How to improve your return on investment in your MDF program

Market development funds (MDF) can be an effective way to boost your company’s marketing efforts and support your eligible channel partners. However, it’s not uncommon for channel partners to fail to capitalise on funds made available to them. The reasons are varied but can include:

• lack of awareness about the availability of MDF

• lack of marketing capacity or capability to design and execute an MDF-compliant marketing program

• limited interest in accessing funds due to competing business priorities

• too many conditions or too much complexity involved in applying for MDF.  

Here are three steps you can take to improve your return on your investment in your MDF program:

1. Communicate your long-term strategy with partners and evaluate their performance

Channel partners often expect to see short-term results from marketing and lead generation activities, particularly in times of economic difficulty. However, if your organisation is operating its marketing strategy on a long-term basis, your targets may not be aligned with those of your channel partners, and they may not see the value in the relationship they have with you. Keeping channel partners engaged with your business and informed of your long-term strategy, and how those channel partners fit into it, can enhance your partnerships.

Similarly, it’s good practice to have agreements in place with your channel partners with specific metrics and targets that you can both work towards. Continuously evaluating the performance of your channel partners against MDF metrics can help you keep track of marketing activities and the budget being spent, as well as the ROI of each campaign. This allows you to align your programs with your partners, and ensure the agreements continue to be mutually beneficial.

2. Continually engage your channel partners for success

Just as your organisation engages multiple channel partners in its MDF programs, your channel partners may be involved with multiple funding channels. This can be overwhelming for some companies, especially if their teams are smaller and under-resourced, as the time and effort involved in managing the onboarding process plus ongoing campaign management can be confusing and time consuming.

Instead of engaging channel partners in a lengthy one-off onboarding meeting and then only making contact during quarterly business reviews (QBRs), consider pivoting to a lighter-touch, ongoing engagement.

Continuous relationship building programs can ensure your partners retain relevant information, and growing familiarity will provide mutual benefit for both of your businesses in the long term.

3. Engage and offer marketing concierge services

Channel partners that lack the marketing resources to invest time in marketing programs may also lack the digital know-how required to conduct effective marketing campaigns. Engaging dedicated marketing concierge services that facilitate access to high-quality, unique marketing services can help alleviate pressure on your channel partners, while strengthening the offers launched in market to support and sell your products and services. A high-quality marketing concierge service can also take pressure off the vendor channel marketing team.

Our marketing consultants at Outsource can help your business develop unique marketing concierge services to support your channel partners. Contact the Outsource team today for more information.