How to Choose a TCMA Vendor

Dealing With Regional Variability

Gating variable and non-variable assets by user group or region needs to work for you. It’s not just about creating content for Ohio and separate content for Pennsylvania because your images and legal copy are different between states. Your TCMA platform should be able to have one asset that applies the variable gating parameters within the asset itself. This helps streamline the amount of content you need, drive down costs, and make updates down the road quicker and more strategic.

Allow Your Channel Partners to Customize and Co-brand

Managing your brand goes beyond the assets you allow your channel partners to customize and co-brand. Ensuring they have the proper and best-in-class paths to execute the content is essential. Your TCMA platform should provide native integrations with Salesforce Marketing Cloud and other email service providers that will scrub against your unsubscribe lists and provide fundamental email reporting back to both the channel partner and your corporate marketing team. These integrations only begin to capture the number of crucial automations needed to allow channel partners to market you brand more effectively.

Fund Management

Organizations manage funds for their channel partners in a plethora of ways. Some provide small budgets to be spent on a corporate approved e-commerce store. Others provide millions of dollars across their channel partners while requiring proof of performance to guarantee the brand is being correctly portrayed across many different marketing tactics. No matter how you structure your fund program, your TCMA partner should be capable of enabling utilization through the platform and offer consultation to assist you with evolving your programs to better meet the challenges you and your channel partners may face.

Through-channel marketing automation platforms with brand management and fund management capabilities give channel partners one less stop along the way to marketing your brand, and that ultimately leads to higher engagement. Providing the channel partner with an easy-to-use platform to facilitate budgets, pre-approvals (e.g. branding and funding), proof of performance, and funds reimbursement will give you better insight into how your channel is marketing and how much they are investing in your brand at the local level.

Marketing Services

Consolidation is key to success with marketing execution services. The last thing you want is your channel partner trying to manage your brand at the local level by utilizing a handful of different vendors that you don’t have relationships with. We segment your marketing services needs into three buckets:

Creative Services and Print

Resources to easily manage custom creative requests within your brand guidelines, like resize requests for a local church bulletin or yearbook ad, and expertise to manage print at a cost that smaller partners can digest. Most of your channel doesn’t have the budget or need for 10,000 flyers, so flexibility prevents waste and saves them money.

Media Placement and Events

Scalability to assist your channel partners to purchase the right media placements at a negotiated rate, and a repository of prequalified local events, complemented with access to event materials that support pre- and post-event efforts.

Social and Digital

Allow channel partners to publish content, monitor their social activity, engage with their social communities, promote key posts, manage online reputations, and optimize online search.

Consolidation and Integration

Choosing a TCMA partner doesn’t have to be overwhelming. Consolidation and integration are key. Seek an all-in-one platform to manage, execute, and track channel marketing activity, and make sure it plays nice with your existing technology.

Want to Learn More About BrandMuscle’s TCMA Solution?

Brand Management to enable local channel partners to personalize and execute brand and legal compliant marketing campaigns.

Fund Management to optimize your marketing strategy with flexible MDF and co-op programs for your partners.

Marketing Execution to help your marketing channel partners implement effective, scalable, and brand compliant marketing campaigns that drive business impact.