THE STATE OF CHANNEL MARKETING Brought to you by:Executive Summary Brought to you by: 4The Channel Marketing Industry is Ripe for Change. Three-quarters of channel marketers agree that their current solutions have a positive impact on sales and view having the right one as a significant competitive advantage. But only about half (51%) believe that channel marketing efforts yield equivalent benefits as other marketing programs. They are also keenly aware of the risks of doing it poorly with 90% believing it can damage a brand’s reputation. Despite this, budgets ($57MM on average) are not under threat with 40% expecting to increase spend by 5-7% in the next 12 months. The top challenges are typically tool and system-related: Visibility is limited by analytics; processes require a lot of heavy lifting; and ROI can't be optimized with current approaches. Brought to you by: 5Where the Channel Marketing Industry is Shifting. The industry has matured to the point that optimizing ROI and data driven decision-making are just as important as demand generation. Currently, only one-third say their spend across programs is optimized and few (38%) get anything m