Marketing
Build and align the distribution channel
When growth calls for new channels, design the value chain, manage channel conflict, and align the physical and digital routes to market.
Your learning route
The program order
Complete the programs in order to finish the route. Each one brings short lessons, applied practice and a realistic business case together.
Plus and Pro members can create a verifiable Stratify certificate when the route is complete.
- Program 01
Channels of distribution: foundations and stewardship
Foundational: how a product travels from producer to customer, and the stewardship view that governs that route. By the end of this program you can lay out the four channel options for an offering, calculate how margins stack down a chain, separate design decisions from management decisions, and map an industry's channels with the four forces.
- The route a product takes to the world
- Channel functions and the margin math
- Design decisions and management decisions
Apply it: Case: mapping Tindall Lighting's channels
7 lessons · ≈3 hours
- Program 02
Designing the channel value chain
Intermediate: you design a route to market from a clean slate or rebuild one that already exists. By the end of this program you can settle the direct versus indirect question against six conditions, build a channel value chain with the seven-step framework, and choose coverage intensity and channel structure.
- The six conditions
- DTC: the brand is the channel
- Building the value chain
Apply it: Case: Beta Company enters the SME market
6 lessons · ≈4 hours
- Program 03
Channel alignment, power, and multiple channels
Advanced: you take an established channel system and run it to high performance. By the end of this program you can balance hard and soft power, run the four-step alignment process, resolve horizontal conflict between intermediaries, and manage multiple channels as an integrated, segmented, or competing system.
- Hard power: product and access
- Soft power: trust and commitment
- The four-step alignment process
Apply it: Case: Padstow Olive Oil sorts out its channels
6 lessons · ≈4 hours