Accelerating partner channel performance
How to prepare for 2024
It’s time again. Time to strategize, plan, budget, and organize for what’s next. Whether you’re approaching the halfway point or the finish line of your fiscal year, there’s only upside to thinking ahead.
At Knack, we anticipate tomorrow based upon empirical evidence of where and how B2B markets are changing—how top B2B software vendors and their partners are transforming marketing ideas into opportunities. Today, we’re sharing some of the organizing principles at the center of our 2024 vision. Principles that may help you structure your expectations and priorities for the most impactful revenue-generating moves you can make.
5 steps for igniting 2024 momentum (that you can start now):
1. Focus on scalable execution from upper to lower funnel. This is how engines are made. With an engine, faster conversions and seamless handoffs between marketing and sales become more attainable than ever before. Another advantage of engines is that they can be multipurposed across products and solutions. For fully integrated marketing and time to revenue, our clients are thinking engine first, and we see the payoff in demand-gen campaigns as well as mid-funnel conversion activities.
2. Refine audience targeting and execution tactics with AI. The use of AI is increasing B2B marketing ROI, and this is only the beginning. As target account lists become more precise and data rich, AI helps improve lead quality and media performance. We’ve invested this calendar year refining our execution frameworks to accommodate greater precision at low friction. The result is that vendors and partners can offer more exciting messages and content by channel and funnel stage while keeping their budgets in check. The B2B marketing world will become more dynamic in 2024 and continue favoring speed, flexibility, and high throughput at low cost.
3. Showcase joint value props with modern GTM motions. The power of a succinct and resonant value prop is never going out of style, and neither is the need to land it across channels. The trouble is, the market is so noisy that only the clearest signals will punch through. Which begs the question: How can you make 2024 different and higher performing than 2023? For B2B marketers, we’re applying creative principles from consumer channels to make joint value props more personable, relatable, and real life. And we’re bringing those value props to market in demand gen and nurture campaigns for ISVs, value-added resellers, solution providers, and vendors who need their GTMs to work harder and provide uninterrupted paths to marketplaces. While the B2B marketing puzzle has more pieces than ever before, we specialize in assembling them with even greater efficiency and effectiveness.
4. Leverage data to optimize your channel strategy and media plans. Ensure all three can plug into your engines. Analyze what has (and hasn’t) performed and prepare to win with mixes tailored to specific funnel stages and buyer profiles. While programmatic display, social, email, content syndication, ABM, and inbound will remain vital, how vendors and partners use them will change. We’ve dedicated the past 12 months to helping our clients identify new formats, creative concepts, and engagement tactics to suit buyers who are increasingly demanding and hard to reach. The future will be similar, only faster. We advise all our clients to plan accordingly.
5. Prepare for growth. For many vendors, the past 15 months have centered on staying in the game, managing costs, converting existing leads, and revamping systems for the next wave. We’ve made the most of circumstances. We see the next 15 months as a return to growth mode. This involves driving audiences to marketplaces, expanding P2P ecosystems, equipping buyers with more self-serve tools, and leaning into operational efficiencies. We see evidence that this shift has already begun, specifically with respect to marketplaces and the ways we’re helping vendors and partners drive an increasing volume of traffic and transactions through this channel. We’re confident this trend will continue.
But first, close 2023 strong
Momentum is on your side. Buyer confidence is up from earlier this year, vendors are expanding their partner investments, and partners are excited to engage because they see upward-sloping revenues on the near horizon.
We’re here to help.
From lead generation programs that are built to scale to pipeline acceleration campaigns, custom GTMs, design systems, and end-to-end marketing and creative strategies, we reset expectations for B2B and partner marketing. We’ll be happy to explore how you can turn 2024 into your best year ever.