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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Insights

Blog

Subscription Hardware Puts The Channel At Risk

Naveen Chhabra August 14, 2023
Subscription-based hardware is the emerging model that every hardware vendor is promising to customers, partners, and investors. It’s a significant shift from the classic capex model in which firms spend money for outright hardware purchases. There are several scenarios such as new technology, short-term projects, test-before-you-buy, and infrastructure bundled with managed services, etc., where subscription-based […]
Blog

Looking Ahead To Forrester’s B2B Summit EMEA 2023

Paul Ferron July 12, 2023
Throughout the year, there is an ebb and flow to the things that I look forward to, often triggered by a certain event. For example, once my family has the winter-sport holiday behind us, I look forward to warmer weather and sunshine. The same happens to me when Forrester’s B2B Summit in North America is […]

How Should CMOs Invest To Fuel Customer-Obsessed Growth?

Download our 2024 Planning Guide for B2B Marketing Leaders to see where to invest, divest, and experiment with funding your growth agenda.

Blog

Exemplifying B2B Excellence: Forrester’s 2023 Programs Of The Year Award Winners

Cristina De Martini April 18, 2023
Our annual POY awards, given at B2B Summit, celebrate companies that have achieved exemplary results in marketing, sales, or product management. Learn the seven companies that will be in the spotlight this year.
Blog

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

Kathy Contreras March 15, 2023
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 […]
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.
Blog

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.
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 […]
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