Innovation and adaptation are the two true keywords you need to focus on when it comes to B2B channel marketing. If you can innovate, you can continue to get maximum value from your channels; if you can adapt, you can make sure that your company is positioned to benefit from new technological advances.
This was made clear recently when Channel Partners created a conference for the leaders of the companies involved in the largest megamergers of the last 18 months.
They took the time to ask the people who spearheaded the the $22 billion merger of Qwest Communications and CenturyLink, the Level 3 Communications acquisition of Global Crossing Ltd., the Windstream Corp. purchase of PAETEC, and MegaPath's merger with Covad Communications about how they handled their new channel marketing initiatives.
2012 Marketing Success Requires Leveraging New Developments
The statistics on the effectiveness of channel marketing efforts in 2011 have started to come in, and they are not encouraging. In fact, they demonstrate that companies are going to have to work harder to innovate with their co-marketers if they want to see growth in 2012.
They demonstrate that in 2011, there was a 50 percent decline in the overall effectiveness of three basic B2B marketing tactics – website design, search engine optimization, and email marketing.
Social media in the B2B channel marketing landscape is still an emerging field. Most companies and co-marketers want to use social media to expand their marketing efforts, but have little experience in doing so.
While many are aware of the benefits of having new low-cost ways to push their marketing messages, many are unaware of the dangers and how easily a social media marketing effort can go horribly wrong.
To see what might trip you up and to avoid problems, it can be helpful to look at the B2C marketplace, in which companies have been experimenting with social media marketing considerably longer than most B2B companies.
When it comes to channel marketing, we all want to maximize our results while limiting our expenses. We want to ensure that our channels work with us so that both parties generate as much revenue as possible and benefit from the co-marketing relationship.
But, what is the best way to accomplish these basic goals? There are lots of stats out there that can give you advice on channel marketing trends, how to leverage social media, how the cloud and other new technologies are changing channel marketing patterns – but, at the end of the day, it all comes down to one simple idea: Effective channel marketing is all about sharing.
