Resellers are not marketing machines. In fact, most channel partners are not very good at marketing at all. Reseller-driven marketing campaigns, when they occur, are all-too-often ad hoc, disjointed, uninspired, and un-sustained. The results, therefore, are predictably uneven. Vendors compensate by providing Lead Generation Programs, Market Development Funds, and other incentives to enable their channels to meet the minimum marketing requirements for business growth.
Manufacturers have learned the hard way that marketing is too important to be left in the small hands of their channel partners. Vendors have to initiate marketing activity, control it, and even fund most of it if they want to see any success. As a result, marketing-related channel-support initiatives have become the backbone of vendor channel organizations at virtually every IT company that has recruited resellers to sell their products. And everyone who works in these channel organizations has a vested interest in maintaining or growing these traditional marketing programs in order to justify their budgets and even their jobs. Change represents risk, and no one wants to increase their risk in these already tenuous times.
Unfortunately, traditional channel marketing (lead generation) programs are increasingly ineffective as social media powers a significant shift in consumer buying behavior – even for B2B transactions. On-line reference selling is in – traditional lead generation is out. Time to get with the program.
Many manufacturers are embracing social media for corporate brand building and customer engagement, but these kinds of marketing initiatives are rarely channel-related. And while channel sales managers are waking up to the potential of social media in influencing their partners, their resellers remain gloriously ignorant of what their vendors are doing or why. Someone needs to invite resellers to the social media marketing party.
Educating resellers on social media and getting them re-connected to their vendors online is a huge task. It’s not enough to say, “OK. Everyone open a Twitter account!” Someone has to figure out the best ways for their channel to take business advantage of new social media tools. Maybe more important, they have to get their resellers into a position to reap the rewards of huge investments that leading vendors are making in their ongoing social media marketing campaigns. This is not going to happen overnight, and it’s going to cost some money. So the big question for 2010 is:
WHO IS GOING TO EDUCATE THE CHANNEL ABOUT SOCIAL MEDIA? (Poll at left)
One possibility is that vendors can retool their channel marketing programs to embrace social media and then provide some kind of training (webcasts, video, even classroom training) to bring their channel partners up to speed. Alternatively, trade associations like COMPTIA, SMB Nation, or ASCII, have a long history of educating resellers on how to improve their businesses. Or maybe resellers should just step up and figure it out themselves. What do you think? (Please vote!)
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