The New Trend in Channel Marketing

It was a boring lunch break so my friend in the marketing slash web development section of our company decided to strike a conversation about partner portals.

According to what he has observed in the online marketing scene, social media or the so-called web 2.0 apps changing the consumer’s behavior. Since channel tactics have to adapt in the changing scenarios of the time, this also means that marketing channels have to be dynamic and flexible in order to face whatever circumstance. And nothing makes it easier for companies to acquire, use and rethink their strategies than through partner portals.


partner profiles

I thought, maybe he was right, although I didn’t want to admit too quickly and adamantly since I was a small time manager for marketing channels in my previous company.

It’s been almost a golden rule that marketers like me should always integrate these kinds of technologies in their websites to improve their product development, channel partnership, branding, etc.

It then struck me that there really is nothing permanent in this world. Businessmen like my other friends in the company always talk about what’s going to be obsolete, and how hard for traditional sales techniques, local sales territories and named accounts are playing a digressive role in marketing. Everything’s just going to the internet. You buy, sell, and resell with a flick of the house as fast as a click.

Blogs, Facebook and Twitter accounts can be used by channels to provide additional service to their customers. They can reply almost immediately and at no additional cost if the customers have questions about a certain product and then, in turn, the customers will present a positive appraisal of the product and extra service incorporated. One can say that it’s a virtual word-of-mouth marketing.

I think the most important advantage that social media fashioned is the effortlessness and competence of communication. In every partnership or relationship, be it vendor-partner, partner-customer, or vendor-customer relationship, the most essential characteristic is the capability to communicate problems and solutions to make way for a give and take relationship. After all, not just because the sellers have the product means that they also have control over the selling situation.