Successful strategies in channel demand gen
Case study:
Closing the Gap in Channel Partner Marketing Campaigns
Leads are a constant source of strife between sales and marketing departments. For channel organizations, the pressure is even greater as they try to treat both channel partners and end-user prospects as customers. Here’s a look at how we helped one channel organization deliver value through its lead generation programs.
Marketing Challenge
The client is a software distributor with more than 300 reseller
partners promoting a leading software infrastructure solution. The
distributor’s revenue pattern follows the typical 80/20 rule: 80% of their
revenues come from 20% of their partners. The client recognized they most
want to grow revenues from the top 20%, plus incent the rest of their
channel to measurably improve as well.
We have found one of the ongoing challenges in the technology channel is the quality and quantity of leads and opportunities that find their way to the reseller partners. VARs often claim that high-quality leads through the channel are few and far between, while vendors and distributors will note that their marketing ROI is negatively impacted by partners who don’t follow up on leads and who do not comply with their lead tracking protocols.
This client is no exception. They have run quarterly demand generation campaigns on behalf of their partners with varying success. Their campaigns promoted the features and benefits of the software product, but did not often tie back to how the software could truly solve their prospects’ business challenges and how the prospects could integrate the solution into their overall enterprise computing strategies.
Solution
Launch International has vast experience building strategic marketing
campaigns for channel organizations–and we addressed this client’s needs
with top-down approach to analyzing their partner requirements–followed by
a quarterly managed campaign strategy that is delivering results.
We first conducted a “partner segmentation analysis” to determine the unique challenges of their top partners. The analysis looked at partner sales and marketing strengths, as well as their ability to deliver complete solutions. By cross-referencing these capabilities, we determined the distributor’s “sweet spot”–the profile of partners where the distributor could add the most value and find the best return on its marketing investments.
In designing their quarterly managed campaigns, we created campaigns that targeted the partners in that sweet spot. We raised the intellectual value of their campaign call-to-action by creating executive briefs that positioned their partners as thought leaders in their solution space. This elevated the partners to a technology partnership position with their prospects.
For execution of campaigns, we developed several web “destination sites” where prospects would register and download the campaign fulfillment pieces. Leads from the campaign sites are distributed to participating partners for follow-up and closing.
The distributor client is currently driving more than 10% of their total revenues through these campaigns. That’s impressive results!
For more information on channel marketing campaigns, contact Eric Nitschke at enitschke@launchintl.com.
