Channel Marketing

Channel marketing is the directing of promotional efforts at specific links or levels (distributor, wholesaler, retailer) in a channel of distribution. It's the method of getting your product into the hands of the customers'. This can be done through direct sales or resellers. Direct sales can occur in person, over the phone, web, or mail. Indirect, or channel sales, typically refers to the sales through the resellers. A reseller can order from you directly or from a wholesale distributor.

So which channel should you use? Most times, the answer is both, especially with the growth of popularity of the internet. But you want to avoid channel conflict. That occurs when vendors and resellers compete for the same business. To minimize this conflict you can segment the products, setup exclusive or limited territories, sell direct at a higher price than the average street price, setup different promotions for different resellers - rotating so they all have advantages at different times, provide co-op and let the resellers choose to establish their own competitive advantage, setup reseller levels by rewarding higher margins and support for higher authorization, or setup a process to determine if a customer has worked with a reseller prior to taking the business direct.

Now channel sales are the overall account liaisons and are primarily responsible for selling products into distribution and the reseller channel. This kind of marketing is responsible for ensuring that product in distributor and reseller locations gets sold out. So channel sales ensures sell-in and the marketing of that ensures channel sell-through.

A channel marketing manager works with the head of channel sales to do the following: establish a competitive reseller program, help recruit resellers, prepare the proper reseller collateral, create reseller kits, manage reseller database and partner relationship management software, jointly invest the market development funds to increase channel sell-through, which is accomplished through managing store and distributor promotions, ensures proper merchandising, ensures adequate stocking levels, runs reseller education, sets up motivational contest to reward sales, and manages seeding programs.

If you incorporate all of this together you can have a great channel marketing system in place.