5 Golden Rules for Marketing to Partners and Distributors

Selling through partners and distributors is an oft-favored model of growing the business. However, many companies struggle to determine and operationalize campaigns to keep those partners active and productive.

Partner marketing remains a neglected branch of B2B marketing initiatives despite being one of its most important. Here are 5 ways to energize partner marketing and enable partners to sell more effectively.

#1 – You are not their priority, their own business is their priority

Vendors assume that their products and solutions are as important to their partners as they are to them. But partners and distributors are only interested in their profit and their top line. They often deal with multiple partners and distribute products from many different companies.

Grab their mindshare by simplifying their task of selling and supporting your products and avoid relegating your products and solutions to the bottom of their priorities.

Having clear and effective marketing collateral also gives distributors the resources they need, when they need it, to sell your products effectively.

#2 – Simplify and make it easy for them to communicate your value propositions to the end customers

First, work out the content marketing proposition of your products. Assess how easy it will be for your partners to adopt that and present it to your clients. This includes even minute details like slide sets, case studies and white papers. Marketing and product collateral like these makes your partners more effective and efficient in selling your product.

In tandem, have an easily-accessible location for these resources. It could be an Intranet or a partner portal that is constantly updated with the latest information like pricing and technical specifications – information that partners often receive much later after the change has been implemented. Timely information is the best information.

#3 – Create and constantly update an On-boarding Kit

When a new partner joins you, present them with an on-boarding kit that contains all the essential information they need like pricing, sales playbooks, cheat sheets, competitive selling info, where they can get training resources, how they can contact you, and so on.

The kit could be on physical media (thumb drives, DVDs) and/or presented online within a dedicated portal.

This works like magic and you have the added benefit of having presented a professional image of your company to your partners, boosting their confidence in your ability to support them in selling your products.

It would also attract more value-added and premium distributors to join you.

#4 – Have a co-marketing strategy and budget pool

A co-marketing strategy, while beneficial to all parties, is also rather challenging to provide and implement. There are multiple stakeholders including different corporate communications departments on both sides. A multitude of branding related issues, amongst which logo placement guidelines, level of customisation allowed for different marketing collaterals, what can and can’t be changed, all need to be discussed as well.

Document these well before embarking on a co-marketing strategy to avoid any miscommunication. Invest time and money in making the process smoother for your partners to help and incentivise them to co-market your product. As they may be marketing many other products over and above yours, the smoother you make this process the more mindshare you claim, resulting in better revenue share from your partner.

#5 – Listen to feedback and adapt

Bear in mind that your partners directly touch your customers. They have their ears on the ground and direct feedback from your end customers. You can make better decisions by listening to your partners and adapting your marketing strategy based on their inputs. This would range from content marketing to what kind of slide sets and case studies work and what more you can do.

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