum. Then there are digital laggards who are either reluctant or lack the skills
and resources to become digitally native.
However, the covid-19 pandemic forced many resisting channel partners to quickly adopt
digital marketing tactics. The pre-pandemic market had more digital resistors than the
present scenario. The overall marketing mix was event-oriented, where companies had large
sales and technical workforce but smaller marketing teams. However, after the onset of the
pandemic, partners and vendors had to make adjustments in their marketing strategies, as
events were no longer possible. There has been a rapid digital acceleration in the last 18
months, along with an increased uptake for digitally-enabled campaigns. Also, consumer
behaviour shifted drastically towards online shopping, making the omnichannel approach a
mainstay within both b2b and b2c segments.
The big question that needs to be addressed now is how to work out digital marketing and
the key steps to understand as a partner for getting digital-ready. Vendors must develop
content and resources around the fundamentals of digital marketing to train their partners. A
digitally capable partner ecosystem will help develop a strong omnichannel engine to target
customers with personalized messaging. A strong digital presence is paramount to offer the
customers additional value. Data analytics on top of digital marketing helps partners measure
and track the outcomes and success of the program.
©Denave
9. BEST PRACTICES AND FORWARAD-LOOKING TECHNIQUES
FOR DIGITAL ENABLEMENT OF CHANNEL PARTNERS
Digital channels are the elixir for brands to become a market force in the present market
dynamics. Companies must optimize their existing sell through relationships and unify them
with digital programs to amplify, expand, and engage with a much larger audience. Now that
we know the role and significance of channel partners in strengthening brand voice online,
let’s check out some turnkey practices to make them digital ready.
• Vendors must provide tools, resources, and content to help partners understand the
importance and fundamentals of digital marketing channels.
• Vendors must offer brand content, messaging, campaign tactics, etc. to help partners run
successfully with their marketing campaigns.
• Allow partners the flexibility to customize the source messaging of the vendor and
integrate it with their own brand identity. There are partners who rely completely on the
content and resources of the vendor while using their market presence and workforce
strength to amplify the campaigns.
• Vendors can also offer their digital assets for the partners to use with their website, email
marketing tools, or content syndication, etc.
• Vendors must offer concierge services to help partners cope up with their campaign
strategies.
• Vendors can direct and enable the partners through tools like newsletters, periodic
marketing events, or webinars. Partners need to have updated information on the latest
trends and technologies.
©Denave
10. HOW CAN ENTERPRISES ENABLE THEIR
PARTNER MARKETING ECOSYSTEM?
Channel partners in the non-technology verticals have more digital resistors than any other
industry verticals. Also, the highly volatile business environment makes it difficult to quickly
adjust with continuously evolving customer behaviour. Small and medium businesses often
have smaller decision-making team that makes the purchase decision. Hence, it is vital to
target smaller groups or individual buyers by executing more personalized campaigns tailored
for homogenous buying teams. Also, specific products and offerings that are targeted to a
particular segment of the SMB would be useful.
Vendors must set clear KPIs at the beginning as to how much amplification they want from
the channel partners. They must then identify the right channel partners who can help achieve
the desired outcome and ready them to execute the campaigns seamlessly. Companies must
build their brand and messaging with end goals in mind. They need to develop campaigns
with a solution approach and identify different routes to market. There are many social media
channels and social media automation tools that allow brands to have a presence at different
channels seamlessly. All this doesn’t require a hard reset. Just simple changes can improve
campaigns by several folds.
©Denave
11. WRAPPING UP
In the digital age, there is heavy reliance on social media channels for day-to-day
requirements. From socializing to shopping to entertainment, social media is the new city mall
for majority of human race. At the very least, having a website and a social media presence is
absolutely vital today. It is also important to recognize that digital is not a quick one-off
process but a journey. There is a gap between the results and the ROI in digital marketing.
Hence, businesses must plan carefully, start early, and keep doing it. Digital marketing is a
trial-and-error process. Right content, right customer personas, right channels, right
messaging is the mixed bag that is the most crucial in digital partner marketing.
Need more in-depth understanding on hybrid demand generation services including digital
marketing, telesales, and field sales & marketing? Schedule a consultation with Denave to get
your most pressing sales enablement problems solved.
©Denave
12. DENAVE OFFERS TECH-ENABLED
SALES ENABLEMENT SOLUTIONS FOR NEXGEN SALES:
©Denave
1. Intelligent Database Management System (IDBMS): Powerful database engine that enables
deeper market and sales intelligence & access to identify B2B prospects.
2. Digital Demand Generation: Digitally native and deep capabilities for digital demand
generation and revenue enablement, specifically in the B2B landscape. This service helps
companies to create awareness, reach prospects and move them along the sales funnel faster:
Telesales: As a part of the telesales service, Denave offers industry-proven and battle-tested
methodologies to improve telesales conversations and improve closure ratio.
Field Sales & Marketing: Our digital demand generation engine is also backed by seamless
offline customer engagement and GTM strategies which are covered under the Field Sales &
Marketing service
Digital Marketing: We conduct enterprise-level campaigns for all business sizes, we understand
how a prospect's journey unfolds on various channels.
3. Sales Training: Multi-model sales training modules are designed leveraging 100+ man-year
experience to deliver enhanced salesforce engagement and driving revenue impact across varied
industries.
4. Retail Solutions: We offer a bouquet of solutions including virtual retail solutions, retail
analytics, visual merchandising, planogram, virtual retail audit.
5. Sales Process Automation: Denave’s sales automation solutions drive quick end-to-end
implementation that translates into systematic data capture, timely feedback, improved team
productivity, smoother dissemination of information, and KPI tracking.
We're here to make sure you never have a sales problem again! Request a quote @
https://www.denave.com/contact-us/ to unlock fast & efficient pathways to boost the ROI.
