Multichannel Marketing and Integrated Marketing Confused about the difference between multichannel marketing and integrated marketing? You're not the only one: http://www.mycustomer.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=133499

Posted on: 10 February 2008 | 10:23 pm

Channel Trends: The Value of Channels In general, channels are still valued. They are growing in both the number of partners and the amount of revenue generated from partners. However, they are NOT the only route to market. Direct sales efforts to enterprise and strategic customers also are critical elements of a complete go-to-market strategy. For many technology companies, their channels

Posted on: 3 August 2005 | 11:43 am

Channel Marketing: Differentiation During a discussion with a client in Mexico City today, it once again became clear that there is no differentiation between vendors in the Channel unless they focus on solving partner business issues. We were discussing how to increase revenue through Ingram Micro in Mexico. The account rep proposed targeting a competitor's resellers. Why would Ingram care

Posted on: 27 April 2005 | 7:43 pm

Channel Strategy: Understanding the Costs of Channel Development Launching a new channel is never cheap. Before advising partners to build channels or launching your own channel program, understand the costs of developing and operating that channel A couple weeks ago, a channel account rep and I were analyzing the financials of his channel partner. The income statement showed a decline in

Posted on: 18 April 2005 | 10:37 pm

Channel Trend: Packaged Services Create Opportunities Several vendors are making real opportunities for mid-market VARs. SAS is doing it right, taking key VARs from Microsoft with the most direct of value propositions: BPoC (Big Piles of Cash). IGS's expansion into the mid-market is similar to Cisco's channel recruitment push of the mid-nineties. By targeting VARs with customers in the 100 to

Posted on: 18 March 2005 | 7:08 am

Channel Marketing: The Role of Branding in Distribution I recently read the book “Brand Royalty” by Matt Haig. Some publicist sent it to me, having found my name among a list of bloggers. I hated it. I dislike most business books, especially marketing books. “Brand Royalty” is no exception. It lacked insight and applicability. The case studies were shallow. The 'secrets' were a mix of

Posted on: 17 March 2005 | 11:29 am

Channel Impact: Reach Extends Beyond Expectations I had a great phone call with a channel provider today. Last weekend I had a voice mail on my home phone that said "If this is the Scott Karren who used to run MSI Consulting Group, please call me." Today I connected with him. Here is his story. In the late nineties, he read a white paper we wrote called The Emergence of the Solution Provider.

Posted on: 16 March 2005 | 8:49 am

Channel Management: Partner Assessment I just finished Alan Deutschman's 'Second Coming of Steve Jobs. Interesting read for people in our industry. Near the end of the book, Deutschman quote Susan Barns research about characteristics that help entrepreneurial companies survive. The are just a relevant for channel partners as for Apple. 1. Pure Staying Power 2. Persistence 3. Continuing Belief

Posted on: 24 February 2005 | 3:45 am

Channel Marcom: Hitachi Gets Message Right for VARs Hitachi's ads for storage partners show a wallet stuffed with cash. “Soon you will need more storage.”. It then touts its program as a profitable relationship. Well done to the team at Hitachi. The Channel Pro Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Posted on: 22 February 2005 | 5:04 pm

Channel Trend: Biometrics Opening Opportunity for Value-added Revenue CRN quotes the VAR AC Technology about biometrics: “Customers are buying this like crazy.” Smart channel partners recognize the trend and offer products early to differentiate. Brilliant partners will change their business model to accelerate the trend. Like LANs, WANs and the internet, biometrics is another big trend.

Posted on: 21 February 2005 | 10:13 pm

Channel Strategy: Channel Performance All the talk in CRN about whether the next HP CEO is 'channel friendly' misses the mark. Most important for HP partners is channel performance. Instead of 'channel friendly' how about channel savvy or channel capable. The Channel Pro Sent wirelessly via BlackBerry from T-Mobile.

Posted on: 21 February 2005 | 12:33 am

Channel Strategy: Demonstrating a Committment to Value According to CRN, 3Com is migrating back to value and eliminating volume-based Gold and Silver categories. That's good, if they really mean it. Our advice to 3Com is to get its channel objectives straight and back them up with action. MDF and rebates make the program overhead rise, and they often do not deliver the market impact desired.

Posted on: 21 February 2005 | 12:13 am

Channel Strategy: Create a Competitive Advantage Work with clients this year seems to be about refreshing and launching programs. When I ran The Launch Group, clients always asked “What can we do to launch like the big boys?” It's a mistake to try to mirror a competitor's programs or to focus on a launch event. Instead, work to find a process for channel management that uses scarce channel

Posted on: 18 February 2005 | 4:04 pm

Announcement: Site Update The Channel Ventures site has gone through a major redesign, with an increased emphasis on common issues channel professioals are facing, along with solutions. Check it out here.

Posted on: 11 February 2005 | 11:42 pm

Channel Programs: Forget Copying Microsoft What to include in a channel program is often a problem both for companies new to the channel and for channel veterans. Copying another program is usually not productive, especially if the vendor you are copying is the market leader with sales many times higher than yours. They have scale, process and momentum on their side. Dare to do something

Posted on: 31 January 2005 | 9:27 am

Channel Marcom: Product Centric Ads Still Common OK. I know I just said ads were at least giving token mention of customers in partner advertising. I was wrong. Samsung is marketing its printers on product features alone. See page 23 of the 12/6/04 CRN. Not even a nod to the channel partner, let alone his or her business. Not a mention of channels at all. Perhaps they saved money

Posted on: 15 December 2004 | 12:04 pm

Channel Tactic: Channel Value Propositions Good channel value propositions need to be about the channel partner's business, not the product. The product is proof of the proposition, not the value. Why? Because the channel partner is not using the product. Its features are of no value to the channel unless they help address a business issue such as sales, gross margin, operating costs, asset

Posted on: 15 December 2004 | 11:34 am

Channel Trend: Consolidation Reshaping Channel Consolidation is the biggest trend in the channel in 2005. With no killer apps on the market, even a recovering economy will not slow the consolidation of channel partners. Even in emerging markets, declining margins on core products will be the primary issues between vendors and partners. Although it happens every day in the channel, it is not

Posted on: 14 December 2004 | 11:22 am

Channel Issues: Competing with Dell in the Channel My VP, Bryan Johanson, wrote an article recently about how the channel can compete with big companies like Dell. Simply put, the keys to success as a small company is customer knowledge and customer service. No magic bullet. No secret weapon. Just customer intimacy that delivers big time and is almost impossible for the big boys to copy.

Posted on: 5 November 2004 | 5:33 pm

Channel Strategy: Facing The Facts As I watched the election results last night, three things stood out. First, despite thousands of polls, neither side really knew how it would turn out. Second, once it was clear how it would turn out last night, the Kerry camp was unwilling to face reality of over 130,000 votes in Ohio. Finally, today they spin about what happened with little connection to

Posted on: 3 November 2004 | 11:50 am

Channel Strategy: Segway Does 180 Degree Turn and Signs up Dealer Channel After three years, Segway has changed its channel strategy and licensed 60 dealers. Why? Because you cannot sell a product that has to be experienced over the internet. Regardless of how cool it is. I have nothing against Amazon (except slow servers), but it was not sufficient as a channel for Segway. Channels are

Posted on: 27 October 2004 | 4:16 pm

Channel Marketing: In Home Parties Crash Retail Forbes had a great article on a channel often ignored by the technology industry--The In-Home Sales Channel, The Party That Crashed Retail. (I only linked to Forbes.com. You have to be a member to see articles. Membership s free, then you can search by article name.) The article is about Pure Romance, a company that sells sex toys to women.

Posted on: 21 October 2004 | 10:48 am

Channel Programs: Dell Sets Performance Benchmark for Product Positioning A lot of people wondered why we included Dell in our POWER Channel Awards for channel programs. "Doesn't Dell sell direct?" We included them for two reasons. First, a lot of channel providers work with Dell to fulfill product to their customers. That is channels. Second and more important, Dell sells to the same

Posted on: 12 October 2004 | 11:15 am

Channel Programs: Winners of the 2004 POWER Channel Awards Not all channel programs are the same. What we found in our interaction with resellers and vendors was that some companies are doing a much better job than others at creating productive channels. These companies are case studies in channel management and deserve close attention by the rest of the channel. The POWER Channel Awards

Posted on: 11 October 2004 | 1:20 pm

Channel Communication: Are you Taking Advantage of the Latest Technology? The perspective of Microsoft's Channel 9 Guy is that he's bigger than Seattle. Here he is sitting on top of Quay Cat's GPS antenna in Elliot Bay with the Space Needle in the background. Robert Scoble was kind enough to bring Channel 9 Guy along on yesterday's Geek Boat Trip. Channel9 guy keeps up with the latest

Posted on: 11 October 2004 | 12:26 pm