Sounds good, right?

Problem is that empowering your channel has always meant hiring more sales people who struggle to control the loose ends. It turns out that implementing channel marketing automation technology is a cost effective approach that will provide a tangible return on investment.
Reality
A recent call with a prospect illustrates the situation. Half of this prospect’s sales come from Group A, a handful of large, national B2C buyers with thousands of local stores. The other half of sales come from Group B, consisting of thousands of local and regional distributors with 1-5 locations. Logically, this marketer focuses the majority of his resources on the handful of big buyers who drive sales quotas.
The irony, while Group A does drive tremendous volume, and total sales, their fixation on price drives profit out of each transaction, resulting in commoditized products. In stark contrast, Group B tends to be very loyal, strong brand advocates, and more profitable (considering the very small amount spent on them currently). So the prospect neglects Group B.
Sadly, this is an all too common problem. Gerald Murray, Research Manager with IDC, recently released a study of channel marketing for large IT companies stating that, on average the IT company participants in his study have 19,000 inactive partners. Beyond IT, the problem pervades other industry sectors.
Solution
How then can the prospect cost effectively drive sales through the more profitable Group B? It turns out that hiring more people is not the solution. The increased human capital costs would outweigh the subsequent sales increase. The opportunity then must lie in the use of technology.
Murray from IDC tends to agree, though his solution is to implement partner relationship management (PRM) tools, though I don’t think that fundamentally tackles the channel marketing problems. Instead, I think a local marketing automation (LMA) platform includes the full suite of tools to solve channel problems. Also based on technology, it focuses on empowering the local channel reseller, a distinct difference from PRM tools that focus on tools for a brand’s channel marketing/sales organizations.
The LMA solution is scalable, cost effective, and ultimately places emphasis on local store marketing execution, a movement that is much more than a trend. To understand this as a solution, one must consider the MARKETING problems a channel faces:
- Marketing Materials - Access and ability to customize proven, professionally designed, and nationally branded creative assets.
- Advertising Funds - Traditionally administered as a co-op marketing solution, national advertising dollars are a lifeline to the small marketing budgets of local channel resellers.
- Strategy - Local channel resellers typically don’t have the training, experience, or attention to develop, implement and execute effective cross-medium local marketing.
- Execution - Local marketing requires knowledge of effective branding across multiple mediums.

In 2008, the
What does it mean to be locally owned and operated? I found myself asking this question when I stepped into
There is no way that you can tell the video is being played in reverse. When the video is played backward, the candies bounce just as they would when played forward. You have no way to know if the video is playing forward or in reverse.
The article,
Working on the local consumer advertising side of the dental implant industry, I understand the barrier of finding financially qualified leads. This procedure is still young, and consumers are simply uneducated on the cost parameters. Once they see the high out-of-pocket cost, they have to ask themselves how much they would pay to smile proudly again, eat apples and steak, speak confidently, and eliminate the stigma of dentures going in the sock drawer at night. What is the price tag on quality of life?
Unfortunately, more often than not, those who manage local advertising make a mistake assuming that their target audience consists of individuals just like them. As a case in point—based on a recent situation I had to correct—most females older than 35 are not listening to sports radio during their morning commute.





Perhaps I've been living in a cave for the last few months to not have already seen this retail marketing campaign on any other media outlets. After just a little bit of investigating, I learned the campaign, developed by
