How Data-Driven Marketing Is Driving IT Channel Growth

How can marketing demonstrate value, grow influence and enhance its standing internally? During my two decades working in the channel, these questions have dominated the debate around the role of marketing. The need to find a compelling answer to them is what has driven and motivated me as a marketing leader.

When I moved across from sales and set out on my journey in channel marketing, I think it's fair to say that marketing was seen in some quarters as a cost centre rather than a profit centre. Questions around return on investment made it difficult for marketing to establish a voice at the highest levels of an organisation. My background in sales meant I could empathise and understand these concerns. I was — and still am — passionate about helping partners to grow their business. It's just that, across the channel, marketing wasn't generally seen as a key driver of that growth.

Thankfully, perceptions are shifting.

In today's IT channel, marketing increasingly plays a central role in creating, shaping and driving business strategy. It has started to earn the respect of nonmarketing functions and leaders, and often has a say in critical business decisions. More and more, there is a recognition that an effective marketing function and strategy can drive business growth and create meaningful connections with customers and partners.

The catalyst for this shift in perception can be summed up in one word: data.

Personalisation, Preferences and Precision

Data-driven marketing leverages data and analytics to make informed decisions, allowing for an iterative and agile approach that responds quickly to changing business needs and market dynamics.

By using insights gathered from various data sources, marketers can identify trends, understand customer behaviour, gain deeper insights into customer preferences and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns. This approach not only allows for more precise targeting of marketing efforts through personalisation and segmentation, but also maximises the tangible value that marketing brings to an organisation through continuous improvement and refinement. There are also clear advantages around planning in terms of both campaigns and budgets.

This, however, is just the beginning.

Increasingly, marketing is playing a central role in programmes and initiatives that harness data to uncover and create new opportunities for customers.

Bridging the Data Gap

Our recent Bridging the Gap research report, for instance, revealed strong partner demand for data that can identify and enable market growth opportunities, with many partners acknowledging the need to bolster their internal capabilities to address gaps in how they utilise and apply data for life cycle selling.

Partners feel a particular need to become more sophisticated in their use of data to both maximise cross-sell and upsell opportunities and drive adoption of new products and solutions, with an overwhelming 95% identifying data capabilities as a key investment priority for the coming year.

To emphasise the growing importance of data within the channel, more than half of those surveyed (59%) strongly agreed that the future of distribution lies in the provision of meaningful customer and market insights.

Against this backdrop, there is clearly a role for marketing in ensuring that we as a distributor meet our partners' expectations and address their challenges.

Building a Data-Driven Marketing Function

For channel leaders seeking to put marketing at the heart of their growth engine by ensuring it is a truly data-driven function, I would offer the following guidance.

Art and Science

The role of marketing in the channel is evolving at an unprecedented rate. By adopting a data-driven approach, channel companies can uncover new growth opportunities and gain a competitive advantage. By having a relentless focus on delivering measurable commercial impact, marketing can prove its value, increase its influence and enhance its standing within an organisation and across the channel.

Marketing has always been part art, part science and it's this combination that makes it such a varied and rewarding career. By retaining the focus on creativity but using data to ensure that they produce art with a purpose and clear business benefit, channel companies can accelerate their growth and achieve greater return on investment from their marketing activities.