How to engage channel partners in B2B

Engage your channel partners

Ian Horsham, divisional director, promotions and incentives at The Grass Roots Group, offers five pieces of advice to engage your channel partners

With research suggesting that on average just five per cent of marketing budgets are set aside for partnership marketing, brands could be missing a trick by not doing more to engage and motivate a valuable channel to market. With customers exposed to more choice and options than ever before, converting sales has become more competitive meaning brands need to work harder with their partners to seal the deal. As such, channel partners require the most competitive incentives and bonus initiatives to ensure their successful input continues to grow and develop with the company.

It’s no longer enough to take a ‘sell x and get y’ approach. Channel programmes need to constantly evolve and take a more sophisticated approach in response to today’s competitive landscape. This digital age dictates how channel partners should be working to take full advantage of the tools to hand on the programme, such as utilising social media. While incentives play a fundamental role in driving performance, the core focus should be on driving engagement between a brand and its reseller audience. For this to happen, comprehensive training for all partners and a full knowledge of the brand are essential.

Here is some advice for B2B marketers to maximise partner engagement and enhance performance levels: 

1. Capture the imagination

For any engagement campaign to be a success it needs to resonate with the audience and get them excited about what’s on offer. Utilising topical hooks such as sporting events, Christmas or royal anniversaries and providing themed benefits surrounding these will take hold of peoples’ imagination, encourage them to think of the possibilities and how they can be attained. Perhaps a trip to London for the birth of the new royal baby, a Christmas market visit or tickets to the Rugby World Cup, the possibilities are endless and adaptable to all in an organisation. Working towards a personalised target with tangible results, which are within realistic reach, is key to a successful engagement campaign.

2. Be bold and engaging

Once you’ve got people’s attention you need to keep it. There’s no point producing a great call-to-action if the outcome doesn’t live up to expectations.  As well as the incentives on offer, the look and feel of any supporting information portal, for example, also needs to engage the audience and entice them to sign up to the scheme. The advice provided needs to be insightful and useful to benefit those involved with the scheme, with online learning, dedicated marketing support and resource libraries playing a key role in helping sales staff ultimately feel more empowered to sell more, alongside the incentive aspect.

3. Offer the right incentives

Successful initiatives are those that utilise tailored and relevant rewards for a channel audience. Points-based solutions might not be the right approach for all, with bespoke reward solutions, ‘business benefits’ packages and prepaid cards starting to grow in popularity. This provides a more personalised experience, empowering partners to make choices relevant to them.  Offering these incentives not only at the point of appraisal but throughout the journey of the relationship will no doubt enhance the partner engagement and, in turn, help to produce visible results through enhanced productivity.

4. React and adapt

The success of any scheme is reliant on the last campaign and to keep partners coming back for more, companies need to constantly review engagement levels and take user feedback on board.

Facilitating a two-way dialogue with partners is vital. An automotive company for example, hosts an online forum on its portal, where topics are posted on a weekly basis, to encourage feedback and debate, with dealer staff embracing the opportunity to have their voice heard.

Taking a targeted approach to each campaign is of great importance and what works for one audience might not work for another, so it is key to segment and target partners based on what interests and entices them to engage in a particular campaign. This is changeable and so needs to be considered on a case by case basis, focusing on dialogue and understanding of the audience in question.

5. Rely on insight

As well as keeping it creative, analysing what has and hasn’t worked well will help boost the success rate of future campaigns.

By drilling down into email open and sign-up rates of each campaign, companies have access to a wealth of information upon which to base future schemes. This will ensure the best possible levels of engagement. This stage shouldn’t however wait until the end of a campaign, with regular analysis meaning tactics can be refreshed or adapted as you go along for a better outcome.

Following these five key principles, companies can keep partners engaged and motivate them to stay loyal to the brand. Showing an understanding of what makes them tick and offering them useful business support tools, as well a reward that they really want, will have a significant and positive impact on future sales and long-term partner relationships.

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