Catarina Martins - (Un)learning Lessons in Channel Marketing

In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Catarina Martins, Global Channel Marketing Director at Schneider Electric, to unpack what strong marketing looks like when the route to market is anything but direct. Drawing on experience across Samsung, Google, and now global channel marketing at Schneider, Catarina shares why good marketing is still built on the same fundamentals, even when the buyer journey becomes more complex.

For channel professionals, this conversation gets practical fast. We explore her three-part framework for effective marketing: know your audience deeply, tell a brand story people want to believe in, and communicate it consistently in the right moments and channels. We also get into one of the hardest parts of channel marketing: proving impact. Catarina breaks down how to measure awareness and conversion more intelligently, how to connect marketing activity to sales outcomes without perfect data, and why the right signals matter more than chasing complete visibility.

We also dig into digital partner engagement in traditional industries. Catarina explains why digital adoption does not happen by pushing tools, but by building experiences partners actually want to return to. From meaningful rewards to tiered loyalty and simple user journeys, she shares how brands can turn partner programs into something that feels less like a system and more like a club worth joining. She closes with a sharp view on where B2B marketing is heading next, and why the brands that win will create real-world moments people remember, not just more content people scroll past.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we dive deep into the mysteries and the secrets of partnerships and the channel. I'm your host, Michelle. I'm head of marketing at Chanext, and I'm joined today by Katarina Martins, Global Channel Marketing Director at Schneider Electric. Katarina, how are things?

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Hi, it's so good. Thank you so much for having me today. Really excited to be in this podcast.

SPEAKER_00 0:28

Likewise, yeah, yeah. I think our prep call was a lot of fun. I'm sure we're gonna have a lot of interesting stuff to uh to talk about. Um, but let's get the uh the intros out of the way first. Could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Yeah, of course. So yeah, so my name is Katerina. I'm a marketeer based in the UK. And if I have to kind of summarize one thing, I've always been obsessed myself is to answer this big question: how can brands make the world better? So a bit about me, it's I've this is the reason why I've pursued my master's in strategic marketing at Imperial College. And I was always curious to answer this question. So during my studies, I um I also found co-founded a sustainability business called the Regional Clerk, which today is family-owned. And uh after my studies, I had a chance to work for some incredible brands. Uh I've worked for Samsung Electronics in the UK, managed, you know, the end-to-end marketing launches for their mobile division from big media campaigns, outdoor advertising to influencer partnerships, loyalty programs. So very exciting about that um uh journey in my career. And then um at Google as well, worked for that company. I led uh the development of their Google Nest um marketing campaigns and working very closely with the countries on go-to-market activations. And uh today I lead, as you as you said in the beginning, I lead the global channel marketing uh team at Schneider Electric for the residential segment. And I focus on building scalable partner programs for countries to deploy and help our partners grow, accelerate sales, and increase customer loyalty. So that's a bit about me in a very summarized um way and a bit about my career journey.

SPEAKER_00 2:15

That's incredible. I I think uh what's interesting to me hearing this, right, is most marketers I know, and I'm in some of those communities and things like that, but but also my friends, we go into either B2C or B2B, uh, and we generally kind of stick with that choice, if you know what I mean. But obviously, not you.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

No, yeah. I I went into a little challenge.

Three Principles Of Good Marketing

SPEAKER_00 2:38

I think challenge accepted, right? So marketing at Google, marketing at Samsung, uh, I think there you could probably make strategic and tactical decisions based on high volume, like direct customer behavior. But now not only are you at Schneider Electric, but you're also in the channel. So the go-to-market motion is far more indirect. So, what did that transition have as an impact on like what you think good marketing is?

SPEAKER_01 3:03

Yeah, that's such a good question. When we talk about good marketing, we could actually be speaking here for hours, right? We could spend hours on theories, frameworks, and case studies. But over time, I've realized something simpler. Sometimes as marketeers, we overcomplicate things. And there's this like three-principle framework that I've seen great marketing teams consistently use to build strong strategies. And the interesting part is regardless if you're in a B2C brand or a B2B brand, I think this three principle framework is applicable and what helps this fundamentals help build what we say quote unquote good marketing. So I can I can speak a little bit about that, the three principle framework that I use. I think, you know, like the the first step, you would assume a lot of every single marketer would have this in their in as their basics, but the step one is really know your audience. You know, every strong marketing strategy starts with one thing: not just understanding the audience demographics, but their reality. Like, who are they? What pressures are they under? What keeps them at night? And equally important, who are they trying to become? And if you don't get their pressure, your messaging is talking about features. But if you do, you talk about relief. It's the same. If you understand their ambition, who they want to become, you talk about progress. You talk about how the solution can help them become the best version of themselves. If you don't, you talk about features. So this is like universal in B2C companies. Uh, consumers aren't buying a product, they're buying confidence, simplicity, you know, nostalgia. They want to feel smart in B2B, you know, electricians, installers, distributors, they're buying competence, safety, being ahead of competition. So different buyers, different industry, but same human psychology. So when someone feels understood, your advert stops feel feeling like marketing. It starts sounding like, oh, they get me. And when someone feels that that they're already half feels that the brand gets you, they're you're they're halfway through the buying process. So I would say that's the number one, right? You probably have heard that a lot from the people that you you interview, but that's really a basic we can never forget. And then I would say step two is know your brand story. So people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. You know? And we've heard a lot this story. For example, at Schneider Electric, it's not about panels, switches, or sockets, it's about trust and doing the job right. So when a contractor chooses Schneider, they feel safe. The system will work, their clients will be happy, they'll deliver an efficient, sustainable, future-ready solution. So that's more than selling equipment, right? It's we're selling peace of mind. And again, this principle is the same with B2C brands. Think about it. You were speaking to me to me about this microphone that you just um purchased. So we don't need to speak about prices here, but I can almost guarantee that that microphone that you just purchased, another company can sell it for you cheaper. But you bought it because of the brand story, right? You buy because of what it can deliver, the promise that it delivers. So that's really important for brands to understand what's your brand story and be really consistent on how you say that. So I would say that's step two, uh, which I see in B2C brands or B2B. And then the final one is once you know your audience well, once you know your why and your brand story and you're consistent in how you do it, then it's all about how you communicate it, where you communicate it, and when do you communicate it. That's where I saw the biggest shift uh coming from a B2C to B2 world, because you know, in big B2C brands uh like Google and Samsung, consumers are likely to know already your brand. So your job is to amplify demand. Whereas at Schneider Electric, the consumer rarely ever interacts with the product during the buying decision. It's the professionals that you need to equip and enable. And you need to, as a brand, design influence where you're often not in the room. So there's many different that's where I had to unlearn a lot and understand what works well in the communication strategy for B2C brands, not always works well in the B2B. But ultimately, I would say these are the three principles. And if you understand your audience, you have a strong why and brand story, you communicate it consistently in the right channels at the right time, everything else flows, regardless if you're in a B2B marketing or B2C marketing.

SPEAKER_00 7:35

I think that's super concise and I love it. Uh at the end of the day, I totally agree with you that we overcomplicate things. This isn't exactly rocket science, and I think the reason why it isn't rocket science is because we're still people. Um and for the audience listening, if I've shared this quote before, I'm very sorry. I will share it multiple times over the coming episodes, but it's one of my favorite summaries of what you just mentioned. Um I was uh at an event in Barcelona in 2018, and there was this professional speaker. Normally I'm very quickly I tune out because it sounds too prepped. Uh, but this guy was really, really enthusiastic, empathic, it was it was fantastic to listen to, but he said something that really stuck with me. And he said, Everybody knows the concept of people buy from people. You've heard it a million times in a million sales books, and he says, but that's not where it ends. People buy from people, people buy from people they like, and people buy from people that are like them. And just hearing those three lines, those for a large part encompass what you are talking about as well, right? You need to know your customer and you need to have a brand that that actually resonates with them. And I think that's such an incredible way of positioning yourselves as either a marketeer or a salesperson, which there's not a huge amount of difference, you're just in different parts of the process. I loved hearing it that way because every time I talk to someone, I think, like, do I actually care about the person standing across from me? Because I have to. That's my job. Like, I have to genuinely care about these people. I have to genuinely trust that my product is a solution to what they're what they're looking for, and I have to do it at the right time. So I really love how you just explained that. I think this is something that mo far more markers should kind of live by.

SPEAKER_01 9:17

Yeah, 100%. It's bringing it back to the basics, right?

Measuring Indirect Impact In B2B

SPEAKER_00 9:20

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um you did just mention that there's a there's this uh disconnect between B2C and B2B and that shift that comes with some complexities potentially. Was there anything specifically you had to unlearn when you moved into channel-led B2B?

SPEAKER_01 9:37

I feel like um something what was interesting is how do we measure the success of our campaigns? And um what I really had to unlearn there is um how do we do it sometimes in a B2C brand and how do we do it in B2B brand where it's more indirect. But I actually find it super interesting because what I realize it's not about having the perfect data, where in a B2C world we tend to have more data to understand our consumer behavior, where in a B2B sometimes it's more indirect and we don't fully have that uh view of the the end user. But what I realize is the point really there is trusting the signals that actually matter. And we kind of spoke about this when during our prep talk, wasn't it? So I really feel like it's a really important thing to talk about because I feel like that's something markers really struggle sometimes. It's connecting the talk between marketing and sales. Um and and I can say here an example that has really helped me um, you know, really understand how to um learn as much as possible how to measure the success of the marketing campaign. So, for example, there was a campaign I worked on where the idea is when we built the marketing assets, it's to be using above-the-line channels, so to ultimately drive brand awareness and consideration, but also create assets for below the line, so to be used in paid media and retail. So the question is how do we we measured success in two ways? Awareness and conversion. So if we start with awareness, um, the goal is simple. As marketeers, our job is we want our brand to be thought of first, right? We want it to be easy to remember. So, Michelle, when you're thinking, okay, I want to buy this, can be anything, right? I need to buy a cleaning product for this specific um type of table. You want that brand, our brand, to come first into your mind, right? But how do we measure that concretely?

SPEAKER_00 11:36

There's like passive, passive awareness almost. Exactly. Really difficult to measure.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

Really difficult, right? You can't really pinpoint. So what we did, we used this exercise, which a lot of marketeers use it today, but sometimes we forget that this exists. We used what it called brand lift surveys on YouTube because a lot of the adverts were being played on our YouTube channel. It's one of the channels where we were able to reach our customers to drive awareness. So we show an ad to group A, and then we don't show the ad to group B. And then we ask both groups the exact same questions. So we say, Do you know this brand? Would you consider buying this if you thought of this problem? Do you think this what brand do you think could solve this solution? Then we compare the answers and the difference between the answers tells you the brand lift. So it basically tells you that the act, the ad actually changed how people think about the brand. And actually, interesting enough, the results we got from that campaign, we saw like more than 50% uh brand consideration uplift, which shows it's much more effective communicating that to the leadership team rather than impressions or clicks, right? It's much more impressive to say there has been a 50% brand uplift uh since we've launched this advert during the specific period. So that was one thing I've really had to learn how to do it properly and now use that um going forward. And then the second part is which we always get challenged, is okay, great. This drives brand awareness, but does it drive sales? Right? So you have to connect the dots. Um so what we it's quite tricky because so what we try to do was we use this exercise called casual impact modeling Python. I'm not sure if you've you've ever heard of it. It sounds really fancy, but here is too fancy for me. Here is a simple version. So imagine you run a campaign in a retail store and sales go up. The first talent you're gonna have in the leadership board is well, wait, sales always goes up during this time of the year. So how can you say that your campaign is the reason why the sales go up? So what this model does, it looks at historical sales from the past few years and it looks at how what the average sales is for each retail store in the specific region, and then it creates a trend. So it takes out seasonality, it takes out all those kind of external variables that could be influencing the hat the ups and downs of increase in sales, and it creates then a forecast. Okay, during this period, you're likely to sell this amount of products due to kind of the historical um, you know, analysis that we've done using this model. And what we can we saw is that the campaign, we used to compare the forecast with the actual sales that the store delivered, and that extra bump, probably your campaign. That's where you know that signal matters. And suddenly, here's a magic. Suddenly, one what once felt invisible becomes crystal clear. So I really had to like learn and learn how to measure success and how to communicate that to leadership because at the end of the day, marketing sometimes can be invisible, but it's so visible once you use the right tools and you right exercises and you trust the signals that matter the most.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

Yeah, I think that's a fascinating way of looking at things. And I it also shows that uh marketing, whether that's in the channel or direct or B2C or B2B, is pretty nuanced because the things you said made me rethink my approach. And and I have a pretty uh staunch opinion when it comes to marketing. When people ask me what metrics do you care about, and I say closed one deals. Yeah. But that's not entirely true because you can't close a deal if nobody knows who you are. So awareness is important, conversion is important, engagement is important, but it just matters about how honest you are, about how you track those metrics and how you look at them. And I think if you look at the channel partner space, I think you see something similar with um partner cohort analysis, right? Where you take a look at, hey, what if we enable this group of partners with X, Y, and Z? I don't know, uh specific marketing, specific specific campaigns in a box enablement. And what if we don't provide that to this other group of partners and then measure the revenue uplift difference?

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:54

It's a very organic way to see, okay, obviously we still can't with 100% confidence say uh there's a causal link here, but there's very strong correlation. And suddenly your data points become leading as opposed to lagging, and they become, like you said, a lot more clear also from a leadership perspective in how you how marketing is driving that change. So I think uh yeah, more companies should should definitely take a look at this kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

That's put on what you said. It's leading rather than lagging. Like you said, it will never be perfect, that's the reality. But if we see a correlation, that's when we can start having good data points to help infirm our strategies. Completely agree.

Getting Traditional Partners Digital

SPEAKER_00 16:32

Yeah, I think we would run into a potential challenge. And that potential challenge is that especially when you look at like mid-market or SMB, you're working with partners who might have been working the same way for decades, very relationship-driven, which I strongly recommend, and it's a super powerful way of selling, but obviously things are shifting, the technological paradigm is shifting. How do you get traditional partners to engage in a more digital and a more like marketing forward way without forcing behavior they don't want?

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Yeah, it's it's especially a very good question for where I'm at at the moment in Schneider Electric. Um, if I can be a bit more specific, you know, you probably can imagine those installers we work with, they've been doing the same thing for a few years and it's worked like it worked in the past. Um, so if we suddenly say, download this digital app and change a little bit how you work, there's gonna be resistance, right? Going back to our conversation, um, the question before, this is probably another way where you can measure loyalty uh performance, but at the same time, you need to find ways to engage digitally with them and to measure those loyalty points, right? So the first step is because from their perspective, the question is simple like why fix something that isn't broken? So the real challenge isn't getting someone to download a digital app or join a digital partner program. It's moving them from I don't need this to I actually want to use this every day. And that's that's a really tricky challenge. But if if I look at how in this industry brands have done it successfully, firstly, it starts with a clear and simple value proposition. So very simple, you know. So when, for example, I'll I'll give you an example. When an electrician joins Meischneider via app or web, they're not just downloading another digital tool, they're stepping into a partner universe, a digital space designed to support their work. They elevate their expertise and reward their craft. Great. Okay, value proposition clear, but the value must be immediate from the moment they start you joining the digital tool. So, for example, take the rewards part of our digital partner program. The first step is making those rewards meaningful. So you can't just assume that uh electricians or a consumer who is part of a bank company, they won't want the same type of rewards. So you have to be really understand what are the rewards that your electricians value the most. What we see is a pattern around rewards that help them in their daily work. So save time, reduce costs, make the job easier. So once you understand what rewards matter for them the most, right, they claim the reward and then they start saying, that's the first spark. Oh, this actually, this app makes my life easier. But that's just the beginning, right? They understand the value, they saw the value, but step two is how do you get them to engage frequently, right, with the with us directly with us through through the digital tools. So from a rewards program, I think it's really important that we build a multi-tier experience where partners or um the high value partners are rewarded differently. And also partners aren't just rewarded for purchases, but also for completing training, building expertise. And when we do that, something interesting happens. You advancing through, you know, those loyalty tiers stops being transactional and starts becoming emotional because now they're not just using an app anymore, they're showing their expertise, their status, their pride in the profession. So they're like joining a club and showing who they are inside that club. And that is really, really where you start building an emotional connection with them. And I really want to emphasize in this conversation here, which simplicity is super key in this type of digital experience. The strongest programs don't make people think harder. Rather, they're whether you're a consumer, an electrician, or you know, a distributor, we have to use behavioral science and consumer psychology, you know, like progress bars, milestones, visible advancement, um, in order for us to make it super simple for them to use our digital tool in seconds and get value immediately from it. So that's when when you put those things together, you're not forcing digital adoption anymore. And that's the difference. I really feel like the best brands don't push digital tools, they build clubs people want to join and make it super easy to join.

SPEAKER_00 21:05

I love that perspective. And I also think that it embraces the mutual nature of the vendor-partner relationship. Um, vendors are also nothing without their partners, right? And it's so important to emphasize that this isn't just something as as flat as a sales channel, so to speak, right? It's about building these relationships because everybody knows the long term is far more important than short-term tactical moves, right? Than that single sale. And if you do have an electrician that understands the Schneider value prop, but also understand how that fits into his day day-to-day life, you're gonna get an entirely different relationship once this person understands the rewards they're getting for being a part of this. And the great thing is if everything goes correctly, they're being rewarded for loyalty to a program that they love anyway. And I think that's why having a strong brand is also so incredibly important. I mean, you can't Just trick people into selling your product, right? You can build loyalty programs that basically overvalue every single person in the program, but that is also a short-term play. So here it's it's back to what you said at the beginning, right? It's knowing your audience, whether that's the end customer or the partner, it's understanding your brand and it's understanding the channels through which you you share that brand. So I think that's a nice way to kind of return to the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

It always goes back to knowing your audience for sure, 100%.

unknown 22:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:33

I think we could talk about marketing for ages because I've got some really fancy sounding frameworks that I can throw your way as well, but we're not going to bore the audience with my insane ramblings about marketing frameworks. What I do want to do is I want to ask you, um, we always ask our guests to uh nominate the next guests on the podcast. Who do you think we should have next and why?

SPEAKER_01 22:54

So I've worked in incredible companies with fantastic leaders, you know, like Google. I have, you know, so many names, Marianne, Ilalia, and Samsung, I have, you know, Charlie Northfield, Henry Brains. There's so many names I can give you, but I think not just a colleague of mine, but a close friend of mine, which has been, you know, we've been together in this career journey, working very closely together, uh, and really being our biggest cheerleader is. I would say Henry Bray would probably be someone I could nominate. I would love to see him in this podcast 100%.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

What does he do and where?

SPEAKER_01 23:28

So he's at Samsung at the moment. Um and when I was out working at Samsung, he used to be in the channel marketing team.

2026 Trend From Ads To Experiences

SPEAKER_00 23:35

That sounds like a great nomination, especially someone I'll I'll definitely reach out to. Um, fantastic. Hey, to wrap this up, do you have any final insights, tips, tricks that you'd like to share with the audience?

Psychology Of Attention And Closing

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Um I would say maybe we can um maybe just to finalize, speak a little bit about like what's the 2026 B2B trend that we're seeing. Um I find it, I find it super interesting, and I thought it could be useful um to share. Um because I keep seeing like a lot of marketeers actually like asked the question like, how do we build loyalty and emotional connection in a world flooded with content? Um, because the reality is, you know, we've hit peak content. AI is generating content at scale, feeds are crowded, and attention spans are down to three seconds, and tomorrow we don't even know it might be one second. So I think one super interesting um trend I'm seeing is that brands that are winning are the ones that are reclaiming attention in the world world, you know, through out of out-of-home campaigns, live moments, and experiential marketing. So the kind of experiences you simply can't scroll past. So I'm really seeing that shift happening uh in marketing the future. We're moving from storytelling to story living because behavioral science tells us around 98% of our decisions are like what we call system one, which is like fast, emotional, instinctive. We don't choose brands because of specs, we choose them because of how they make us feel. And experience taps straight into that. You know, like having seen Samsung in London, for example, they partnered with um a restaurant chains, and they called this campaign called Secret Menu, where only people with Samsung phone uh mobile uh would be able to unlock hidden dishes through a QR code. And that will spark like a conversation in the table about the brand. And they've this is just one example out of many brands that I'm currently seeing building this story living. And um, when people experience a brand, it sticks in them in the memory in a way content rarely can. And in the future, we can leverage VR, AR to take this to another level. So I think the last thing to say is the brands that win today won't feel like ads. They feel like moments we were part of because loyalty today is really built through story living, and that's something I'm super excited to see in podcasts and news, just to see how brands continue to build that experience and targeting our customers and building long-term friend loyalty.

SPEAKER_00 26:08

There's one thing that I have to add to that.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

And that's that it ties into another part of uh cognitive psychology, and that is if you look at attention spans, right? You mentioned that we're at like three seconds now, we might go to one second. Experiences that are new for you are perceived as taking longer. So this actually might even be a way to spread out the limited time that we have to really make additional impact and get that feeling of impact with people that are experiencing those special moments. And I totally agree. And again, it comes back to using the tech that we have to build real relationships, right? To build real experiences. I think that's a fantastic point to end on.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

100%. Yeah, this is we could be spending hours here, couldn't we, Michelle, speaking all about what interesting time we've been seeing, a few frameworks, but um no, it's been great. It's been great speaking with you for sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Absolutely, likewise. So thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and taking the time to speak with me. And for you, dear listeners, thanks for tuning in and see you in the next episode. Thanks, Katarina.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

Thank you.