Many organizations, particularly B2B companies, depend heavily on their channel partners. The quality of the relationship between you and your partners can make all the difference in how well the channel performs. Many of the ideas we recommend marketing organizations embrace to improve their performance and program success are applicable to channel marketing programs. 

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Three Critical Steps in the Channel Partner Dance 

Integrate these steps with your channel partners to improve your joint marketing efforts:

1. Establish metrics and performance targets. Every channel program should include a performance target. Base this target on a specific objective from your overall marketing plan. The performance targets and metrics should reflect both yours and channel partners’ priorities. Aim to select a few key metrics that to your overall business outcomes that depend on your channel partners’ success. These metrics might include: net new customers acquired, incremental share of wallet; rates of new product adoption. Identify and select program performance targets that will enable both organizations to successfully make progress against the metrics.
2.  Leverage data and analytics and transform these into insights: Just as data and analytics are important for making fact-based decisions with your business, the same holds true for making sound channel investment decisions. Through data analysis, such as transactional data, data from surveys, program response data, purchasing trend data, etc, you and your channel partner can use this information to gain a deeper understanding of the customer based address by your channel partners and thereby segment and target more accurately.
3. Segment more granularly. Your channel partners may have some broadly defined market and/or customer segments. Often the more granular the segmentation and personas, the higher the degree of insure program success. Use purchase frequency and recency, customer value scoring, share of wallet data to help define more granular segments. This can enable channel partners to develop more highly tuned programs that are both more effective and efficient at achieve your specific objectives. Effective segmentation facilitates improvement in participation and sales.

Every channel partner should have an outcome-based customer-centric Marketing plan that is clearly linked to business results and complements your overall Marketing plan.

FAQ:

1. Establish metrics and performance targets: Align partner program goals with your overall marketing objectives. Focus on a few key metrics such as new customer acquisition, incremental share of wallet, and new product adoption rates that reflect mutual priorities and business outcomes.
2. Leverage data and analytics: Use transactional, survey, and program response data to gain insights into customer behavior addressed by your partners. This enables more precise segmentation and targeting for joint programs.
3. Segment more granularly: Move beyond broad segments to detailed personas using purchase frequency, recency, customer value scores, and share of wallet. Granular segmentation helps partners create more effective, efficient marketing initiatives that drive participation and sales.

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