2023: The year channel marketing starts to matter
The Coterie Community unilaterally agreed and that's one of the things we'll be focusing on this year - driving more support and education around elevating channel marketing.
Colleen Fogerty, who is the Global Head of Partner and Ecosystem Marketing at Atos Tech Foundations, said organisations will need to shift from partner-by-partner this year to ecosystem marketing.
And then communicate collectively about how that differentiates them [as an ecosystem] from their competitors - this, she said, is what ecosystem partner marketing is all about.
After some good discussions about how the community can support channel marketers with these technological shifts this year, we started chatting about how channel marketing is impacting us on a personal level - another element of support and networking the community offers.
We all agreed that despite a tough few years, even more resilience will be needed this year for channel marketers. As the economy tightens there will be more requirements than ever to continually justify our roles, demonstrate ROI and make sure we invest in the right things.
But this resilience will in turn make us think more creatively and be innovative about where and how we spend our budgets. Technology that alleviates multiple challenges will play a part in this, as well as having a multi-talented team around us.
This community felt that it will also encourage us to prioritise and be agile. That means having our teams focused on the right partners, our budget focused on the right strategy to drive value and our own time doing the things that will help us grow personally and as a business.
Heather Meltvedt, who is Director of Partner and Ecosystem marketing EMEA LATAM at Palo Alto, said for her this year will be about being focused on less, to do more. She said we all find it easy to get caught up in little things and feel like we have to ‘do' all the time. But she's realised this means she has less time to focus on the things that will have the greatest impact.
And for me?
I think it looks like channel marketers are in for another roller-coaster ride this year. But I also believe this presents a huge opportunity for partner marketers to shake things up, think differently and get channel marketing the recognition, funding and resourcing it needs.
