Manda Banda is Lynchpin Media ’ s Deputy Managing Editor and Editor of Intelligent CIO Middle East and Intelligent CIO Africa . |
Market Development Funds or MDF as they commonly known in the regional channel are used in indirect sales channels whereby funds are
made available by vendors to help channel
partners ( resellers , VARs , solution providers ,
systems integrators and distributors ) sell
their products by contributing to marketing
materials and other related activities .
MDF , like most good things , is subject
to some level of abuse . Channel managers
know they need to provide partners with
some level of marketing assistance as
partners have limited marketing resources .
Of their available budget , partners allocate
most to either hiring salespeople or
engineers . Consequently , most channel
partners have very little in the way of
marketing expertise . The average channel
partner across the Middle East too often
typically views marketing as , at best , a sales
support function .
No direct correlation
When marketing gets treated as little more
than a sales adjunct , the more limited
the return on those investments become .
Most sophisticated channel organisations are now looking to maximise investment in market development funds in a programmatic way that goes well beyond a one-time sales event .
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There might be some value to be gained
from a sales event involving , for example ,
contracting a sports legend to appear at
a customer event . But usually , there ’ s no
direct correlation between those events
and increased revenue for a vendor . End
customers may view the channel partner
that funded the event more warmly . But
the odds are low they will sign a contract
just because they got to shake hands with a
sports personality .
Today , most sophisticated channel
organisations are now looking to maximise
investment in market development funds in
a programmatic way that goes well beyond
a one-time sales event . To push channel
partners in that direction , savvy channel
managers are more aggressively measuring
the results of any given marketing effort a
channel manager makes .
Channel managers are now making
concrete recommendations relative to what
types of marketing programmes they are
willing to fund . These recommendations
are based on data they can now collect
concerning how useful different types of
marketing initiatives are .
The challenge
The challenge channel
managers face is in
dynamically allocating
limited marketing budgets
across those activities .
As marketing increasingly
becomes a science ,
marketing professionals are
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being held accountable for the return on every penny spent . The wild spending days like at the peak of the IT channel business in the mid 1990s and 2000s in the regional are long over .
Decisions on where to allocate marketing funds are being made in near real-time , based on data generated within marketing automation systems . As a logical extension of those systems , most vendors nowadays are working with strategic media houses and demand generation platforms across the region to provide channel managers with both the data demanded by corporate marketers to justify allocations as well as the actionable insights required to optimise the distribution of marketing funds across a range of classes and partner types . This is being done to ensure that not every plan is suited to all partners that each vendor works with .
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