Since recruiting and developing channel partnerships can be a difficult and time consuming experience, ensuring that your current channel partners maximize their revenue potential is extremely important.  Traditional marketing tactics such as teleprospecting and email will always be necessary, however, the greatest potential for increased revenue in this digital age is through inbound marketing.  Furthermore, the integration of traditional outbound tactics along with an effective inbound marketing campaign will ensure you are getting the most out of your channel. 

Keywords

When developing a keyword strategy for your channel partners, you will want to identify a small group of long tailed keywords that your partners will want to rank for.  You will want to ensure each partner is working towards ranking for the same phrases to increase the likelihood that potential customers will find at least one of your partners through search engines.

Blog Content

Developing consistent content that can be distributed to all of your channel partners to post on their blogs will help to drive website traffic and increase market share in your given industry.  The distribution of this content throughout the channel not only provides them with quality thought leadership, it also ensures you will have a consistent message throughout your channel.  This consistency will help to develop your brand and outline what sets your product apart from the competition.  It also takes the pressure off your channel to develop this content.  A well developed blog strategy should include 16 blogs per month, this can be a monumental task for smaller companies that do not traditionally produce this type of content.

Premium Content

Along with your blog content, developing and distributing premium content offers throughout your channel will provide them with the necessary firepower to increase sales.  As the solution vendor, your expertise cannot be underestimated.  You will want to develop content that will speak to prospects at each stage of the sales funnel.  This content should be educational and not self promoting.  Providing your channel with the tools to educate and persuade potential customers will have a heavy impact on their ability to sell, and in turn, the bottom line.

Email Workflows

Developing a quality email workflow campaign that can be used by each of your channel partners will help to increase the reach of your product.  Since each partner will have their own target companies based on size and geographical location, providing these templates to them will create brand consistency and ensure consistent messaging.  You’ll want to create emails that link to content offers for customers at each stage of the sales funnel.  Depending on what offers are being clicked on, you will be able to determine who is sales ready, and who needs further lead nurturing.  This creates a sales pipeline that could bring in revenue for years to come.

Landing Pages

You will want to create a standard landing page template that each of your partners can use on their individual websites.  This will allow them to gather information on potential customers through the use of premium content offers and forms.  This will help to develop quality, segmented lists for email workflows and teleprospecting that are based on the type of content they download.  Teleprospecting efforts can be used to immediately qualify and scheduled appointments for prospects who appear to be towards the bottom of the funnel, whereas email workflows can be used to nurture those that are just identifying pain points and potential solutions.

Social Media

Social media has become an increasingly greater piece in the sales process.  Creating profiles specifically geared towards distributing and promoting your content is essential in getting the word out.  You will want to encourage your channel partners to join industry specific groups on LinkedIn and Facebook to increase your reach to a targeted audience.  Creating your own groups that draw in your buyers will help you to develop a target audience for content distribution.  Postings should abide by the 80/20 rule with the majority of your content coming from outside expert sources.

Sharing Information

Monitoring the success and failure of your inbound campaigns is paramount in maximizing profitability.  If a certain piece of content is garnering a large response for one of your partners, you should spread the word throughout your channel.  Additionally, if complaints or bad reviews should arise, you should let your channel know.  With a significant amount of data and geographical areas at your disposal for analytics, you will have a greater ability to hone your inbound marketing campaign.

Inbound Works

In an ever changing marketing universe, utilizing inbound marketing tactics to draw customers to your channel is the best way to develop a quality sales pipeline.  The information gathered through content downloads and email clicks helps to develop an image of your ideal customer persona.  This allows you to create targeted marketing campaigns, as well as develop new products that fit the needs of your customer base.