Channel marketing is the practice of working with a third party to take your products or services to market. (Triptych, 2018). Companies that sell services and products often use channel marketing. For channel marketing companies, devising strategies that generate prospects, leads, and sales for both your products and your distributors, is imperative to building strong, lasting, and profitable relationships.
Many people would say that the best promotion they can do is through channel marketing promotions. Most channel marketing companies already have a partner programme, in which they supply all partners with a range of marketing collateral and supporting content for a range of marketing channels. Many of our clients are from the manufacturing industry, and what we have discovered from working closely with them is that there isn’t a solution for them to track, analyse and report on the usage of all of their material. This lack of insight and data means they cannot accurately understand how successful each dealer’s efforts are, and which channels and promotions generate the best results. Example channels of promotions include social media, pay per click (PPC), word of mouth and digital prints.
Social Media Channel Marketing
Channel marketing promotions through social media are very common these days. This is because of the many benefits that a company can get by reaching out to potential customers through social platforms. For one, it is cost-effective since you don’t have to spend a lot of money on advertising. Besides that, it reaches a wide range of people and gives them the chance to share posts and content on your products and services. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram all offer easy-to-understand reporting analytics that your dealers can provide. By implementing UTM parameters to social media posts, your dealers can track with social media campaigns and promotions generated the best results. Through these platforms, you can easily interact with customers, which increases your chances of closing sales.
Pay Per Click Channel Marketing
People rely on Google to research products and services before they make purchase decisions. Setting up your dealer networks with a strong Google Ad strategy means that ads promoting your offerings will be displayed in Google’s search engine results when people search for terms related to your products and services. Google Ads offer comprehensive reporting and analytics that track various metrics, such as ad impressions, clicks, conversions, cost, and return on investment (ROI). This way, you can easily see which advertisements work best, which ones don’t, and use these insights to make future business decisions.
Multi-Channel Promotions & Target Audience Insights
Because of the unrivaled popularity of the channels, both social media and pay-per-click promotions through Google are likely to generate results, no matter who your target audience is. To further enhance the performance of your dealer’s marketing efforts, a multi-channel solution is recommended. If you can implement a promotion strategy that is flexible enough to be handed to every dealer, regardless of their size and their values, then you are winning. This kind of multi-channel marketing solution should include utilising PPC and social media, as well as email promotions, landing pages and content marketing. Each promotion and channel selection should be tailored around the specific target audience of the dealer. Understanding audience demographics and where they are in their buying journey will determine the channels and content your dealers should use. Your analysis should start with your most successful customers, then filter down the most unsuccessful. Data analysis carried out in this way means you can become more successful in acquiring new customers. This in turn resurfaces new insights on alternative routes to optimise (Data Driven Marketing, Progress). Your brand is always at the forefront of minds because your audience is receiving progressive, relatable, and useful information at all the right times.
The Key to Successful Promotions
Creating a suite of marketing templates that track performance. These templates should be built so that each partner can customise elements according to their brand, and their specific audience’s needs, but maintain a consistent overall message and design. This presents a cohesive, national, partner effort. The manufacturers should ensure their marketing teams help set up each campaign for the partners. Not only does this build up a rapport, but it provides an opportunity to gain insight into how they intend to use the marketing material. Stakeholders should have full visibility of each of these channels so that they can report on the success of the campaigns and the ROI. Analysing the results of a marketing campaign can be time-consuming, but it provides insight into the value of the partnership and allows you to recognise areas of improvements.
