Channel Marketing and What it Can Do for Your Company

Commentary by: Lou Perlaky, VP, Marketing

Now, more than ever, it is vital that every segment of your distribution network be well educated about your company's products or services. In today's tight economy, the education of this network can be the deciding factor in the success of your company, and channel marketing is the key to providing it.

There are many projects that will benefit from a channel marketing campaign, including traffic building, direct response marketing, and product launches. In order to better understand how channel marketing can work for you, let's look at the example of a product launch.

Your company has just launched a new widget. Now what? First, your internal staff needs to learn all about it. The sales force needs to learn how to sell it, the call center needs to learn how to troubleshoot it, and top executives need to know the bottom line. Next, you'll need to educate your external customers. From distributors to dealers to installers, an intense educational campaign is necessary for the success of this new product.

Each one of these segments requires different facts and information. That's where channel marketing comes in. It will allow you to market directly to each group with the specific information that that group needs.

Channel marketing can take many forms, from print to multimedia (CD and video) to Web-based. Figure out which venue will work best for each segment of your distribution network. Installers without Web access will likely benefit from an instructional video, attractively packaged and accompanied by print brochures. Sales representatives, though, are better off with a CD that demonstrates the great features of this product. They will be able to use it to educate themselves, and then use it on sales calls to educate distributors and dealers.

For those with Web access, it is cost effective to use your existing extranet or intranet. These tools were made for channel marketing. With the ease of information upload, and the ability to make changes on the fly, information can be disseminated quickly, and feedback can be gathered almost immediately. This will lead to increased sales, and superior education.

With successful channel marketing, your accomplishments will be many-fold. Most important of these are increased profits and superior relationships. With these successes in place, your projects can thrive.