How well you do with channel brand consistency
Tech brands have always suffered from the fact that distributors marketing their products have also been in charge of creating and publishing pieces on their brands.
When done by third parties that are sales oriented, things tend to be bad, in the sense that the execution is poor and your brand is negatively affected. This is critical when your country business is managed by local distributors, and you don’t always necessary have full visibility on the brand work they are doing.
So, here are our 10 tricks to boost the consistency of your channel execution:
1.- Pay them for working with your brand
Distributors make Money on selling your product, but do not necessarily make Money on treating your brand. Your brand is a key asset that has to be respectfully worked. So, if possible, I would really recommend that you allocate some marketing funds for them to treat your brand, or, in case you do not have those, shift some of the channel points you allocate for them to your brand treatment.
2.- Limit their creativity
Creating is not their job, it is yours. Their job is selling your products and making their sales target So , limit their creativity.
3.- Limit your sales people creativity
This one is a tricky one. Your sales people can sometimes get ‘very creative’ in front of their clients (your distributors). I really recommend you do not allow that. Creativity, art-works and brand treatment, in general, should be part of the marketing team and not the sales team.
4.- Use your bosses
Your distributors can often see all those aspects related to marketing and your brand as secondary. They often won’t pay attention to your messages. When this happens I would really recommend that you use your company top execs in order to get your message across.
5.- Make them plan ahead
In order to get enough time to review and amend what they are producing, your should plan ahead every single element giving you enough time to review and allowing them to correct along the way.
6.- Fund their marketing people
If you have resources allocated to their teams, I suggest you not only fund their sales people but also fund part of their marketing team. This will allow them to get allocated resources to treat your brand accordingly to your needs.
7.- Educate them
Plan training sessions with them. Not just a one-off session they will forget quickly, but an on-going training plan so that sees enhancing their consistency as an ongoing journey.
8.- Tell them the truth
Be honest with your feedback. Try to be always positive, but honest, facing the raw facts. Face them and try to invest resources and means in order to facilitate them treat your brand as it deserves to be treated.
9.- Bring good news
You will be the brand journey companion for them, so bring good news regularly and make them have the sense of progress with your brand, so they can keep motivated and feel the sense of progress.
10.- Make them part of your team
Invite them to internal brand meetings so they can participate in your brand discussions and feel their work is crucial to the country and channel business.
You might be interested in downloading below our channel brand consistency checklist
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