Through-channel marketing is software that lets a brand run local advertising for the dealers, franchisees and independent shops that sell its products, and manage the money it shares with them to pay for that advertising. It is also called distributed marketing or channel marketing. It is sold mainly in the United States, where many brands sell through thousands of local dealers.
Why does a brand need it? A brand that makes air conditioners, cars or mattresses often does not sell to customers directly. Local businesses sell for it. These businesses are its channel partners, and selling through them is called channel sales. Each dealer wants local advertisements with its own address and phone number. The brand wants every advertisement to use the correct logo, prices and claims. Without software, dealers make their own advertisements, and many of them break the brand's rules.
The money is the second problem. Many brands set aside co-op funds for their dealers. A co-op fund is money that the brand pays towards each dealer's local advertising. Usually a dealer earns it as a share of what it buys from the brand, and the brand repays part of each advertisement's cost. Checking each claim by hand, with invoices and screenshots, takes office staff weeks.
Say a heating and air-conditioning brand in the United States has 600 independent dealers. Each dealer earns co-op funds equal to 2% of what it buys from the brand. One dealer in Arizona bought $250,000 of equipment last year, so it has $5,000 in its fund. It logs in to the brand's portal and picks a ready-made "summer AC service" advertisement. It adds its address and phone number, and sets a budget of $2,000 for search and social media advertisements within 15 kilometres of its shop. The software checks the advertisement against the brand's rules. It buys the advertising space through a demand-side platform (DSP). When the campaign ends, the software already has the receipts. So it pays the dealer back 50% of the cost, $1,000, and $4,000 remains in the fund.
The brand sees every dealer's campaign in one place. It can see which regions spent their funds, and which advertisements brought calls. Some brands also reward dealers who reach a sales target, through a rewards and incentives platform.
In India, car, two-wheeler and paint brands also sell through thousands of dealers. But most software of this exact kind is built for the United States market. This product is different from a customer engagement platform, which sends messages from the brand straight to its own customers. Through-channel marketing helps the brand's partners advertise, under the brand's rules.