Ensuring that partners promote your messaging and products consistently is always a challenge.  As a channel professional myself I always looked for ways we could better support partners who have little to no marketing resources.  Last week I did a webinar with Josh Gibbs of SharedVue, a syndication and marketing support infrastructure.  I actually reviewed their product back in June of 2009 and boy have they made progress since.

The replay of the webinar can be found here and walks you through the challenges:

• Partners sell multiple products from multiple vendors so they are going to lead with whichever product makes them look good.
• Partners lack marketing know how.  They tend to be more technically inclined, that's why they are such great VARs, SIs, or ISVs.
• Partners websites are cumbersome and updating content is not as easy as it should be.  Partner sites do not tend to show vendor products and information accurately. Images are not high resolution, product pages may show old products, or there may not be any products at all.
• Marketing resources are limited for many partners.  Put yourself in the shoes of an SMB business owner, do you hire more feet on the street or a marketing executive?  Most marketing resources at channel partners tend to be administrators or business owners who are already spread thin.
• Customers are already blocking out messages because they have been so bombarded.  With more and more companies trying to reach prospects partners need help standing out by providing value.

Overwhelming, I know, but not to worry, the webinar details how vendors can help their partners, big and small, deal with the above challenges.  Whether social media, multi-touch campaigns, syndication, or marketing automation, see how any and all can drive more business through your channel.  Some of them don't even cost you money...it's just about restructuring the resources you already have.

Have any of you used these tools?  What are you doing to support your partners demand gen goals?  Would love to get your feedback.