I hosted a great panel discussion Thursday, the 14th with three talented marketers representing an interesting variety of channel marketing experience. If you missed the live webinar, you are in luck. You can still watch the on-demand presentation, Practical Practices for Increasing Channel Revenue Through marketing.

Here is a synposis of what was covered.

George Mulhern discussed HP's dominance over Dell in the printer business, attributing much of that success to HP's incredible ability to market and sell through its robust network of international channel partners.

George also drove home the point that for brands to successfully sell through the channel, they must control each "moment of truth," or touch point a partner has with a customer on the brand's behalf. In his material, he also discussed the five channel strengths and three proven practices to increase the effectiveness of channel partners.


Shane Vaughan discussed ten challenges common to most brand channel marketers as well as five fixes (four easy and one not-so-easy) that brands can employ to empower their channels to be more effective. His tactical suggestions included:

1. Providing strategic local marketing planning for your local resellers.
2. Employing microsites, a co-branded web-presence for each reseller.
3. Making available a robust ad-builder in addition to effective local demand-generation creative.
4. Enabling channel partners to execute and track their local marketing.
5. Using a co-op administration tool to increase usage and effectiveness of co-op advertising.

Steve Rogal extracted lessons learned and models used from more than 20 years of channel marketing experience.

Included in his material, Steve shared his "Critical Success Factors," a partner model that he developed to evaluate and improve a partners' marketing and selling. Such analysis will allow brands to refocus their resources on the right partners.

Steve rounded out his comments by discussing six specific criteria for identifying a "good" dealer.

We are gearing up to host another marketing webinar the first part of December. Stay tuned.