As you know, resellers play a crucial role in the IT channel by bridging the gap between vendors and end customers, driving vendor revenues to new heights.  Given the weight your resellers carry for your organization, it’s critically important to listen when your partners speak, especially if they’re complaining about the dynamics of your partner program. 

To this end, Channelnomics just released their annual research on the “Top 10 Grievances Partners Have With Vendors” based on their analysis of thousands of partner comments.  Number 4 on the list – insufficient marketing resources.

Alright vendors, it’s time to step it up because this complaint has been in the top 10 for pretty much the entire history of the channel.  Are you listening to your partners?

This should go without saying, but if you’re not providing your resellers with effective marketing tools and resources, they will struggle to effectively communicate the value of your solutions, ultimately impacting sales and customer engagement. To foster stronger relationships and drive mutual success, vendors must empower their reseller partners with robust marketing support.  If you won’t, your competitors will, enabling them to take market share from you.

With this hot topic in mind, here are the top 4 ways vendors should be providing essential marketing assistance to their resellers.

1.  Provide Content That Supports Pre- and Post-Purchase Needs

One of the most impactful ways to support resellers is by providing high-quality marketing content that supports both pre- and post-purchase needs. This content should align with key areas such as brand marketing, thought leadership, product marketing, feature adoption, and renewal. By covering the entire customer lifecycle, vendors enable resellers to educate potential buyers at every stage of their journey—from initial awareness to long-term product engagement—while ensuring brand consistency and credibility.  Not only does this help your partners market, it also helps their sales teams better understand and position your products with end buyers.  Essential content types include:

• Product descriptions, specifications, and use cases
• Thought leadership articles that highlight industry trends
• Case studies and customer success stories
• Whitepapers and solution briefs
• Engaging video content and product demos

By offering this comprehensive content strategy, vendors help resellers drive customer acquisition, engagement, and retention, ultimately strengthening the overall sales pipeline.

2.  Offer Co-Branded Marketing Assets & Joint Venture Campaigns

Resellers benefit greatly from having access to professionally designed, co-branded marketing materials. Vendors should create customizable templates for brochures, email campaigns, social media posts, landing pages and voice of the customer programs that resellers can personalize with their own branding. Co-branded content enhances trust among end buyers, reinforcing the partnership between vendors and resellers while driving higher engagement. 

With assets created, it’s time to think about deployment.  To generate leads and drive sales, vendors should launch joint venture marketing programs with their resellers.  These programs should include:

• Co-hosted webinars and virtual events
• Targeted digital advertising campaigns
• Social media promotions
• In-person trade shows and networking events
• Content syndication and distribution programs

By actively engaging in joint marketing efforts, vendors can amplify brand awareness, increase customer reach, and strengthen reseller relationships.  Looking for a new approach to creating joint venture programs, check out Demandi.co.

3.  Move Beyond MDF with Purpose-Driven Marketing Tools

While Market Development Funds (MDF) have been a traditional approach to supporting reseller marketing, it’s time to get with the times and think beyond MDF.  MDF programs have very low activation rates because they are often complicated, and resellers simply don’t have the time to initiate marketing programs on their own. Giving your partners marketing funds to work with translates to putting more work on your partners’ plates.  Instead, provide resellers with specific tools that align with specific purposes and outcomes.  Support your partners with automated tools and done-for-them marketing programs that reduce their marketing workflows and seamlessly integrate into their sales processes. By offering intuitive, ready-to-deploy marketing solutions, vendors can drive better adoption and maximize reseller success.

4.  Automate Marketing Support to Improve Activation Rates

Partner portals are an antiquated way to distribute marketing assets to resellers as they require manual activation and deployment processes for both vendors and resellers. It’s time to provide resellers with automated marketing solutions that get the task accomplished while also reducing associated workflows. Resellers need marketing support that is automated and that’s done for them. Automation tools should be the priority to improve activation rates, ensuring that marketing content is seamlessly deployed without adding additional burdens on reseller teams. By embracing automation and removing manual complexities, vendors can ensure that resellers are fully equipped to drive sales and customer engagement effectively.

Conclusion

Providing strong marketing support to resellers is essential for vendors looking to maximize their channel success. By delivering high-quality content, enabling co-branded materials, engaging in joint marketing programs, and shifting from outdated partner portals, MDF programs and manual processes to automated marketing solutions, vendors can empower resellers to effectively market their solutions and drive revenue growth. Investing in reseller marketing support not only strengthens vendor-reseller relationships but also ensures a competitive edge in the IT channel marketplace.

Where ChannelBridge Fits In

ChannelBridge fully automates content distribution to your partners’ websites, for both you and your partners.  You as a vendor simply need to continue publishing content, as you already do.  ChannelBridge automatically indexes and distributes your content to your partners’ websites.  ChannelBridge guarantees through-partner content delivery helping you as a vendor maintain accurate, relevant representation in front of end buyers while helping you and your partners drive customer acquisition, feature adoption, renewal and ultimately brand and partner loyalty.  When it comes to fully automating content distribution, ChannelBridge is the market leader.

ChannelBridge answers your partners’ calls for better marketing support.  Are you listening?

As a marketing and revenue leader in the IT Channel, you’ve likely invested significant time and resources into creating high-value content that aligns with product marketing, customer acquisition, retention, and increasing customer lifetime value (LTV). That’s great!

However, if you don’t have a way to scale distribution of this content to end buyers and your partners aren’t using this content, what’s the point?

The reality is that you need to be reaching potential end buyers at scale with your content to maximize ROI.  The good news – you already have a powerful content distribution network at your fingertips – your partners’ websites – and your partners are hungry for marketing support, especially when it’s done for them. 

Yes, leveraging your partners’ websites as a content distribution network will require investment.  As such, you should anticipate that leadership will ask you, “How will this contribute to revenue?” 

It’s a great question and one that can be hard to answer.  So let’s jump in!

1. Maximizing Through-Partner Visibility

From analyzing thousands of reseller websites (MSPs, MSSPs, ISVs, VARs, etc.), we’ve discovered that 60% of these websites don’t accurately represent the vendors respective partners work with. The most common issue? Severely outdated content about vendor products.  It’s not uncommon for us to find that the most recent post about a given vendor’s products dates back as far as 2019.  Second to outdated content is the lack of any vendor mentions at all, not even a logo in the logo showcase (though these same sites often reference competitors).

 This misrepresentation harms you, your partners and even end buyers. When outdated information makes your products appear irrelevant, end buyers see your solutions as out of touch with their needs. This leads to lost deals for both you and your resellers.

 By consistently distributing your content through your partners’ websites, you ensure potential buyers have the most accurate, up-to-date information about your offerings. This enhances your sales potential and empowers your partners with the content they need to become active participants in driving sales.

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2. Fueling Partner Conversations

If a reseller’s last content update about your products was in 2019, chances are they’re not actively promoting you on social media, through email campaigns, or even in direct conversations with buyers. Without fresh content, your products are absent from their marketing and sales activities.

Reality Check – You lose 100% of the conversations you’re not part of.  So what’s the status quo costing you in terms of lost revenue opportunities every year?

Simply providing updated, sales-enabling content unlocks your partners’ ability to promote your products across their channels. This visibility translates into more conversations and opportunities to win deals.

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3. Improving the 80/20 Rule

The Pareto Principle is alive and well in channel sales: a small percentage of active partners drive the majority of revenue.

According to data from Salesforce and Canalys, partner-led sales now drive the majority of revenue for technology organizations.  Point in fact, Palo Alto Networks just announced that 95% of their gross revenue comes through their channels.  Partner-led and marketplace based sales are critically important to your organizations revenue growth.

Despite the gravity of your channel, chances are only 20% of your partners are active.  What if you could achieve just a 5% increase in partner activation? By simplifying content distribution and enabling partners to market your products more consistently and effectively, you’ll activate more partners and boost partner-led revenue.

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4. Upselling, Cross-Selling, Feature Adoption & Renewal

Once your partners’ marketing efforts are humming and they’re acquiring new buyers, it’s time to focus on retention and expansion. Through consistent content distribution, you can: 

– Educate partners and their customers about additional features and products.

– Drive upselling and cross-selling opportunities.

– Ensure customers fully utilize your offerings, increasing their value and likelihood of renewal.

 Active, informed users are more likely to renew and grow with your solutions, directly impacting customer LTV.

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5. Content-Driven SEO & Organic Traffic Growth

Organic search is one of the most valuable marketing channels for acquiring high-intent buyers that convert.  Ranking on the first page of relevant search results brings in qualified, intent-based traffic—which is far more likely to convert to revenue.

When you scale content distribution through your reseller network, you can expect the following impacts on SEO;

• Exponentially grow high quality backlink volume
• Increase acquisition of high-intent referral traffic
• Increase content indexation
• Strengthen topical authority
• Enhance brand trust and credibility
• Increase competitive advantage
• Higher SERP results compared to competitors across more queries

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6. Leveraging GenAI Summary Answers

Search engines increasingly use GenAI to provide summary answers to user queries. GenAI builds these answers based on indexed content. The more relevant, high-quality content you distribute, the greater the likelihood that your information will be included in these summaries.

 With buyers trusting and acting on these recommendations, your brand’s inclusion in GenAI-generated answers can drive significant high-intent traffic and revenue.

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7. Establishing Thought Leadership & Brand Authority

Put yourself in the buyer’s shoes: Would you trust a cybersecurity vendor discussing outdated threats, or one addressing today’s and tomorrow’s challenges?  Multiply this out by 60% of your channel and you’ve got a real problem on your hands.

By consistently distributing relevant, current content through your partners’ websites, you position your brand as a thought leader that brings contemporary, forward-looking solutions to market. This builds trust with partners and end buyers, making your products their first choice.

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8. Enabling Partner Sales Teams

To sell your solutions effectively, resellers need the right tools and knowledge. If the information they’re working with is from 2019, they’re not selling your products—they’re selling your competitors’.

Consistent content distribution ensures that partners’ sales teams have up-to-date information to confidently position your products to buyers.

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Summary

Investing in scaling content distribution through your partners’ websites positively impacts revenue by:

– Ensuring reselling partners and end buyers have access to accurate, relevant product information.

– Enabling partners to market your products and include you in more sales conversations.

– Increasing partner activation rates and resulting revenue.

– Driving upselling, cross-selling, and feature adoption, increasing customer LTV.

– Boosting organic search performance and acquiring high-intent traffic.

– Enhancing visibility in GenAI summary answers, seeding your solutions earlier in the buyer journey.

– Establishing thought leadership and trust in your brand.

– Equipping partner sales teams with the tools they need to succeed.

Take Action with ChannelBridge!

ChannelBridge was built with one purpose in mind – fully automate through-partner content distribution for both vendors and resellers.

With ChannelBridge:

– Your content is automatically indexed and distributed to partner websites following Google’s SEO best practices.

– The process is infinitely scalable and cost-effective, with an average monthly cost of just $35 per reseller.

– ChannelBridge is zero code for vendors and easy for resellers to integrate, taking only minutes to set up.

– Once in place, ChannelBridge is 100% automated for both vendors and partners.

Ready to scale your content distribution and drive revenue growth? Reach out today to get started with ChannelBridge!

In today’s digital landscape, where buyers increasingly take control of their own purchasing journey, the collaboration between your partner marketing and SEO teams has never been more critical. As an IT vendor, if you’re not optimizing for both self-led discovery and seamless content distribution across your partner network, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to drive visibility, authority, and sales.

 Let’s break down why it’s time for these two teams to unite—and how doing so can fuel your growth.

The New Reality: Self-Led Buyer Journeys

Gone are the days when tech buyers would reach out to sales teams at the start of their purchasing process. Now, more than ever, buyers are conducting their own research and educating themselves before they ever get in touch with a vendor or a partner. By the time they’re ready to engage with a sales representative, they’re already well along in their decision-making journey.  This shift places a heavy emphasis on creating content that supports self-led discovery. Buyers need to be able to find your information easily, so you must ensure that your content is both highly relevant and easy to access—no matter where they are in their search.   One of the top channels for this self-led discovery is organic search. According to studies, most buyers turn to search engines to find answers to their questions and evaluate options before contacting a sales team. This makes SEO (Search Engine Optimization) a non-negotiable aspect of your marketing strategy. Being on page one of search results is no longer optional—it’s essential.

Where Partner Marketing and SEO Meet

 

This is where the intersection between partner marketing and SEO comes into play.   For IT vendors, distributing your content through your partners’ websites offers a range of benefits, both for your partners and for your SEO efforts:

• Enable Your Partners with Valuable Content:  

When executed correctly, distributing marketing content through your partner websites enables partners with the resources they need to engage their audience. By providing your partners with relevant, high-quality content, you ensure they can showcase your solutions effectively—without needing to create their own materials from scratch. This also strengthens the partnership, creating a collaborative dynamic that benefits both parties.

• Increase Content Visibility Across Multiple Channels:  

When your content is distributed across multiple partner websites, you’re essentially multiplying the places where buyers can discover your brand and offerings. As buyers increasingly turn to search engines for their research, having your content appear in different contexts—such as your partners’ websites— boosts its visibility and relevance. More visibility means more opportunities for buyers to find your brand during their search process.

• Establish Brand Authority as a Topic Leader:  

By ensuring your content is visible across a broad network of partner sites, you can position your brand as an authoritative voice in your niche. This consistent, topical presence helps to build trust with potential buyers, increasing the likelihood that they’ll consider your solution when they’re ready to make a purchase.

• Build a Backlink Network that Boosts Your SEO:  

One of the most powerful aspects of distributing content through partner websites is the opportunity to create a strong backlink network. Backlinks—links from external websites to your own—are a key ranking factor in SEO. The more high-quality, relevant backlinks you can generate from authoritative sites (like your partners’), the better your chances of ranking on page 1 for relevant queries.

 Not only does this improve your organic search rankings, but it also drives more traffic to your website, helping you capture more leads and accelerate the buyer journey.

The Challenge: Manual Content Distribution

 Historically, there’s been a barrier to implementing this strategy effectively: content distribution has often been a manual process. IT vendors and partners both had to invest significant time and resources to upload, update, and share content across various portals and websites. This creates friction, slows down the process, and ultimately limits the effectiveness of the strategy.

 But this doesn’t have to be the case anymore.

The Solution: AI-Powered Automation

Today, there are advanced technologies available that can automate the entire content distribution process—reducing the burden on both you and your partners. With the right tools, you can streamline how you deliver content, ensuring it’s distributed consistently and efficiently across all partner sites, while also tracking engagement and optimizing for SEO in real-time.

 This is where ChannelBridge.AI comes in. We’ve built a platform specifically designed to automate through-partner content distribution—removing the manual processes that have traditionally plagued partner marketing and SEO teams. Our solution makes it easier than ever for IT vendors to distribute content, build a strong backlink network, and optimize for search engine visibility—all while saving time, reducing costs and truly enabling partners.

Why Now Is the Time for Alignment

With the increasing importance of organic search for self-led discovery and the growing need for seamless content distribution through partner networks, it’s clear that SEO and partner marketing should no longer operate in silos. When these two teams align, they can amplify each other’s efforts, creating a far more powerful marketing engine.

So, what should you do next?

• Work with your SEO team to identify the most relevant search queries for your target audience.
• Create high-quality, evergreen content that addresses buyer pain points and questions.
• Leverage your partner network to distribute that content at scale.
• Automate the distribution process to ensure maximum reach, efficiency, and SEO impact.

The time to act is now. If you’re ready to harness the power of AI-driven automation to scale your through-partner content distribution and enhance your SEO efforts, check out ChannelBridge.AI today. We’ve built the solution to make this strategy as seamless as possible—and at a price point that makes it an absolute no-brainer for IT vendors.

The digital landscape is undergoing a significant transformation. With the impending obsolescence of cookies, we’re witnessing massive change in how marketers target audiences—especially in the realm of B2B tech purchasing. As cookies and traditional audience targeting mechanisms become less reliable, many of the tried-and-true tools that channel marketers have relied upon, such as intent data and third-party data, are quickly losing their relevance.

However, rather than lament the loss of these tools, it’s an opportunity to rethink how we engage with tech buyers and adapt to this changing environment.

The Challenges of Traditional Targeting Tools

Let’s be clear: the tools that are being phased out—like intent data and third-party data—were never a perfect solution to begin with. Their effectiveness has always been a point of contention, particularly when it comes to their reliability, accuracy and recency with the crux of related issues being tied to flawed ID systems.

As these traditional data methods lose their potency, tech vendors must pivot to strategies that are more aligned with how today’s buyers research, evaluate, and purchase technology solutions.  In short, tech vendors must meet tech buyers where they are in order to influence their purchase decisions.

The Shift: Partner Websites as a New Strategic Asset

So, where does this leave technology vendors who are looking to maintain or increase their reach in an increasingly fragmented market?  The answer is simpler than many realize: your partners’ websites.

These digital assets are arguably the most underutilized resource in the channel marketing toolkit today. If you’re an IT vendor, your partners’ websites likely represent the most untapped opportunity for driving influence in the tech buying process. Here’s why:

• Unmatched Audience Reach

On average, a partner website sees approximately 1,185 unique visitors per month—90% of whom are tech buyers. That means your partners’ websites are not just random digital properties; they are prime real estate where tech purchasers already go to research, evaluate, and decide on solutions. When you invest in making your brand and product content highly visible on these partner sites, you gain access to this audience without the need for invasive data targeting or expensive paid media campaigns. You are essentially reaching the exact people you want to target—without the need for cookies or external data.

• Influence Over the Purchase Decision

Another critical point to consider: partners have significant influence over the tech purchasing decision. In today’s ecosystem, the average partner works with 20 vendors, some of whom are your direct competitors. Moreover, tech purchasers typically engage with an average of 7 partners throughout their buying journey. This extensive web of influence underscores the importance of ensuring that your content is consistently visible across your entire partner network.

By embedding your messaging directly within the partner ecosystem, you ensure that your solution is part of the broader consideration set. This can have a profound impact on your ability to drive through-partner influence. Additionally, such a strategy doubles as an excellent partner enablement initiative, fostering stronger relationships with your partners while simultaneously empowering them to advocate for your solutions.

For a deeper understanding of the impact of through-partner marketing, I encourage you to read this insightful analysis from Canalys: Link to Canalys Analysis.

• Reduction of Purchase Friction

By marketing through your partners’ websites, you are meeting tech buyers where they already are—on a platform they trust and engage with regularly. Not only does this reduce friction in the purchasing process, but it also accelerates the buying cycle. Tech purchasers can learn about your offerings, compare solutions, and make purchasing decisions—all within the same ecosystem. This seamless experience significantly lowers barriers to conversion and leads to faster, more efficient sales cycles.

The Problem of Manual Processes—and the Solution

Historically, one of the key challenges of executing through-partner marketing at scale has been the manual nature of the processes involved. Both vendors and partners have had to navigate complex portals, upload content manually, and constantly manage content updates across various channels. This often results in broken processes, inefficiencies, and missed opportunities.

However, the landscape has changed dramatically in recent years, thanks to the rise of AI-powered automation. With the right technology in place, it’s now possible to fully automate the process of distributing and optimizing content across your partner network. By leveraging AI, you can streamline your through-partner marketing efforts, significantly reduce operational costs, and ensure consistent, high-quality content delivery—without the heavy lifting.

This is exactly the problem ChannelBridge.AI was built to solve. With ChannelBridge.AI, you can automate the entire through-partner content delivery process, empowering your partners to keep your brand and products top of mind with minimal effort on their part, and zero extra burden on your marketing team. It’s a win-win scenario that maximizes impact with minimal effort.

Conclusion: Embrace the Partner-Driven Future

As we move away from cookie-based targeting and embrace a more partner-driven approach to reaching and influencing tech purchasers, it’s crucial for IT vendors to rethink their strategies. Partner websites represent an enormous, untapped opportunity—one that, if leveraged correctly, can dramatically improve your go-to-market effectiveness, increase sales velocity, and foster stronger, more productive partner relationships.

With the right strategy and tools in place, your partners’ websites could become the most powerful asset in your marketing arsenal, providing you with direct access to tech buyers while sidestepping the challenges of traditional targeting methods. The future of tech marketing is here, and it’s time to adapt.

Ready to get started? Reach out to learn how ChannelBridge.AI can help you take advantage of this opportunity today.

If you’re involved with channel sales and marketing, I think you’ll agree that we are firmly in the partner-led economy.  In fact, data provided in the latest State of Sales Report published by Salesforce demonstrates that 89% of IT vendors now consider their channel as their primary revenue stream, driving 70% or more of total revenue.  Case in point, Palo Alto recently that 95% of their total revenue is generated through their channel.  At risk of stating the obvious, your channel can literally make or break your business.

Given the gravity of channel-led revenue, it’s important to make sure you have a few basics covered to help ensure that you’re set up to maximize your channel success.  In doing so, you’ll also give your partners their best opportunity for success while providing them with the tools they’re asking for.  So let’s jump in!

1.  Set Your Base:  The single most impactful thing you can do to maximize your channel is to make sure your partners are actually aligned with your products and program before you sign them up.  We all know the 80/20 rule.  Regardless of your specific ratio, if your partners are not deeply aligned, you’ll end up expending resources on partners that may never actually produce.  Our advice – invest in data-driven approaches to profiling and identifying partners that best fit your products and program.  If you have an existing  partner program, start by using a tool like PartnerOptimizer to build profiles of your most productive partners.  Then use this profile to find look-alikes and focus recruitment efforts on these prospects.  If you are just getting started with your program, PartnerOptimizer can  help you identify partners that best fit your criteria based on factors like certifications, complementary offerings, competing offerings and customer targets.  In either scenario, if your partners’ DNA is a match for your program, you’ll reap the rewards.
2. Help Your Partners Talk About You:  One of the top asks partners make of their vendors is for better marketing support.  The reality is that most resellers are small to mid-sized teams who are great technologists, not necessarily marketers, and who are busy servicing their clients.  If you want to be a part of their conversations with end buyers, you have to make it easy for your partners to talk about you.  Recent analysis from Canalys suggests that there are now 28 critical pre-sale marketing moments in the tech purchase cycle and that most to all of these 28 moments are happening through-partner.  With this in mind, you must look for ways to consistently deliver your message through your partners in a way that is effortless for them to execute.  The easier you make it for your partners, the more conversations you’ll be in.  The more your partners talk about you, the more deals they’ll register.
3. Build A Unified Market Presence To Scale Influence:  The analysis from Canalys referenced above also states that end buyers now trust seven partners, on average, through their purchase cycle.  For vendors, this exponentially increases the landscape you’ll need to cover in order to influence tech buyers.  Through studying thousands of reseller websites, we’ve found that 48% of partner websites have no mention of the vendors within a given partner’s vendor portfolio.  When content about vendors is present, 80% of the time that content is more than 6 months old.  Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon to see content about vendor products that is up to three years old.  Needless to say, technology content does NOT age like a fine wine.  Old content simply makes both you and your partner look out of touch with end buyer needs, costing both of you deals.  Multiply this problem out across the scale of your partner network and you’ll quickly see that you’ve got a narrative problem across your entire market.  It is critical that you look for ways to consistently deliver your messaging across your partner network so that you maintain control of your narrative and so that end buyers see your products as a relevant offering.  Not to mention, you’ll help your partners look like their at the tops of their games which is good for everyone.

In conclusion, if you start by recruiting only the right partners for your business, then help those partners effortlessly keep you top of mind while scaling your influence in the market, you’ll maximize your channel-led revenue.

Now is probably a great time to mention that we’ve built ChannelBridge to help you and your partners fully automate numbers 2 and 3!