Channel Marketing Manager

Overview:

The Channel Marketing Manager is responsible for the strategic planning and implementation of channel and customer-specific growth plans that drive market share and profitable revenue growth for the Secure Storage product lines in the retail channel. This role will partner cross-functionally with product marketing, brand marketing, finance, supply chain, sales, and customer teams to set category and new product growth targets for their assigned channel & customers, develop strategic channel and customer business plans, and then translate plans into marketing programming, execution, and field activation that creates customer and end user conversion opportunity. The Channel Marketing Manager will be looked upon by peers, leaders, and cross functional partners as the internal expert of their channels. They will use knowledge of industry, keen competitive understanding, in-depth channel & customer acumen, and strong cross-functional collaboration to achieve channel and customer success.

Responsibilities:

Channel:

• Strategic Planning: Participate in the strategic planning process, recommending growth and distribution strategies, conversion programming and marketing initiatives for the channel to meet business, brand, and financial objectives.
• New Product Commercialization: Partner cross functionally to develop channel distribution strategies and go-to-market/commercialization plans that maximize new product potential in the channel. From business case through launch, advocate for assigned channel and collaborate with development teams to ensure success of new product concepts with customers and end users.
• Category Management: Serve as the expert on the use of syndicated data to assist sales and business segment leads into making well informed decisions from actionable insights. Generate weekly, monthly, and ad hoc reporting to provide insights, identify opportunities and deliver solutions that drive profitable category growth. Leverage analytics to inform innovation pipeline and build future portfolio that drives trade up, grows margin and increases share of shelf.
• Budget: Partner with Senior Channel Manager to effectively plan and allocate available funding for channel to maximize ROI and manage programming within available budgets.

Customer:

• Joint Business Planning: Participate in Joint Business Planning process for customers within channel, aligning on core strategies to drive growth. Collaborate with customer teams, strategic account managers/sales leaders, and internal cross functional teams to deliver annual plans and programs that drive end user demand and customer growth. Monitor for success and adjust as necessary. 
• Line Review Management: Coordinate the line review process from start to finish, compile and leverage category insights to make recommendations for optimal assortment, planogram space allocation, flow, and execution. 
• Collaborative Marketing Planning: Partner with Customers’ marketing teams to create annual demand generation plans aligned to joint business objectives. Partner with internal creative teams and customers’ creative teams to develop customer-specific marketing assets, collateral, promotions, advertising, digital activation, and merchandising. Ensure adherence to internal ProDriven Brand Standards in all customer executions. 
• New Product Activation: Provide customer insights to fuel new product development and distribution strategies. Leverage customer insights and collaboration to inform market opportunity & forecast, distribution strategies, and go to market strategies to ensure success with customer targets. 
• Shows & Events: Set strategies for executing customer events/trade shows, that build ProDriven brands’ equity and drive conversion among customer & end user targets.

• Bachelor’s Degree (emphasis in business/marketing or related field) 
• 5+ years of experience working with a leading consumer goods company (Channel/Trade Marketing, Category Management, Product Marketing, Brand Marketing, National Account Sales or related position) 
• Experience in channel and category management for a major national retailer, Hardware or Mass channel preferred. 
• Demonstrated knowledge of channel marketing and category management philosophies, tools and processes and proven record of success. 
• Having held a channel or category lead role is highly preferred. 
• Ability to build strong sustainable working relationships with the customer, and cross functionally within Sales and Marketing 
• Strategic thinking, self-starter with ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously with aggressive deadlines. 
• Advanced analytical skills and computer software proficiency (Excel, PowerPoint, SharePoint, PowerBI, etc.) 
• Prior experience analyzing retailer data and presenting key findings and recommendations to senior level executives. 
• Proven ability to analyze and identify insights from a combination of data sources. 
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills 
• Strong project management, follow-up, organizational, communication and presentation skills 
• Ability to travel up to 10-15%