Ignite the Channel: How Keeping It Simple Will Get Your Partners Fired Up
The world of sales is not a glass-half-full kind of place. What would you do if your team hit 50 percent of your sales plan or 50 percent on leads? So why would 50 percent be acceptable in Channel Marketing?
Consider the facts, according to a recent Gleanster Research report:
- About half — 48 percent — of the money Brands allocate annually for Co-Op and MDF gets left on the table. That’s $33 billion dollars that Channel Partners turn down every year.
- More than half of those Partners — 57 percent — say they do so knowingly, because the Co-Op advertising process is just too difficult.
This means that half the time, Brands can’t even pay their Partners to execute local marketing. It’s crystal clear: Channel Marketing is broken.
Challenges Partners Face
Let’s take a closer look at the why Partners call the process difficult, and even unfair. For a local business owner, participating in Co-Op and MDF means:
- Going out of pocket, up-front, at 100% of the cost, in order to promote the Brand for a company that’s far larger and with far more resources than the Local Partner.
- Dealing with manual processes, paperwork, fax machines and hardcopy records.
- Dedicating time and money to managing media and production vendors to customize and execute the Brand’s local marketing.
- Submitting ads for Brand approval.
- Waiting weeks for reimbursement.
- Risking denial for reimbursement if ads don’t meet the Brand’s guidelines.
If a Partner feels burned by the process — left waiting too long for reimbursements or left to pay for a Brand ad that wasn’t executed exactly right — then, they may not want to repeat the Co-Op process.
Solution: Keep It Simple
Making a difficult process simple is about eliminating roadblocks and offering, quicker, easier and more effective alternatives. If you had to create a process from scratch, with your Partners’ wish list in hand, you’d have to:
- Forget about asking Partners to pay costs upfront. Instead, make Co-Op funds instantly accessible to Partners.
- Ditch the manual processes. Instead, opt for Channel Marketing automation.
- Leave the vendor management headaches behind. Instead choose a Channel Marketing platform that automates campaign execution through best-in-class vendors.
- Eliminate the cycle of submissions, approvals and denials. Instead, go with a platform with built-in Ad Builder technology and dynamic templates that can give your Partners the flexibility to customize local marketing.
Keeping it simple essentially means giving your Partners what they need to succeed.
The good news: Brands don’t need to reinvent the Channel Marketing process. Today, Through-Channel Marketing Automation platforms offer an array of attractive solutions. But what really sets the leading platforms apart is instant funding — it’s the latest ground-breaking marketing technology solution designed to get your Partners fired up about Channel.
