Your Full Guide to Through Channel Marketing Automation

Through channel marketing automation (or TCMA) is an incredible way to extend the reach of your brand. By leveraging your relationships with partners, dealers, ISVs, wholesalers, resellers, affiliates, and more, you can amplify your presence in the market and make it effortless to drive more indirect sales.

But what exactly is through channel marketing automation, how does it work, and what changes can we expect in the next few years? Whether you're a seasoned marketing professional or new to channel strategy, this post is packed with actionable insights and examples. Get ready to dive deep into the world of TCMA!

👉 Keep reading to learn more about:

• What is through channel marketing automation?
• What are the benefits of through channel marketing automation?
• What can I do with through channel marketing automation?
• How to find the best through channel marketing automation tools
• The future of through channel marketing automation

What is through channel marketing automation?

Through channel marketing is a strategy that empowers business partners to market your products or services on your behalf. You'll equip them with the tools, marketing collateral, and strategies they need to do so. When you automate key portions of this process, you and your partners are able to drive more leads with less work.

Marketing automation in channel management isn't just about efficiency; it's about creating an easy way for your partners to get involved while also ensuring brand integrity. With automation, you can ensure that your brand messaging stays consistent, your marketing strategies are executed precisely, and your partners have the newest tools at their disposal.

What are the benefits of through channel marketing automation?

By implementing through channel marketing automation strategies and tools, you enable your partners to become more effective marketers, thereby multiplying your brand's reach and impact in the market. TCMA benefits include:

• Enhanced partner productivity: Partners can launch campaigns quickly, ensuring time is spent engaging customers rather than managing marketing collateral.
• Consistent brand messaging: TCMA tools ensure that all marketing materials and messages are consistent across various channels, maintaining brand integrity.
• Increased marketing agility: Meet market changes rapidly, with the ability to update and deploy new content across partner networks instantly.
• Improved lead management: Leads are distributed automatically to the right partners at the right time, speeding up response times and boosting conversion rates.
• Scalability: As your business grows, TCMA grows with you, facilitating easy partner onboarding and management of increased marketing activity.
• Cost efficiency: Automation reduces labor costs and maximizes marketing spend efficiency, leading to a lower cost per lead and higher ROI.

By consolidating diverse marketing operations into a single streamlined platform, TCMA not only simplifies the complexity of channel marketing but also empowers your partners with the autonomy to act swiftly and effectively. These benefits collectively lead to a robust channel marketing strategy that delivers results.

Seeing is believing. Our MasterClass episode: "Successfully Automate Your Partner Marketing Campaigns" showcases through channel marketing automation examples and best practices to drive your success.

What can I do with through channel marketing automation tools?

Through channel marketing automation can revolutionize how you support, manage, and collaborate with your channel partners. Here's a deeper look into what you can achieve with a TCMA tools.

• Digital asset management: Shares a comprehensive digital asset library with partners to streamline the distribution of segmented and updated content, tools, and collateral to partners.
• Content syndication: Distributes your marketing content across partner channels automatically, maintaining brand consistency and message alignment.
• Showcase syndication: Manages a dynamic, lead-generating microsite for your brand that partners can syndicate or use as a campaign landing page.
• Promotion syndication: Builds topic-specific banner ads that are linked to syndicated microsites, enabling brands to amplify new product promotions and drive demand via partner networks.
• Social media automation: Schedules and shares approved content to partners' social channels, increasing reach and engagement.
• Paid ads campaigns: Provides partners with ready-to-launch paid advertising campaigns tailored to their local markets, which you can set up and manage centrally to ensure consistency and reduce overspend.
• Email marketing automation: Enables partners to send pre-designed, brand-compliant email campaigns to their customers, with the ability to personalize and automate distribution based on customer behavior and preferences.
• Claim processing: Manages and tracks the use of market development or co-op funds provided to partners for developing local opportunities and networks.
• Lead scoring and prioritization: Evaluates and ranks leads to prioritize follow-up actions by partners, maximizing chances for conversion.
• Lead distribution: Routes leads from campaigns to appropriate partners based on predefined criteria, optimizing for quicker follow-up and better conversion rates.
• Analytics and reporting: Provides detailed insights into partner performance, marketing campaign success, and overall program effectiveness.
• Training and certifications: Facilitates online learning for partners to improve their product knowledge and sales techniques.
• Integration capabilities: Ensures your TCMA data can seamlessly connect with your PRM, CRM systems, content management systems, and other software tools.

Each of these features is designed to not only ease the marketing burden on your partners but also to ensure that your brand's marketing efforts are more effective, consistent, and measurable across your entire partner network.

⭐️ TCMA example: Stanley Black & Decker drives 163% increase in leads

Stanley Black & Decker (SB&D) was missing their customers right where they were searching for their products most—in local Google searches. With Impartner’s Google Ads for the Channel technology, they now manage localized Google Ads campaigns for their resellers, which has led to a 163% increase in local dealers’ leads and a 49% decrease in cost per lead!

Read the full case study here.

How to find the best through channel marketing automation tools

Selecting the ideal through channel marketing automation (TCMA) tool should start with a clear understanding of your business needs. Consider the scale of your operations, the number of partners in your program, and the diversity of markets you cover, including any language requirements.

Key features like content syndication, lead management, and analytics should top your list, with a keen eye on how these features integrate with your existing systems. Scalability is also crucial; the tool must adapt to your growing business. User-friendliness will ensure that your partners will actually use it.

From there, look at user reviews on G2 and access analyst reports to learn more about top options. During the evaluation phase, arrange for demos with each vendor to test the tool's intuitiveness and functionality. Investigate user feedback to anticipate the tool's real-world application and support. The balance between cost and potential ROI should drive your decision.

Finally, make your top-performing partners part of the selection process, ensuring the tool you choose aligns with their workflows and preferences. Opt for a TCMA provider that not only demonstrates a commitment to innovation and regular updates but also offers a clear roadmap and robust support for the tool's lifespan. The right TCMA tool is one that fits seamlessly into your current operations while being equipped to handle tomorrow's marketing challenges.

✅ Level up: Discover our top five strategies for leveraging the true power of your TCMA tools.

The future of through channel marketing automation

What's the biggest trend in TCMA? The shift to partner marketing automation as a more inclusive concept.

Partner marketing automation and through channel marketing automation are interconnected concepts, yet they differ subtly in scope and focus. While TCMA serves the specific marketing needs of your partners, PMA adopts a more strategic and comprehensive approach to drive collaborative marketing success.

Through channel marketing automation targets activities relevant to channel partners, emphasizing the distribution of marketing resources. In contrast, partner marketing automation is a broader term that encompasses marketing collaboration between you and your partners, aligning your strategies cohesively across all marketing efforts. In general, it emphasizes the importance of nurturing your partnerships beyond mere transactional interactions.

The introduction of AI and predictive analytics in TCMA means we'll be able to begin anticipating market trends, partner performance, and customer needs with unprecedented accuracy. Learn more about this in our MasterClass episode: "Unlocking the Power of AI for Better Partner ROI".

Finally, TCMA tools will be the cornerstone for creating hyper-personalized partner experiences, which in turn improve customer experiences. For instance, automated paid ads tools are already generating local campaigns that resonate deeply with specific audiences, meeting them exactly where they are.

Meet the next-gen TCMA platform

The transformative potential of through channel marketing automation and partner marketing automation cannot be overstated. These tools and strategies are setting a new standard in channel marketing, one that prizes efficiency, smart automation, and most of all, the power of collaboration.

Embrace these trends, and you'll not only stay competitive—you'll lead the pack in the evolving landscape of partner marketing. Your partners are an extension of your brand; it's time to equip them with the tools to meet your customers right where they already are.

Ready to get started with through channel marketing automation? It's time to meet Impartner.

Each day millions of partners in nearly every industry across the globe access Impartner. Why? Because the partner experience matters and leading channel organizations agree.

Impartner is the fastest-growing, most award-winning channel management solution provider on the market. Our partner relationship management (PRM) and through channel marketing automation (TCMA) solutions help companies accelerate revenue and profitability through their indirect sales channels at every partner lifecycle touchpoint.

From content syndication to asset management and hyper-localized ad tools, Impartner handles it all and more with best practices and automation built-in.