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July 2009 | Volume 12 / Number 7
The Channel Perspective

Channel Networking Expands Channel Visibility and Sales

Human networking often gets lost in the shuffle when introducing new products and technology but can be your strongest ally. Maybe it is because my daughter is graduating high school, but it has reminded me of my networking that started in the western suburbs of Chicago at Proviso West High school, continued to grow at Western Illinois University and again at Golden Gate University in San Francisco. Networking employs social behaviors that can make or break your company and product.

There are many ways that you can enhance networking for a company. Newsletters are one of the traditional methods. It allows you to communicate to those that are already familiar with your company, product and technology. This is a good method to help sell new products to the existing channel.

The company website helps you network beyond your current company customer base. It allows those that visit to learn about the company and the company products. It helps create the company image and product branding.




Many companies will set up an .org or .com url for an organization or a technology. Then they try to make it a focal point for the group or technology. If done well, this technique will allow you create opt in list of the participants. This allows companies to perform direct marketing to an approved list. It also allows company messages and products to be ever-present on the website as an advertiser at no cost.

Blogs have been incredible for technologists to get the word out about companies, products, or evolving technology. This can be an excellent way for a company to continually stay connected with customers, prospects and to competition. If you are a well-known blogger, you can give immediate credibility to a product. Blogs are mostly text but graphics, video, weblinks and audio features are also used. A place for viewer comments should be a part of the blog as this provides direct feedback on the idea, product or company being discussed.

Companies are now finding that networking with LinkedIn, Plaxo and others are good vehicles to communicate with direct contacts connected to employees or the company and also a way to expand the reach of the employees and company. In this way you can find out your competition’s customers and contact names. One method that is proving popular is starting groups. If the group is well defined and becomes popular, this could be a great way of initiating some word of mouth advertising to people of like interest, skill, or authority. It is also a way to keep track on the latest technology, trends, and popularity of the leaders versus competition.

Publicity techniques are used to help create product awareness that leads to word of mouth advertising. These include:

  • Special events
  • Contests

  • Event Sponsorships
  • Surveys

  • Testimonials
  • To name a few

Publicity is a good tactic since it is generally lower cost, but it can be frustrating since publicity is only covered selectively. Your effort may not receive any coverage. The other disadvantage is that you have no control over how the company, product or idea is presented.

Viral marketing is much like a real virus. It targets preexisting communities or social networks and spreads within the group. Generally, these techniques are short lived. A sample would be sending a free computer game to high school boys. Along with the game might be a control panel that contained a company or product name. Another example would be to distribute a free softphone technology to laptop users. This would keep your company or product name in front of the laptop user when they wanted access to the phone service. It would potentially create pull through if you also offered VoIP services.

All of these channel networking methods are ways of enabling word-of-mouth communications. This is one of the most effective means of promoting a product, a company or to establish a brand name. Normally, you would target the market leaders. With the diversity of the channel, companies need to use multiple methods to establish the pull through that word of mouth advertising creates. It is the personal nature of word of mouth networking that makes it so powerful. People are more receptive to products and ideas when they are recommended by a friend, relative or associate. This is why it is so important to have a direct access to a channel as an information source and why companies try to have influence over the channel networking via word of mouth.

Has your channel networking been lost in the shuffle? IT

Don Witt is President of cyLogistics (News - Alert) (www.cylogistics.com).

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