In business marketing, it's easy to confuse the primary audience of a brand. Companies in the channel (your distributors, wholesalers, dealers, retailers and so forth) are the ones who actually buy your product, aren't they? That makes them your customers. And they're very important to the success of your business.

But brands have other, more important customers: the people who purchase and use your brand's products. It may be a remodeling contractor installing your brand of roofing or lighting fixtures. It may be an IT manager at a company installing your software. It could be a printing press operator using your brand of ink in his printing press.

These are important people to your brand. Because this is where brand loyalty is built: at the point of contact. And if they are disappointed, they won't be going back to your distributors and dealers (your channel) to buy more. They could likely switch to another brand.

Sure the channel is important, but it all begins with the end user. Make your brand important to them, and the job of selling the channel on the merits of your brand gets so much easier.

Some companies, in an effort to serve multiple channels of distribution, develop so-called "channel brands" or brands designed to placate channel customers.

They're afraid that customers might be upset if the products are sold in competing channels (say, through distribution and direct to retailers). That's a slippery slope.

Channel brands add complexity and cost, not to mention confusion, to the end user. Plus, about the time you develop a brand to please one channel customer, another channel customer will probably demand access to that brand. And so it goes.

Best advice: focus the brand on the end user. Build your brand promise. Then put compelling programs in place to serve your channel customers.