Improve channel marketing: key ingredients for effective enablement.

Companies that sell through independent or quasi-independent channel partners (what we’ll call channel vendors) face a formidable set of marketing challenges. For most channel vendors, the single greatest challenge is that many of their channel partners don’t have the time, resources, or expertise to run effective marketing programs on a regular and frequent basis.

In addition, it’s exceptionally difficult to ensure consistent brand messaging and brand presentation when marketing programs are being run by dozens, if not hundreds, of independent channel partners. Finally, channel vendors often have little visibility regarding the effectiveness of marketing programs run by their channel partners, either because their partners don’t track the performance of their marketing efforts, or because they are unwilling or unable to share those results with the channel vendor.

To address these challenges, a growing number of channel vendors are implementing a new generation of marketing enablement programs that are designed to simplify, streamline, and automate marketing activities for their channel partners and thus optimize the performance of their indirect sales channel.

On the blog over the next few weeks, we’ll address four major issues:

• Why effective channel marketing is critical for channel vendors. 
• Why channel partner marketing is more challenging than “regular” marketing. 
• What is channel partner enablement and how can you do it right?
• Why a growing number of channel vendors are implementing third-generation marketing enablement systems to boost the performance of their indirect sales channel.