Channel marketers looking to work more closely together

Developing a more resilient ecosystem is going to be one of the methods that channel marketers uses to navigate the year ahead.

Collaboration and knowledge sharing are seen as some of the best ways to help share best practice and help those responsible for marketing have confidence that they are taking the right approach.

Channel marketing experts Coterie Community quizzed its marketers from a range of different channel organisations to reveal the stand-out areas for 2023. It found that, along with building resilience into ecosystems, sustainability and everything as a service (XaaS) were other areas causing concern.

Helen Curtis, founder of the Coterie Community, said that channel marketeers faced some “unique circumstances in 2023” and they would find it easier to deal with them through greater levels of collaboration.

“By coming together, talking and planning for it, we can take advantage of every trend and work to overcome the challenges,” she said.

Barnaby Wood, EMEA product management of Veritas Technologies, said that dealing with numerous issues, including strategic initiatives around sustainability and subscription models, was adding to the pressure on channel marketers.

“This will increasingly drive channel marketers to get hands-on and do a bit of everything. The internal ecosystems around channel GTM are not robust. We need to focus next year on increasing our alignment with sales, educating the entire business on ‘why’ channel marketing, and making the whole process more collaborative and effective.” 

The sustainability issue dominated much of last year and is continuing to do so, with marketers viewing it as a priority for their firms. One of the challenges many face is settling on the right strategy, with so many differing approaches being taken across the industry.

“There isn’t a single ‘right’ solution to addressing sustainability and ESG issues, so as well as being a key trend, this is also going to be a challenge in 2023. For channel marketers, getting to grips with compliance, and then using that to help drive competitive advantage, could make a real difference,” said James Houselander, senior manager of EMEA channel marketing at HPE Aruba.

The other trend that should see plenty of collaborative discussion is around marketing XaaS.

“With the ongoing industry shift to XaaS and revenue spread over a longer period, more subscription deals are needed to equal the pre-Xaas revenue and mitigate churn. For channel marketers, this means more marketing is needed to fill the funnel faster as we look to greater collaboration with our partners to help increase awareness and reach and to drive pipeline velocity in a noisy marketplace,” said Lily Lazarevski, senior global channel marketing manager at Infoblox.

Curtis said that the year ahead would be challenging for marketers, but a fresh year also presented the opportunities for a different approach.

“It looks like channel marketers are in for yet another roller-coaster ride...it will also present a huge opportunity for partner marketers to shake things up, think differently and get channel marketing the recognition, funding and resourcing it needs,” she said.