How Can Brands Better Navigate Economic Disruptions?

Regardless of industry, your business has likely been impacted by disruption over the last three years. From manufacturing shortages and supply chain issues to shifting consumer priorities, the ability to safely predict your revenue and ROI is unsurprisingly harder than ever.  

If we compare running a business to sailing a ship, there’s no doubt many of you are trying to navigating through choppy waters, but that doesn’t mean you have to steer blindly. Despite economic cutbacks and rising costs, the tide is turning in favor of brands that leverage incentives to build loyalty, support partners, dealers, and resellers, and create predictable revenue – and the data shows it. 

Illustrating the data: All industries face these challenges in 2023 

In our latest infographic eBook, Navigating the C’s of Unpredictability, we describe the top 5 challenges businesses across all industries face in 2023, including insights and data pulled from our latest 2023 State of Channel Incentives Report. 

An interesting takeaway is that while 90% of C-suite stakeholders describe incentives as a top investment priority in the next year, they also cite insufficient models for non-traditional incentives as a top challenge, followed closely by difficulty justifying incentive programs not tied to transactions.  

In other words, decision makers still struggle to develop innovative incentive programs that go beyond cash. Or, at the very least, they’re concerned their current cash programs won’t be enough to sustain them if there’s a recession. They also want robust programs that can support revenue goals through economic downturns, but don’t know how to use technology to automate complexities.  

Again, this is unsurprising if you’re already in the same boat. So the real question is, how can brands leverage both traditional and non-traditional incentives to better navigate disruption, and which technology or platform will best support their ecosystem? 

“All Hands on Deck” to build sustainable, ROI-boosting incentive programs 

The best answer is that it requires “all hands on deck.” When you’re already facing cutbacks and other “C’s” (challenges described in our eBook, like compliance), investing in new programs or technology requires confidence. 

This means you’ll need: 

• Partners who have a careful understanding of your own partner ecosystem and consumer habits (what motivates them to sell or what compels them to buy). 
• Technology that simplifies application complexity with flexibility and also helps you manage challenges like payments and compliance 
• Strategies that include both traditional and non-traditional incentives and reward that help you capture mindshare and market share.

Basically, the best way through the storm is to not sail alone. Use the knowledge and resources available through partnerships with technology experts to build a better ship. When unpredictability is the only thing you can predict, it pays to have someone who knows the best routes to take.  

Resources to get you started 

Since we already describe a few of the necessities for an effective incentives partnership in our eBook, we encourage you to check it out: Navigating the C’s of Unpredictability. 

But if you’re one of the 90% of decision makers who already knows the value of incentives but still struggles with industry-specific challenges, or you’re curious about incentive technology and automation, here are a few additional resources that will help set your sights on the far shore: 

• Cultivating and Managing Healthy Channel Ecosystems (Videocast) 
• Is Your Partner Ecosystem a Revenue Engine? (Videocast) 
• Technology: Delivering outstanding ROI and global sales performance (Case Study)
  

About 360insights 

360insights is a partner engagement and business optimization company that enables brands to better influence, manage, and engage with their complex channel ecosystems. The company offers a SaaS platform that empowers brands to manage promotional spend across co-marketing and advertising, pricing, rebates, SPIFFs, and rewards. Combining incentive management and ecosystem orchestration with a powerful data analytics engine, 360insights serves more than 300 of the most recognizable brands around the world, across multiple industries, helping them boost their indirect business.