When vendor and manufacturer brands are looking for ways to increase B2B sales, channel partners must be priority #1. Whereas a B2C company can see sales skyrocket from a single, catchy marketing campaign, things are more complicated over in the B2B realm. Marketing campaigns must be multi-pronged—resonating with multiple channel partners in a way that’s beneficial and relevant to them while representing your brand in an appealing way. 

Motivating partners to market your products, educate their teams, and close sales isn’t easy. Channel partners are juggling multiple vendor relationships. If you’re not at the top of their priority list, you’re losing revenue and market share. 

This is where the perfect synergy of channel marketing and incentive programs comes into play. When done right, these strategies don’t just coexist—they amplify each other. Here’s how you can make it happen. 

Using Incentives to Motivate Channel Partners to Participate in Marketing Campaigns  

Channel partners, like all of us, are busy. Convincing them to dedicate time and resources to your marketing campaigns is no small feat. Incentives can tip the scales in your favor, though. 

Imagine you’re launching a co-branded digital ad campaign. By offering performance-based rewards—such as gift cards, rebates, or tiered bonuses—you give your partners a direct reason to prioritize your campaign. If they can earn rewards for responding to surveys or spreading product awareness to their audiences, they’ll have an immediate reason to engage with your marketing. Often, it’s that snap judgement moment—”Oh, this will benefit me, and instantly!”—that creates a habit of engaging with your brand. 

Here are a few ways to increase B2B sales by using incentives to drive marketing engagement: 

• Gamification: Incentivize participation by gamifying campaigns. For instance, hold a quarterly contest to reward the partner who sends the most emails and campaigns to their customer base, earns the most revenue or leads through marketing campaigns, or shares the most social media content with their audiences. 

• Tiered Incentives: Offer rewards based on levels of engagement—higher participation earns greater rewards. This approach fosters competition and drives deeper involvement. 

• Participation Points: Reward partners for completing specific marketing activities, such as creating co-branded content, hosting webinars, or holding customer-facing events. These points can be redeemed for gift cards, merchandise, or travel rewards. 

• Campaign Completion Bonuses: Offer a significant reward for partners who fully execute a marketing campaign from start to finish. For example, completing a campaign might involve loading a subscriber list, setting up a landing page, promoting the campaign on social media, and following up on performance metrics. 

• Early Bird Incentives: Encourage timely participation by rewarding partners who launch your campaign materials within a specified time frame, such as offering an additional discount on marketing tools or providing exclusive access to products or services. 

• Content Amplification Rewards: Provide bonuses for partners who actively share your marketing content through their own channels. For instance, you could track and reward partners for the number of social shares, blog posts, or email campaigns they execute using your assets. 

• Collaborative Marketing Credits: Create a system where partners earn credits for campaign engagement, which they can then apply toward co-op marketing funds, additional training, or premium marketing tools. 

By using incentives strategically, you transform your marketing from yet another message that goes straight to the “Forget” folder into fun, two-way exchanges. When partners feel rewarded for their efforts, they think about your brand more often and their priorities start naturally with yours.  

When you make it easy and rewarding to engage with your brand, you’re not just running a campaign—you create lasting loyalty and drive meaningful revenue growth. You build collaborative, mutually beneficial partnerships. 

Use Marketing Campaigns to Promote Incentive Programs 

Your incentive program is only as good as its visibility. If partners don’t know about the rewards on the table, how can they get excited? Marketing campaigns aren’t just for selling products—they’re also an essential tool for selling your incentive programs. Marketing for your incentive program should clearly establish the program’s value from the beginning, then periodically stimulate program activity. 

Here are actionable ways to increase B2B sales use marketing to promote your incentive programs effectively: 

• Success Story Spotlights: Showcase partners who have excelled in your channel programs. Highlight their achievements in newsletters, webinars, or social media posts. For example, share how a partner earned a significant incentive reward for hitting sales targets or completing marketing activities. 

• Incentive Teasers: Use email campaigns or social media ads to tease upcoming incentives. Phrases like “Limited time to earn 3X points!” or “Don’t miss your chance to earn exclusive perks” can build anticipation and engagement. Inspiring a little FOMO can go a long way. 

• Reward Showcases: Create a visual showcase of available rewards, such as a landing page or infographic detailing what partners can earn. Include examples like gift cards, merchandise, travel experiences, or co-op marketing funds to spark interest. 

• Educational Content Campaigns: Educate partners on how to participate in your programs through explainer videos, guides, or live Q&A sessions. The more clarity you provide, the more confident and motivated they’ll be to engage. 

• Seasonal Promotions: Align your incentive marketing campaigns with seasons or holidays to make them more engaging. At Extu, we’ve found that the holidays are consistently the biggest month for redeeming reward points—and it’s not close. A “Holiday Rewards Countdown” campaign could feature daily or weekly updates about gift ideas available as rewards and how to earn points to redeem them. 

By leveraging these strategies, you can ensure that your incentive programs stay top of mind for channel partners. When you effectively market the benefits of participation, you’re not just promoting incentives—you’re fostering a culture of engagement and driving results across your channel. 

Make Channel Marketing and Incentives Faster and More Efficient with Automation 

Channel marketing and incentive programs can be complex and time-consuming, but automation makes it so you can scale your efforts while shrinking your workload. By streamlining processes and nixing manual tasks, you can make it easier for both your team and your channel partners to engage and succeed.  

Here are some ways automation can boost channel marketing and incentive efficiency: 

• Automated Campaign Deployment: Pre-designed templates and workflows can help you quickly launch co-branded marketing campaigns, while allowing partners to customize and send campaigns in just a few clicks. This saves time and improves brand consistency. 

• Performance Tracking: Provide partners with an automated dashboard where they can monitor their progress toward rewards and promotion goals. Real-time feedback keeps partners engaged and motivated. 

• Instant Reward Redemption: Set up an automated system that allows partners to redeem their earned rewards seamlessly. For example, partners could automatically receive a gift card or discount code once they hit a milestone. Instant gratification equals increased motivation! 

• Pre-Scheduled Communications: Improve the efficiency of marketing campaigns with automatically triggered and pre-scheduled emails. Reminders and updates keep partners informed about new marketing initiatives, available incentives, and deadlines. This ensures consistent communication without demanding extra effort and constant vigilance. 

• Claim Validation and Approvals: Implement automated systems to validate and approve claims for co-op marketing funds or incentive rewards. This not only reduces processing time but also minimizes errors and delays.  And with a solutions provider like Extu, you can set up automatic flagging (for example, flag any claim for rewards over $500 in value) to make sure that the claims submission process isn’t abused. 

• Info Capture for Dynamic Segmentation: When you use a customizable registration form for your incentive or marketing program, you can adjust the fields to automatically capture information you need to segment your partner audience. This is especially useful for getting that extra bit of info you don’t get by other means, like the basics collected when partners go through the authorization process. The more info you have, the more precisely you can segment your partner base, then market to them with the most relevant, engaging content possible.  

• Workflow Integration: Integrate your channel marketing and incentive management tools to create a seamless experience. For instance, linking incentive progress with campaign performance can help partners see how their marketing efforts directly translate to rewards. 

By automating these processes, you not only save time and resources but also create a frictionless experience for your channel partners. With fewer administrative hurdles, partners can focus on what matters most—executing campaigns and driving revenue. 

Measure, Adjust, Repeat 

It’s been said ad nauseum, but it’s worth repeating one more time: what gets measured, gets done. Here’s the uncomfortable truth: not every channel marketing or incentive program will hit the mark on the first try. And that’s okay—what’s not okay is running campaigns or offering rewards in isolation without assessing how they work together. If you’re not measuring the combined impact of your marketing efforts and incentive programs, you’re throwing darts in the dark.  

Here’s how to create a feedback loop that ensures these strategies are in sync and constantly improving: 

• Set Joint KPIs: Incentive programs are a form of marketing, at the end of the day. So don’t treat marketing and incentives as separate initiatives. Define unified goals that measure how these strategies drive results together. For example, track metrics like campaign participation boosted by incentives, the percentage of partners redeeming rewards tied to marketing activities, or revenue growth from incentivized campaigns. 

• Cross-Program Dashboards: Use dashboards that integrate data from both your marketing and incentive efforts. This allows you to see how campaigns and rewards influence each other in real-time. For instance, are partners who engage in marketing campaigns earning more incentives? If not, why? 

• Test Reward Structures Within Campaigns: Use A/B testing to experiment with how different incentives impact marketing engagement. For example, test whether offering points for webinar attendance generates more sign-ups than offering tiered rewards for co-branded content creation. 

• Survey Partners About Their Experience: Go straight to the source. Ask your partners how they perceive the connection between your marketing campaigns and your incentive programs. Do they see the value? Is the process seamless? Incentivize survey responses to get actionable feedback. 

• Celebrate Collaborative Wins: Don’t just measure success—amplify it. Share stories of partners who leveraged both marketing tools and incentive opportunities to achieve outstanding results. These examples inspire others to engage with your programs holistically. 

• Keep Optimizing: The market evolves, and so should your strategy. Regularly review how your channel marketing and incentive programs are working together. Look for emerging trends, changing partner behaviors, or new opportunities to align these efforts even further. 

Here’s the bottom line: channel marketing and incentive programs are not separate silos—they’re pieces of the same puzzle. When you measure their combined impact, adjust based on insights, and repeat what works, you create a system that doesn’t just drive results—it dominates. Because when your partners feel supported, rewarded, and empowered to market your brand, everybody wins. 

Conclusion: Greater Channel Marketing and Incentives Alignment = More Ways to Increase B2B Sales 

Channel marketing and incentive programs aren’t just complementary—at peak effectiveness, they’re interdependent. Separately, they can achieve decent results, but when combined strategically, they can a powerhouse that drives revenue, engagement, and loyalty among your channel partners. The key is aligning these efforts seamlessly: motivate partners with meaningful incentives, use marketing to amplify those programs, leverage automation to eliminate inefficiencies, and constantly measure and refine your strategies. 

The reality is, in the B2B world, if you’re not actively making it easy—and rewarding—for partners to prioritize your brand, someone else will. But when you put the right systems and tools in place, you’re not just building campaigns; you’re building relationships. Start connecting the dots between your marketing and incentives today—it’s time to own the channel.