Channel marketing is one of the least understood roles in marketing.
Channel marketers walk a fine line between sales and marketing. But that also allows channel marketers to have a unique perspective in the organization by:
- Intimately understanding the distribution channel and knowing the needs and priorities of their customers – and their customers’ customers
- Being able to build a compelling story as to why their new products and programs will help build their customer’s sales and profits
What are channel marketing’s key roles and activities with Sales?
Channel marketing goes by many other names: customer marketing, trade marketing even sales support or admin are other names for the same role. Regardless of what it’s called, the goals for channel marketing are designed to minimize the conflicts with sales.
- Making the flow of information work for sales, not against them
- Removing repetitive information requests
- Building a faster process between questions and answers
- Pushing information outward
As a result, channel managers strives to…
- Understand customer strategies
- Provide marketing direction & support to sales, product, and brand managers
- Find ways to invest more in growth opportunities
- Co-develop better ways of selling through product inventory
Sales can – and should — expect support from Channel Marketing with…
Designing & budgeting promotions- Tracking annual goals to Results
- Joint customer planning
- Building connections with the customer’s teams
- Getting retail & online merchandising support
- Sharing insights within & outside channel with the product marketing team
Who Does What?
| Sales Needs | Channel Mgr | Brand Mgr | Product Mgr |
| Establishing Item Pricing | No | No | Yes |
| Customer Item Distribution | Yes | No | Yes – FYI |
| Unplanned Promotions | Yes | No | Yes – FYI |
| Updates to Products POP, Package, Web | Yes (1st) | Yes | Yes- FYI |
Financial
| Sales Needs | Channel Mgr | What’s Needed | Completed by |
| New Item Cost & P&L Impact | Yes | Customer’s potential unit volume | Finance |
| Freight Cost Quotations | Yes | Item, delivery locations & requirements & unit volume | Finance (& Logistics) |
| Unplanned Promotions & Expenses | Yes | Item, units, dates, offer level | Channel & Finance |
| Trade Show Offers | Yes | Items, offers, dates, any Freight needs | Channel & Finance |
Merchandising
| Sales Needs | Channel Mgr | What’s Needed | Completed by |
| Changes to POP/New POP | Yes | Objective of changes, timing & process steps with customer | Brand |
| Website Marketing Content | Yes | UPC, item, data fields that need to be entered | Brand |
| Catalog & Ad Page Designs | Yes | Items, due dates, offer & output needs | Brand |
| Planogram & End Cap Designs | Yes | Items additions or deletions, output needs | Channel |
Channel Marketing is a critical input to the planning process
All year long, the channel team is watching and documenting the activities in the market. Their insights can assist the entire sales and marketing team with…
- Product launch requirements
- Competitive insights
- Market and channel growth
- Who’s winning and losing in the channel and why
- Promotion insights
- POS insights
- Merchandising
- AOP (annual operating plan) roll ups
These activities are all being accomplished within your organization but by breaking them out for a separate team to focus on, you will improve your insights, communication and, ultimately, your sales.
Channel Instincts - A Marketing Blog By Greg Bonsib 
Reblogged this on INSIGHTOVATION® and commented:
This is timely Greg,
I was just in a discussion about Channel Marketing yesterday. From my product marketing perspective, and at a very high level, I explain product marketing as ‘where we play and how we win with our consumers’ and channel marketing as ‘where we play and how we win with our customers.’ Thanks for putting some meat around the topic.
Channel marketing plays a critical role in the execution of strategy. It requires specific knowledge, skills and expertise. It is too often overlooked, or viewed as a tertiary role, when compared to product marketing, brand marketing, and sales strategy, when actually the role is a peer to the others. Thanks Greg.