As you know, resellers play a crucial role in the IT channel by bridging the gap between vendors and end customers, driving vendor revenues to new heights. Given the weight your resellers carry for your organization, it’s critically important to listen when your partners speak, especially if they’re complaining about the dynamics of your partner program.
To this end, Channelnomics just released their annual research on the “Top 10 Grievances Partners Have With Vendors” based on their analysis of thousands of partner comments. Number 4 on the list – insufficient marketing resources.
Alright vendors, it’s time to step it up because this complaint has been in the top 10 for pretty much the entire history of the channel. Are you listening to your partners?
This should go without saying, but if you’re not providing your resellers with effective marketing tools and resources, they will struggle to effectively communicate the value of your solutions, ultimately impacting sales and customer engagement. To foster stronger relationships and drive mutual success, vendors must empower their reseller partners with robust marketing support. If you won’t, your competitors will, enabling them to take market share from you.
With this hot topic in mind, here are the top 4 ways vendors should be providing essential marketing assistance to their resellers.
1. Provide Content That Supports Pre- and Post-Purchase Needs
One of the most impactful ways to support resellers is by providing high-quality marketing content that supports both pre- and post-purchase needs. This content should align with key areas such as brand marketing, thought leadership, product marketing, feature adoption, and renewal. By covering the entire customer lifecycle, vendors enable resellers to educate potential buyers at every stage of their journey—from initial awareness to long-term product engagement—while ensuring brand consistency and credibility. Not only does this help your partners market, it also helps their sales teams better understand and position your products with end buyers. Essential content types include:
- Product descriptions, specifications, and use cases
- Thought leadership articles that highlight industry trends
- Case studies and customer success stories
- Whitepapers and solution briefs
- Engaging video content and product demos
By offering this comprehensive content strategy, vendors help resellers drive customer acquisition, engagement, and retention, ultimately strengthening the overall sales pipeline.
2. Offer Co-Branded Marketing Assets & Joint Venture Campaigns
Resellers benefit greatly from having access to professionally designed, co-branded marketing materials. Vendors should create customizable templates for brochures, email campaigns, social media posts, landing pages and voice of the customer programs that resellers can personalize with their own branding. Co-branded content enhances trust among end buyers, reinforcing the partnership between vendors and resellers while driving higher engagement.
With assets created, it’s time to think about deployment. To generate leads and drive sales, vendors should launch joint venture marketing programs with their resellers. These programs should include:
- Co-hosted webinars and virtual events
- Targeted digital advertising campaigns
- Social media promotions
- In-person trade shows and networking events
- Content syndication and distribution programs
By actively engaging in joint marketing efforts, vendors can amplify brand awareness, increase customer reach, and strengthen reseller relationships. Looking for a new approach to creating joint venture programs, check out Demandi.co.
3. Move Beyond MDF with Purpose-Driven Marketing Tools
While Market Development Funds (MDF) have been a traditional approach to supporting reseller marketing, it’s time to get with the times and think beyond MDF. MDF programs have very low activation rates because they are often complicated, and resellers simply don’t have the time to initiate marketing programs on their own. Giving your partners marketing funds to work with translates to putting more work on your partners’ plates. Instead, provide resellers with specific tools that align with specific purposes and outcomes. Support your partners with automated tools and done-for-them marketing programs that reduce their marketing workflows and seamlessly integrate into their sales processes. By offering intuitive, ready-to-deploy marketing solutions, vendors can drive better adoption and maximize reseller success.
4. Automate Marketing Support to Improve Activation Rates
Partner portals are an antiquated way to distribute marketing assets to resellers as they require manual activation and deployment processes for both vendors and resellers. It’s time to provide resellers with automated marketing solutions that get the task accomplished while also reducing associated workflows. Resellers need marketing support that is automated and that’s done for them. Automation tools should be the priority to improve activation rates, ensuring that marketing content is seamlessly deployed without adding additional burdens on reseller teams. By embracing automation and removing manual complexities, vendors can ensure that resellers are fully equipped to drive sales and customer engagement effectively.
Conclusion
Providing strong marketing support to resellers is essential for vendors looking to maximize their channel success. By delivering high-quality content, enabling co-branded materials, engaging in joint marketing programs, and shifting from outdated partner portals, MDF programs and manual processes to automated marketing solutions, vendors can empower resellers to effectively market their solutions and drive revenue growth. Investing in reseller marketing support not only strengthens vendor-reseller relationships but also ensures a competitive edge in the IT channel marketplace.
Where ChannelBridge Fits In
ChannelBridge fully automates content distribution to your partners’ websites, for both you and your partners. You as a vendor simply need to continue publishing content, as you already do. ChannelBridge automatically indexes and distributes your content to your partners’ websites. ChannelBridge guarantees through-partner content delivery helping you as a vendor maintain accurate, relevant representation in front of end buyers while helping you and your partners drive customer acquisition, feature adoption, renewal and ultimately brand and partner loyalty. When it comes to fully automating content distribution, ChannelBridge is the market leader.
ChannelBridge answers your partners’ calls for better marketing support. Are you listening?