Channel Management Examples: Real-World Brand Success Stories

For brands that sell their products through a combination of sales and distribution channels, channel management is a must. By proactively maintaining and optimizing these channels, you can drive better sales and marketing outcomes — and, in turn, increase revenue. 

But what exactly does successful channel management look like? You can see many great examples of channel management in the wild from widely known brands you use every day. By learning from these real-world examples, you can better understand how to effectively manage your channel network for the best results. 

Let’s dive into some core examples of channel management.  

Leaving your channel network unattended is a major risk. But when you implement a proactive channel management strategy to keep these relationships in check, you’ll experience: 

• Increased customer reach: Proper channel management leads you and your partners to the marketing tactics that make the greatest impact, resulting in increased visibility, awareness, and engagement.  
• Brand compliance: By overseeing partner marketing, you can ensure that every asset and campaign is brand- and legal-compliant.  
• Accurate performance tracking: Channel management enables you to accurately identify the channels that are performing the best and generating the most revenue.  
• Increased revenue growth: When you equip your channels to make the greatest impact, you boost your brand’s revenue growth potential.  
• Greater customer satisfaction: By ensuring channel optimization, you create the best possible experiences for your customers, leading to increased satisfaction.  
• Better partner relationships: When you manage your distribution channel by equipping it with marketing resources and support, you cultivate better relationships with your partners. 

Channel management is happening at about every company you can think of — you just don’t often see this side of the business.  

Let’s take a look at some real-life channel management examples to better understand the many ways it takes place at leading brands.  

Amazon is a prime example of a widely known brand that’s perfected its channel management. This brand is known for its wide-reaching network of distributors, partners, and sellers, which allows Amazon to offer a wide variety of products while facilitating fast shipping and global delivery.  

Amazon keeps its distribution channels in check by leveraging a sophisticated logistics system while administering intensive partner onboarding to ensure every package is delivered seamlessly while delivering a positive customer experience.  

Bobcat is among the most well-known compact equipment brands in the world. While the Bobcat brand manufactures these machines, its global network of more than 700 dealers is responsible for marketing and selling them. So, when the brand noticed a dip in dealer engagement, it decided a focus on boosting marketing participation was imperative.  

To overcome this lack of engagement, Bobcat added a three-month commitment length to their paid media tactics in addition to the original six-month commitment. The brand also simplified its campaign enrollment forms to make opting into these programs faster and easier for dealers.  

By offering easier, more flexible marketing options, Bobcat saw significantly higher dealer marketing participation, an increase in co-op fund use, and a substantial spike in paid digital subscriptions, proving the importance of channel management.  

Coca-Cola is another major name that leverages a complex channel network. This brand has hundreds of bottlers, retailers, and distributors worldwide that it uses to produce, package, promote, and distribute its products. However, with so many channel partners in the Coca-Cola network, it’s crucial that all branded assets and materials are consistent with the company’s iconic branding.  

To ensure brand and legal compliance across its distribution channels, Coca-Cola has brand guidelines that all partners must adhere to when manufacturing, marketing, and selling its products. The company also has a Legal and Compliance team in place to ensure all regulations and standards are being upheld across global operations.  

DISH Network, a leading broadcast satellite provider, has over 4,000 retailers globally that sell its products and services. Because marketing isn’t always second nature to local retailers, the brand manages this distribution channel by enabling its retailers with: 

• Co-op programs 
• Digital marketing bundles 
• Digital asset management 
• Ad-building technology 
• Local marketing support 

By providing this level of resources and support, DISH Network simplifies and streamlines the local marketing experience for its retailers while motivating them to invest in local marketing.  

Beardbrand is a men’s grooming company that sells beard care products. This brand, which once sold its products on Amazon, decided that this sales channel no longer served them — though 10% of Beardbrand’s revenue came from Amazon sales, they realized this platform was intercepting direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales.  

As a result, the brand announced that its products would no longer be available on Amazon and shifted its focus to selling them on its website. As a result of this channel management move, Beardbrand gained greater pricing control and increased sales by over 20%.  

Navigating and resolving channel conflict is a crucial part of any channel management strategy. Why? Because with multiple distribution partners comes the potential for tension. But with the right conflict resolution tactics, you can ensure harmony across your partner network.  

This is exactly what Braas Monier did when it sensed the potential for conflict to arise among its distributors.  

Braas Monier is a building materials and roofing manufacturer with a large network of distributors. With so many distributors already selling the brand, the company knew adding more channels could potentially put a strain on their partner relationships. To diffuse the situation, Braas Monier decided to establish a new brand, MeinDach. In doing this, the company broke up business, resulting in faster sales cycles, increased annual revenue, and reduced customer acquisition costs.  

Nike is another great example of a brand that avoided potential conflict through proactive channel management.  

This brand sells its shoes both in-store and on its website, Nike.com. Naturally, when a brick-and-mortar store and e-commerce site both sell the same products, it can be easy for these channels to cannibalize revenue from one another. So, Nike decided to introduce Nike By You, an online-exclusive service that allows customers to customize their own Nike shoes. By offering products that are only available on Nike.com, the brand evaded channel conflict by reducing the amount of in-store vs. e-commerce competition.  

Honda is a major auto manufacturer with an extensive dealer network. Because Honda dealers are responsible for both marketing and selling its vehicles, the brand has an ad-builder site containing marketing assets dealers can use to promote their products. However, this portal housed many outdated, off-brand assets and catered mainly to its tier 2 dealers — excluding its tier 3 partners.  

To better equip this distribution channel for success, Honda revamped its ad-builder site with user-friendly features like asset customization, interactive previews, and streamlined ordering and downloads. In addition, the brand also created a new asset hierarchy with built-in quality controls to make brand-compliant materials easier for dealers to locate. Then, all customized assets would be automatically sent to corporate for approval.  

By improving digital asset management, Honda streamlined dealer-led marketing efforts while ensuring all local assets adhere to branding standards. 

Serta Simmons is one of North America’s biggest bedding manufacturers. Naturally, this brand sells its products through a large distribution network of retail partners. However, Serta noticed that these retailer partners were leaving a significant amount of co-op dollars unspent.  

To better support this channel, Serta Simmons decided to simplify the user experience by seamlessly integrating their co-op program with campaign activation, enabling retailers to easily use co-op funds for digital media efforts. This move encouraged more retail partners to invest their co-op funds, resulting in increased sales at the local level. 

Horizontal channel conflict is common for brands with extensive distribution channels. This is when conflict occurs between multiple partners within the same tier of a brand’s distribution channel. This type of discord often occurs when one channel partner sells a product at a lower price than another, creating an unfair advantage.  

Harry’s, a men’s grooming products brand, avoided horizontal conflict by establishing its razors at the same price across all of its distribution partners, such as Amazon, Walmart, and Target, eliminating price competition among these retailers.  

By examining these real-world examples of channel management, it’s clear that proactively maintaining both your sales and distribution channels is crucial to achieving success.  

Take control of your distribution network with Ansira, the platform designed to create harmony across your partner ecosystem. Get in touch with one of our experts to learn more.