Selling through the channel: how partner marketing helps manufacturers drive sales
For many manufacturers, getting a product to market does not mean selling directly to the end customer.
Distributors, merchants, resellers and other partners can all play an important role in taking products to market. They may provide access to established customer bases, specialist knowledge and routes into sectors or territories that would be difficult for a manufacturer to reach alone.
But appointing a partner does not automatically mean they will sell your product effectively.
Your products may sit alongside competing brands, and your latest launch might be one of dozens of updates they receive that month. While your own team understands exactly what differentiates the product, the channel partner selling it may have had very little exposure to that story.
That is where partner marketing and sales enablement come in.
Make is easy for partners to sell you
Think about what you are actually asking of your channel partners.
They need to understand your products, explain their benefits, answer customer questions and communicate why someone should choose your brand over another.
If doing that requires them to dig through a website for information, rewrite technical copy themselves or wait for somebody in your marketing team to send over an asset, you are making their job harder than it needs to be.
Good partner marketing removes that friction. The aim is to give partners clear, accessible information and ready-to-use materials that help them move from understanding your product to actively promoting and selling it.
That might include:
- Product and messaging guides
- Campaign toolkits
- Co-branded marketing assets
- Email and social media content
- Sales presentations
- Training and educational materials
- Product launch communications
The exact mix will vary, but the principle is the same – make it as easy as possible for your partner to sell your product.
Remember: your priorities are not automatically theirs
A major product launch can consume months of work within a manufacturing business.
Product development, testing, technical literature, packaging, pricing, sales training and campaign activity may all have been carefully coordinated ahead of launch day. It’s a major event.
But to a distributor representing dozens of manufacturers, it may just be another email in their inbox.
That does not mean the partner is disengaged. It means manufacturers have to translate their own priorities into something useful for the channel, so the partner can communicate the proposition to their customers.
They will want to know:
- What is new?
- Who is the product for?
- What problem does it solve?
- What makes it different?
- What questions are customers likely to ask?
- What can the partner do with the information you have given them?
The easier those answers are to find and use, the greater the chance the message you want to convey will be received properly.
Give partners content they can actually use
There is an important difference between giving partners marketing content and enabling partners to market.
A 40-page brand presentation might contain everything they could possibly need to know about your business, but that does not make it particularly useful when someone wants to promote a new product on LinkedIn tomorrow morning.
Effective partner content should require as little extra work as possible.
A distributor might need an editable email they can send to customers, while a reseller could need social posts, website copy and campaign graphics that can be quickly adapted to their own brand.
Creating these assets centrally has another benefit – consistency.
You retain greater control over how the product and its benefits are communicated, while giving partners enough flexibility to make the content relevant to their own audiences.
At TMPR, we have supported manufacturing businesses with everything from channel-focused campaigns and co-branded assets to partner content, events and sales enablement materials. The objective is not to create more marketing collateral for the sake of it, but to give the people responsible for taking a product to market practical tools that support the sales conversation.
Make partner communication an ongoing conversation
Partner marketing should not begin and end with product announcements.
If the only time a distributor hears from a manufacturer is when there is something new to sell, the relationship can quickly become transactional.
Regular communications can keep partners informed about product developments, technical updates, new resources, campaigns, customer success stories and wider developments within the business.
It can also create opportunities to share expertise. Thought leadership articles, technical guidance, training content and customer case studies can all give partners useful content to share with their own audiences, while helping the manufacturer build visibility further down the supply chain.
The result is a relationship in which marketing is not simply pushing information at partners. It is helping partners add value to their own customer relationships.
Treat the channel as part of your marketing strategy
Manufacturers invest significant time and resources in developing products and building routes to market. Partner marketing helps make sure that investment is supported once those products reach the channel.
That means understanding what different partners need, creating communications around those needs and giving them the tools to confidently take your message into the market.
Done well, partner marketing can help increase campaign reach, strengthen relationships across the channel and, most importantly, make it easier for partners to sell.
At TMPR, we have years of experience creating partner and channel communications that engage, inform and enable B2B networks. From partner newsletters and product updates to training materials, campaign toolkits and co-branded assets, we help businesses turn their channel into an active part of their marketing strategy.
Get in touch to discuss how we can help your partner network communicate and sell more effectively.
