Capturing reseller mindshare is a core competency for channel marketing executives. Success is a function of great products, competitive business practices, and especially effective marketing and sales communications. However, as every channel marketing executive knows, it is extremely difficult to communicate effectively with reseller partners.
There are a number of communication challenges to overcome: creating high-quality content; customizing messages for different audiences; putting the information into the right hands at the right time; standing out in the communications clutter; measuring results; and, keeping everything current and up-to-date in a fast-changing marketplace. Success takes time, resources, discipline, and a lot of hard work. Historically, only the very biggest and best channel marketing organizations have done it well on a consistent basis. This is changing as low-cost SaaS communication solutions become available to channel managers across the industry.
One new solution called Channel Marketing Content Syndication makes it easier for smaller companies to improve the effectiveness of their channel communications. There are several variations, but basically channel content syndication allows channel marketing managers to create one “master collateral piece” and maintain version control everywhere it exists. These “master collateral pieces” can be web pages, marketing documents, community pages, or online presentations that can usually be customized (within defined limits) by reseller partners and then put in front of customers and prospects.
How Channel Marketing Content Syndication works
1. Vendor Marketing creates “master collateral piece” content and places into a marketing archive.
2. Reseller pulls marketing material from archive, co-brands and personalizes it with their message.
3. Reseller makes marketing material available to customers via link or embedded code (incorporated into a website or social hub).
4. Vendors update the “master collateral” content when necessary. Only the newest version is visible to everyone, no matter when or how the material was originally distributed.
5. When users view the content, usage data is visible to the vendor who created the material while the channel partner that distributed it gets user information.
The use of Channel Marketing Content Syndication provides huge benefits to both channel marketing managers and their resellers. For example: channel partner messages are consistent – all resellers and sales reps are correctly presenting vendor’s message at all times. Marketing materials are available to partners and their customers quickly from an online marketing archive that is always up to date. Partner involvement is easy – Content Marketing Syndication can integrate into their website, email and social media sites because it’s a link or embedded code, not a file or document. The quality of content put in front of customers is controlled (protecting the vendor’s brand). Analytics and reporting on the effectiveness of each message is collected real-time and made available to the appropriate people in the distribution chain. Channel Marketing Content Syndication even tracks which partners use the materials effectively at each level of the distribution chain.
Since their introduction last year, Channel Marketing Content Syndication capabilities from companies like Brainshark, Tie Kinetix, and SharedVue have proven very successful at improving the quality and consistency of their channel marketing campaigns. Companies like SAP, EMC, Microsoft, and Cisco are already using the technology with great results. The next step is for their competitors to integrate Channel Marketing Content Syndication into their own channel marketing in order to level the playing field and be more competitive in their fight for reseller mind-share.
