How to Generate Leads With Your Channel Partners

TSL Marketing has our roots in Channel Marketing, having worked with channel organizations and their partners for 25 years. At TSL, we have experience helping thousands of channel partners generate, nurture, and progress leads. 

We understand that channel organizations need to take a unique approach to lead generation because they are working with partners that promote and sell their products and related services. Any lead generation strategy needs to take this partnership into consideration. 

In working with channel organizations, we start by helping them find the right partners, and then we define their ideal audience and choose the right mix of sales and marketing activities to generate leads. We find that establishing a strong foundation for channel marketing is the best way to generate leads. 

Joint Marketing: Collaborative Marketing

In channel marketing, lead generation is a collaboration between channel organizations and their partners. That’s why channel companies need to use a joint marketing strategy to generate leads. TSL helps our channel customers develop a joint marketing plan that is tailored based on the channel partner’s marketing resources, such as available time and funds.  

We want to ensure that the channel organizations and their partners share lead generation goals and that both have ways to measure their progress, using pipeline metrics, once the joint marketing plan is in place. We encourage channel organizations and their partners to engage in joint lead generation by building relationships between the sales teams at both companies. 

The joint marketing plan may vary based on the value proposition delivered by the channel company and its partner. For example, if the channel company offers a product, and the partner provides managed services related to that product, they may use lead generation tactics that present a joint value proposition. 

Building Your Joint Ideal Customer Profile 

We help channel companies determine how their target audience relates to the audience of their partners. Some channel partners may have a different industry or geographical focus that needs to be accounted for when generating contact lists and developing marketing content.  

Segmenting the audience and defining that audience’s pain points will help channel partners to hone their message and select the correct channels, such as social media platforms for advertising, that reach the most prospects with the potential for turning into leads. 

Clearly defining the personas you want to target is crucial. You and your channel partner should identify a few key personas and determine their challenges, interests, sources of information, values, and goals based on experiences with your ideal customers. 

Channel organizations and their partners should also explore in depth the type of company they want to target. The target company may vary based on whether a channel partner is offering products or services and support related to the channel organization’s solutions.  

A channel partner may focus on companies in target industries or in a specific geographical area. The channel organization and its partner may also need to consider whether they are targeting enterprises or small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Ideally, reps from both firms will build a joint target account list for Account Based Marketing based on their ideal customers and companies. 

Lead Generation Tactics 

To successfully generate leads, channel organizations need to make sure that their tactics align with the partner’s capabilities by assessing the experience of the partner’s sales and marketing team, as well as the time and marketing funds that are available.  

When choosing tactics, channel organizations and their partners should focus their joint efforts on generating quality leads. When leads are of poor quality, they can hurt the relationship between your channel and your partners and lose their attention. High-quality leads make partner reps feel that working together is worth their time.  

TSL Marketing offers a wide range of lead generation tactics for channel organizations and their partners. We believe in combining inbound and outbound marketing strategies for a modern, digital approach to channel marketing that still delivers a human touch.  

We encourage channel organizations to develop a strong website that conveys their brand identity and creates many opportunities for conversion. While channel partners may not have the resources to take on such a major project, they can take advantage of the channel partnership by creating a partner page and related offers. 

Social media marketing works well for generating leads for channel partners. Social media is a great way to create awareness about the partner’s brand and present opportunities for customer referrals that extend the company’s reach and could turn into leads.  

As a tactic, SEO is a much longer-term play and not necessarily a good one for immediate lead generation. However, partners with sites that have good domain authority can consider SEO as an aspect of joint efforts. SEO helps draw more traffic to a partner’s website and content, creating more opportunities for engagement. 

TSL works with channel partners on organic and paid social, as well as in creating marketing content that is customized based on whether a partner offers products or services related to the channel organization’s solutions. 

Lead Nurturing 

At TSL, we understand that lead generation efforts need follow-up. Once a lead has entered the pipeline, channel partners need to nurture it until the prospect is ready to buy a product or service. TSL believes that channel partners benefit from warm handoffs, in which sales qualified leads (SQLs) are passed along for nurturing. 

The channel partner sales team should be trained in following up on leads. The tactics to be used in nurturing leads will depend on the time the partner has available for follow-up and should be included as part of an ongoing lead generation strategy. 

Many reps don’t have the time needed to focus on lead nurturing. While reps can be encouraged to nurture leads, the channel partner marketing team should have a nurture plan in place to make sure leads don’t get neglected. 

Lead Generation Services for Channel Partners 

TSL Marketing provides Lead Generation services designed to help channel organizations and their partners grow and spread their reach. We can work with your channel organization to develop lead generation campaigns that include paid digital ads and emails, along with telemarketing follow-up by our skilled Business Development specialists. These campaigns result in SQLs and MQLs that boost your pipeline.

The TSL team also offers monthly Nurture and Lead Generation services that include database creation, strategy, and content calendar. Our team will craft blogs, emails, and social posts that result in engagement that can turn into leads.  

Experience our deep expertise in channel marketing. Schedule a meeting with TSL Marketing President and channel marketing expert David English.