Working in a crowded industry means it can be difficult to differentiate, so being able to cut through the noise is key. To do that, you need to execute effective marketing activities.
A strong proposition, effective customer-focused content and a unique perspective or point of view go a long way.
When you compare the IT channel to other industries, there are some clear challenges that channel businesses are facing when it comes to driving business growth, and for me, they’re linked to marketing.
- A lack of innovation – it might seem silly given the channel sits at the heart of innovation, but marketing lacks in this area, with a lot of businesses still focusing on traditional marketing tactics.
- A lack of creativity – despite the channel’s overwhelming B2B focus, many forget that B2B buyers are consumers too outside of work. We need to be engaging with them in more personable ways.
- A lack of strategy – probably the biggest challenge facing channel businesses. If your strategy isn’t nailed down, you lose focus and, more often than not, find yourself spread too thinly, or investing time and effort in tactics that are unlikely to generate results.
For me, channel marketing efforts are in a bit of a pickle. Some businesses do it great, but many struggle to cut through.
It’s not their fault.
When you come from a very technical background, which many channel leaders do, it’s no surprise that your focus is going to be building technical capability.
Nobody expects those who are technically minded to be marketing geniuses, and similarly, nobody expects marketers to excel when it comes to technical capability.
That’s why you let marketers oversee marketing, and techies oversee technical work.
But when you’re technical, and marketing seems so alien to you, how do you know where to focus on or invest in? You know you ultimately want to grow, acquire new customers and deliver more projects, but when one or more of the above challenges are in play, growth is always going to be challenging.
So where how do you get out from between a rock and a hard place?
The good news is that it’s easily fixed, we just need collective focus on levelling-up.
Increasing knowledge and capability
Firstly, we need to help IT channel leaders gain a better understanding of marketing, its benefits and which efforts are right for them. That means going back to basics, kissing goodbye to buzzwords and jargon, and investing the time and effort required to help them make sense of it all.
From there, we marketers stand a better chance of earning back their trust by showing the growth in performance of their marketing efforts.
Secondly, we need to lower our expectations that every marketer has the same level of experience, knowledge and capability. Modern day marketing evolves almost daily, so we need to ensure that marketers are equipped with the knowledge and skills to do their jobs effectively. We can’t expect them to hit the ground running on day one without the skills required, in the same way you wouldn’t expect a non-techie to be able to build an app overnight.
We also need to help them understand what good looks like and how to achieve it. That means assessing existing performance against internal benchmarks, as well as industry standards. From there, we can begin to focus on gaps and what we need to do to shift poor to good, and good to great.
Equally, we need to give marketers our time and energy. Without direction, you’ll find marketing teams (or individuals as is often the case) lacking focus and struggling to deliver results. If you can’t dedicate your time as a busy leader, then consider alternative ways to support them.
Making marketing accessible
Not every partner, distributor, or even vendor has the same-sized marketing budget. You only need to look at two competing businesses’ marketing efforts to understand who has the biggest budget.
I’m a firm believer that budget should not prevent you from being able to access and deliver good, effective marketing.
Many vendors offer marketing materials for their partner communities to use, but as many partners will know, they’re generic, uninspiring, and often fail to hook a customer or prospect.
We need to shift this and work together collectively to ensure that every channel partner has the content available to them to execute effective marketing, without having to break the bank. Partners need to be included in a vendor’s content creation process so that they can feed in their own content needs, as well as the needs of the audiences they’re trying to engage.
It will take time to shift from where we are now, but there’s a duty on us all to work together. The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll see results.
Nathan Selby
Nathan is an experienced marketer, with over 15 years' experience across a breadth of sectors, including higher education, local Government, recruitment, automotive, financial services, and tech (channel and SaaS).
For almost a decade, Nathan has focused heavily on supporting channel businesses to deliver exceptional marketing, which led to the formation of Resultful, a channel marketing consultancy aimed at supporting partner growth, increasing capability and making marketing accessible.
Nathan’s expertise focuses on marketing strategy and taking a data and insight-driven approach to full marketing execution. He is passionate about connecting data and marketing to help channel businesses meet their business objectives, whether that be increasing brand awareness or driving growth.
