Channel Marketing

The mandate for channel marketing leaders has grown more complex in today’s buyer-first climate. Alignment with and among suppliers and partners is key to providing the high-touch experience customers expect. Explore our insights to help build a sound channel marketing strategy that enhances partner and customer experience and demonstrates business value.

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Transformation Ahead For Channel Marketers: Insights From Our B2B Marketing Predictions Webinar

Kathy Contreras 5 days ago
Channel organizations are at a pivotal moment. As partner networks have grown more complex, a more holistic, ecosystem-oriented approach is needed.
Blog

CMOs Drive Growth With Media Inclusivity

Kelsey Chickering December 13, 2022
After the 2020 murder of George Floyd, brands and agencies swiftly made bold commitments to invest in Black-owned media companies. The goal? To better reflect the diversity of brands’ audiences and create a more equitable media ecosystem. While well intentioned, it too narrowly focused media dollars solely on minority-owned media groups and away from other […]

B2B Summit North America

Discover research-based insights, tools, and frameworks to power your success in a tumultuous 2023. Join us for the year's premier event for B2B marketing, sales, and product teams.

Podcast

How A Sharper Customer Focus Will Fuel B2B Growth In 2023

What It Means December 8, 2022
As inflation woes, market turbulence, and supply chain disruptions cloud the 2023 landscape, B2B organizations will look to their existing customers to forge a more predictable path to growth. On this week’s What It Means, VP, Principal Analyst Ross Graber discusses this and other 2023 predictions for B2B marketing and sales leaders.
Blog

Grounding Twitter Ad Dollars Is Common Sense, Not Activism

Kelsey Chickering November 4, 2022
Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover has been — at best — chaotic and tumultuous. Advertisers are uncertain about what direction the company will take: What will happen with content moderation? Will Twitter become a mainstream Gab with a steady flow of disinformation? While Musk has tweeted that “nothing has changed with content moderation,” racist tweets have surged […]
Blog

Forrester’s 2022 Moments Map Is Here!

Julie Ask October 4, 2022
Forrester’s Moments Map helps brands understand consumer awareness, adoption, use, comfort, and ultimately preference for various devices and channels.
Blog

Your Buyers Are Evolving, And You Should Follow

Paul Ferron May 31, 2022
Marketers need to understand how their buyers are changing and enable their buyer-facing roles with key insights to gain competitive advantage and drive growth.
Blog

Unlocking The True Business Opportunity For Modern Partners

David Park February 23, 2022
The business opportunity for channel partners is larger than most vendors realize. Transform a linear transaction into exponential growth.

Tackle 2023 With Bold Action & Clear Focus

Get our Predictions 2023 Guide to see the 12 big-impact dynamics that leaders will have to navigate in the coming year.

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In 2022, Channel Marketers Must Prioritize Customer And Partner Value

Kathy Contreras October 4, 2021
A focus on enhancing partner experience and generating customer value are key to channel marketing success in the year ahead.
Blog

Top 59 Global IT Channel Media Outlets — What MSPs, MSSPs, Resellers, Integrators, And IT Consultants Read

Jay McBain September 2, 2021
Out of the 14 different spheres of influence that we track at Forrester, the channel industry trade press ranks near the top. Smart vendors and distributors know that the magic of finding, influencing, recruiting, enabling, and nourishing a top-performing channel boils down to three simple questions about partners: What do they read? Where do they […]
Blog

Top 143 Social Media Groups For MSPs, VARs, And Tech Channel Professionals

Jay McBain July 8, 2021
The channel is very large, highly diverse, and incredibly decentralized. Channel partners know that to be successful, they need to carve out a niche — whether that be by line of business, by industry (and, increasingly, by subindustry), by size of customer, geographically, technologically, and by business model. These six vectors are not mutually exclusive, […]
Blog

The 100 Best Channel Podcasts Of 2021

Jay McBain April 29, 2021
With more than 2 million podcasts available how do you find the best channel podcasts? Forrester's Principal Analyst Jay McBain has you covered. Check out the list of the best 100 channel podcasts of 2021.
Blog

For Partners, If It Makes Dollars, It Makes Sense: Using TEI To Build The Business Case For Your Partner Program

David Park April 26, 2021
A Forrester channel TEI study highlights the economic metrics and the business advantages to choosing to work with that partner. These studies can explain and break down the economics and the outcomes of a partnership investment in real-dollar terms partners understand — not just gold, silver, and bronze.

See Why 2023 Fortune Favors The Bold And Focused

Explore our 2023 Predictions to see where strategies are shifting – and where opportunities for bold moves exist.

Blog

Reaching A Verdict On Channel Marketing’s Return

Brett Kahnke April 22, 2021
The channel organization must have a strong interlock with the marketing operations team to ensure the measurement roadmap is focused on the right areas.
Blog

Are Distributors The Future Of Distribution?

Jay McBain February 24, 2021
I made a prediction in January of 2018 that IT distributor disruption would continue. It was obvious that industry consolidation was accelerating, major distributors were diversifying, and private equity was getting more interested in transforming the industry. In the second half of last year, the two largest global IT distributors were acquired by private equity, […]
Blog

Growth Marketers Ignore E-Channels At Their Peril

Lori Wizdo January 28, 2021
Both business buyers and B2B sellers are increasing their participation in marketplaces. As the shift continues, companies that have experience of and actual success in marketing on marketplaces will reap the benefits of early adoption. A number of factors are converging to drive this trend. B2B buyers rely less and less on enterprise account reps. […]
Blog

What I See Coming For The Channel: 2021

Jay McBain January 21, 2021
  Last year ended up being a tale of two cities for the channel. On one hand, customers and governments recognized partners as an essential service and central to their ability to rapidly respond to a worsening pandemic early in the year. With catlike reflexes, the IT channel emptied the laptop supply chain and became […]
Blog

Channel Software Tech Stack 2021

Jay McBain January 12, 2021
^CLICK IMAGE FOR FULL SCREEN^ The channel software stack comprises a group of technologies that help companies develop, design, and execute plans to find, recruit, onboard, develop, enable, incent, co-sell with, manage, measure, and report on partners. Delivering automation of indirect sales processes, workflows, and partner programs, channel software is becoming increasingly critical to a […]

2023 Planning Isn’t Business As Usual

Explore Forrester's 2023 planning guide for data-driven insights on where to invest, where to pull back, and where to stay the course.

Blog

How Did I Score On My Channel Outlook For 2020?

Jay McBain January 8, 2021
In what was one of the most challenging years for many of us, the channel experienced more change in 2020 than in the past 39 years combined. Revisit our 2020 channel predictions, and see which of our calls proved true, which accelerated, and what it means for 2021. That being said, many of the calls that I did make not only became true but accelerated due to COVID-19. That being said, many of the calls that I did make not only became true but accelerated due to COVID-19.
Blog

Looking Ahead: What Channel Marketing Leaders Must Prepare For In 2021

Kathy Contreras November 23, 2020
Understanding partner and buyer needs is paramount during 2021 planning. The current market disruption will have an ongoing impact on the channel, and channel marketers must cultivate acceptance and empathy toward partners and their buyers during these challenging times.
Blog

Channel And Ecosystem Leaders Are Demanding More From Partner Relationship Management (PRM) Solutions

Jay McBain November 9, 2020
As brands increasingly use different types of partners to reach, influence, transact, and retain customers, partner relationship management (PRM) solutions are being asked to serve both traditional and nontraditional channels at a new level of scale and personalization. Managing these growing ecosystems in a consistent, predictable, and productive way is critical to the success of […]
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