5 Strategies for Strengthening Dealer Marketing & Relationships
By Two Rivers Marketing
Don’t leave revenue on the table. Improve the marketing and sales capabilities of your local field and dealer teams to ensure that everyone across the network is operating at the top of their game.
The essential bridge
For most B2B companies, customers engage primarily with your local dealers, distributors, and field reps. These channel partners are the face of your brand to customers and prospects, with the ability to make — or break — deals that have a lasting financial impact on your company. Are all of the people in your channel team delivering solid performance? Or are some falling through the cracks?
It’s critical to get this right. You can have a powerful national or global brand, but if you can’t deliver locally, you’ll give up market share and revenue that could’ve been yours.
Local discovery is being driven by AI
The rise of AI search has increased the importance of having just as strong a local presence online as in real life. Technology that was once considered sophisticated for channel partners is now considered table stakes for your customers. To compete, your local dealers and reps need to appear in the places your customer is searching — or be invisible.
Check your local reps’ sales and marketing maturity
Your channel partners’ current digital marketing capabilities will tell you where sales enablement efforts are going well — and where there’s still room to grow.
Building (Grade C): Channel partners have an accurate local brand presence with claimed listings, a consistent name, address, and phone number, a quality website, and visibility in local search.
Mastering (Grade B): They actively manage relationships and reputation through reviews, organic social, local paid media, and an engaging website.
Leading (Grade A+): They’re an AI-ready local authority, with structured data for AI, full directory coverage, and an omnichannel presence.
Develop local marketing leaders for your B2B company
Training and support are the best ways to level up your channel partners. At Two Rivers Marketing, we’ve built a channel marketing curriculum around improving sales enablement capabilities for B2B companies in agriculture, construction, banking/finance, and more. The industries may change, but the core skills are consistent. Here’s what you need to train on to get an A-level channel partner network.
Listings Management. Listings support local recommendations and real-time local data. Once the dealer’s local listing is live, management is the active, ongoing process of monitoring and syncing the their core business data like name, address, phone, hours, and services accurately across all online directories and search platforms (Google Business Profile, Bing, Yelp, OpenAI, Dola, and Gemini).
Why it matters: Accurate, consistent listings help nearby buyers find and choose a dealer first. Conflicting or outdated info breaks buyer trust, weakens local SEO, and hands visibility and sales to competitors.
Reputation Management. Online reviews are vital to how your company and the local dealer are perceived. That requires actively generating customer reviews, monitoring and responding to them (including handling negative feedback), and amplifying the positive ones across search and review platforms.
Why it matters: Most customers read reviews before buying. By offering a steady stream of fresh, well-managed reviews, dealers — and companies — build the trust signals that win local buyers and improve rankings.
Organic Social. Posting consistent, authentic content like customer stories, how-tos, and expert tips builds brand presence and engagement on social platforms.
Why it matters: Your target customers are on social media daily, so a dealer's authentic local social presence reaches customers where they already are and carries credibility that drives awareness, engagement, and leads. See how we helped an OEM deliver extraordinary engagement through a focused organic social offering for dealers.
Paid Social. There are opportunities to post paid ads on any social network, but in the B2B/professional space, LinkedIn should make the cut every time. LinkedIn profile targeting offers you a precise way to reach new buyers by company, job function, and industry.
Why it matters: LinkedIn targeting adds high-quality new prospects to help you recover lost leads and expand your sales pipeline.
Digital Ads and Paid Search. These ads appear on the webpages your customers’ visit and at the top of the search results page when someone actively searches a relevant query that you’ve bid on. For local channel partners, two of the most effective digital ad types, depending on the goal you want to reach, are Performance Max (PMax) and Search on Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.
PMax is an automated, AI-driven Google campaign that serves your ads across the whole Google ecosystem (YouTube, Maps, Gmail, Search, Display) from assets you provide, finding people who behave like your customers even before they search. PMax and Search campaigns can be also developed on Microsoft Ads, which run across the Microsoft Search Network (Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo) and Audience Network, with the unique ability to target by LinkedIn profile as well.
Why it matters: SEM captures high-intent, ready-to-act local buyers at the exact moment they're searching for what you sell and places your result high on the page, making it an efficient way to generate qualified leads and calls right now. PMax and Search campaigns extend channel partners’ reach well beyond keyword search. PMax builds brand recall and surfaces new look-alike leads with photo/video that builds visual trust, while Microsoft campaigns add high-intent Bing buyers plus precise B2B/contractor targeting via LinkedIn so dealers reach more of the right buyers and generate more leads.
Dealer Website. It’s not enough to just have a website anymore: Customers expect engaging web experiences — even from local dealers. The best channel partners offer interactive, action-oriented sites with compelling hero visuals, video, testimonials, and clear calls to action so visitors stay longer, trust the business, and take the next step. Through remarketing, which reengages people who visited the site or started a form but left without finishing, you can show them ads to bring them back to your site.
Why it matters: Many B2B purchases are complex considered decisions that involve a great deal of research and customers visiting sites multiple times. Remarketing gives dealers a second chance to convert leads they’ve already earned. An engaging site converts traffic instead of losing it to bounces, turning the interest that listings, search, and social generates into actual leads and sales. It's the local storefront where the conversion happens.
AI Search. Generative engine optimization (GEO) and answer engine optimization (AEO) focus on getting your business to surface in AI-driven search results. This includes optimizing content, listings, and structured data so channel partners get cited in AI-powered search tools.
Why it matters: A large, fast-growing share of buyers now start research in AI, so if your channel partners don’t have clean, consistent, structured data that gets them found by AI, they’re effectively invisible to your customers and prospects.
Traditional Media. Channel partners still see a lot of benefit from more traditional forms of media, including billboards and other signage, direct mail, vehicle wraps, radio ads, print placements, and local sponsorships (high school sports is a popular option for many).
Why it matters: Playing an active, visible role in the community is important to the success of a local business. When your customers and prospects see and hear your company name in the places where they live, shop, commute, work, and play, it builds awareness and familiarity that’s crucial for your brand.
Events. Local and regional trade shows and events allow dealers/reps to meet customers and prospects, spread awareness, and be visible to the community. To support their channel partners, some B2B companies provide professionally designed “event in a box” materials that include banners, table covers, and backdrops for partners to use at events.
Why it matters: By providing professional co-branded materials, the “event in a box” elevates dealers’ physical presence at local and regional events in a turnkey way so your brand is well-represented everywhere, every time.
Level Up Your Channel Partners With 2RM
At Two Rivers Marketing, we specialize in channel marketing, helping our B2B clients improve the sales enablement skills of their local dealers and sales partners. Contact our team today to see how we can help you take your channel to the next level.
