Marketing beyond visibility

Faraz Ali Khan, Marketing Director at ASBIS Middle East in a conversation with CXO DX  discusses how the company is sharpening its focus on partner engagement, demand generation and solution positioning, while making marketing more measurable and closely aligned with business growth. He also discusses growth opportunities across AI, data centre infrastructure and enterprise storage, alongside the continued expansion of ASBIS’ technology portfolio.

What are your top priorities for strengthening ASBIS’ marketing strategy across the region, and what key outcomes are you aiming to achieve over the next 12–18 months?

Our biggest goal in ASBIS is to make marketing more strategic, measurable and connected to business growth. ASBIS Middle East operates in highly diversified markets such as mature economies like UAE, Saudi Arabia other GCC countries and high growth emerging markets in Africa. Our marketing strategy has to be flexible, localized and business driven.

In the next 12-18 months, we are focused on four key areas like ASBIS B2B portal, partner engagement, demand generation, and solution positioning. We want to go beyond traditional campaign execution and build marketing programs that help vendors build more visibility in the market and help partners convert opportunities into business.

And the second important priority is to improve the quality of our communication. In today’s marketplace, partners are bombarded with unnecessary information so the message needs to be relevant, clear and useful. No matter if we’re selling components, server, data centre solutions, storage, networking, unified communication, video collaboration, printing, sound equipment, gaming or consumer tech, the aim is to connect the solution to a real business need.

The key results we want to achieve are more partner loyalty, better campaign ROI, more lead generation, more vendor collaboration and more measurable contribution to the sales pipeline and leverage our vendor funding to get maximum business impact. For us, marketing is not just about visibility. It is about trust, enabling partners and growing the business sustainably.

As distribution becomes increasingly value-driven rather than purely transactional, how is marketing evolving to create stronger business value for both vendors and channel partners?

Distribution has changed a lot. It was more availability, logistics, pricing and product movement in the past. These basics are still very important, but today the vendors and partners demand much more from distribution. They want market intelligence, demand generation, training, sales enablement, digital campaigns, partner engagements, events and development with business impact.

Marketing is becoming a much more central part of this transformation process now. As mentioned, it’s not just about product availability anymore. We’re working on full go-to-market narratives around solutions, customer pain points and partner opportunities.

Vendors use channel marketing to build awareness, educate the market, generate demand and reach out to a wide variety of partner communities. For channel partners, marketing helps to simplify complex technologies, better position solutions and start new opportunities with customers.

This is where value added distribution becomes powerful. We are a bridge between the global technology vendors and the regional channel partners, so we understand both sides. We translate vendor strategy into local execution, helping partners turn technology trends into business opportunities. That’s how marketing bridges the gap between brand awareness and revenue.

Looking back over the past year, what have been some of ASBIS’ most significant business achievements across the region? How has marketing contributed to accelerating growth, partner engagement, and demand generation?

We had a very good year on a global and regional basis. The ASBIS Group reported record revenue performance in 2025, supported by strong momentum in AI, value-added distribution and technology demand across its markets. The company also reported strong year-over-year sales growth in early 2026, which reflects the strength of the business model and the confidence of vendors and partners.

Regionally, ASBIS Middle East sustained its position throughout the Middle East and Africa via vendor partnerships, partner events, market expansion, solution-focused campaigns and industry recognition. We’ve also seen strong engagement across categories like components, data centre, enterprise storage, networking, AI PCs, video collaboration, printing, gaming and Apple ecosystem products. Events, trainings, webinars, LinkedIn communication, email campaigns, PR activities, tradeshows, exhibitions and partner enablement programs helped us build stronger connections across the channel.

One of the most important things in marketing is to provide consistency. Business growth is not achieved by one campaign only. This is achieved by constant communication, regular contact, strong follow-up and building trust with partners. That’s where marketing plays a very important role.

Which technology segments or solution areas are currently generating the strongest momentum for ASBIS, and where do you see the biggest growth opportunities over the next few years?

We’re witnessing strong momentum across many technology areas. For ASBIS, AI PCs, data centre infrastructure, enterprise storage, servers, smart infrastructure and gaming are all important growth segments.

AI is one of the biggest drivers, no doubt. It is affecting nearly every category from processors and PCs to servers, storage, cloud infrastructure and enterprise applications. When organizations embrace AI, they need stronger infrastructure, more powerful devices, secure networks and reliable storage platforms. This creates opportunities.

In my opinion, data centre solutions are another area of significant growth, particularly as businesses in the region and Government invest in AI workloads, edge computing and data security. As organizations generate and manage more and more data, storage, servers, enterprise SSDs and related infrastructure will continue to grow.

Another significant opportunity is premium technology ecosystem, including Apple products, professional devices, accessories and customer experience led retail and channel models. The recent expansion of ASBIS’ Apple distribution footprint into 14 additional African countries is a major milestone and creates new opportunities in high-growth markets.

I think the biggest opportunities in the next few years will be around solution bundling, partner specialization and market education. Partners who can transition from product selling to solution selling will be better positioned for long-term growth.

Partner enablement has become increasingly important in today’s competitive market. How does ASBIS help channel partners maximize their marketing investments through MDF, digital campaigns, events, lead generation, and sales enablement initiatives?

This is the key components of our marketing practice, Partner Enablement. Many of our partners are great at sales, but they might struggle with things like building campaigns, communicating value propositions, reaching the right audience, or converting vendor programs into measurable business.

ASBIS offers partners structured marketing support in different areas. This includes MDF planning, MARCOM, email marketing, social media content, webinars, product trainings, partner events, lead generation activities, solution presentations and localised communication.
We also partner with vendors to ensure MDF dollars are spent efficiently. The goal is not just to spend the budget, but to spend it in a way that creates visibility, engagement and measurable results.

Events and trainings are still very important in our region as channel business is still relationship driven. Partners want to be able to communicate directly, face to face, to have product knowledge and be confident before they take solutions. We want to help our partners get more value out of each and every marketing activity. It might be a small training, a digital campaign or a large partner event, but the goal is always the same: create awareness, build confidence and generate business opportunities. A decent MDF plan should help build brand awareness and generate business.

How do you measure the success and ROI of partner marketing programmes? Which KPIs matter most when evaluating campaign effectiveness?

Measuring ROI is very important because marketing should be tied to results for business. But when it comes to channel marketing, ROI should not be measured only by the direct sales result. Some programs are designed for creating awareness, others for creating leads, some for educating partners, some for building the potential business. We measure the success of our programs according to its objective.

The main KPIs are partner attendance, level of engagement, number of leads, pipeline creation, sales conversion, partner participation, reach, email open/click rate, social media engagement, sometimes event feedback and finally follow up.

Another very important KPI is the behaviour of partners, if partners request for more info, register opportunities, attend trainings or events, promote solutions and start conversations with customers that means your campaign brings the value.

In my opinion, effective marketing is not just about figures presented in a report. It is about the quality of impact also.

How has your collaboration with vendors evolved, particularly around joint GTM strategies, digital marketing, AI-powered campaigns, and pipeline development?

Vendor collaboration also becomes more strategic. Now we collaborate more closely with vendors on target markets, partner segments, messaging and selecting the best format for the campaign. Digital marketing has taken on added importance as it enables faster communication, better measurement and reaching out to a greater number of partners.

AI is helping us with improving our campaign creation, content development, audience targeting and performance assessment as well. However, as was pointed out by me in an earlier interview, AI is meant to strengthen relationships and not weaken them. It enables us to be more relevant and responsive.

Regarding pipeline development, it becomes a key focus of the collaboration between vendors. They want to understand the impact that marketing efforts have on business development and partner engagement. This is a very positive trend as it has increased the value of marketing.

What qualities do vendors now expect from distribution marketing teams beyond traditional brand awareness campaigns?

Today, vendors require strategic, data driven, creative and commercial marketers who can think strategically about distribution. It includes planning, localization of the content, segmentation of the partners, digital skills, event execution, lead generation and analysis. It also requires us to have a good understanding of how to position vendor’s products and communicate their value to the local partners and customers.

Yet another skill we need is Flexibility. Relational management is also essential to vendors. In our region, trust, communication, and follow up play an important role. An effective distribution marketing team needs to have the ability to operate with vendors, sales teams, product managers, and other partners simultaneously.

Above all, vendors expect marketing to deliver business results. While they appreciate the visibility, they need engagement and growth.

ASBIS recently expanded its collaboration with Apple. What strategic opportunities does this partnership create for your partners and customers, and how does it strengthen your regional portfolio?

Apple’s partnership is definitely a significant step forward for ASBIS. ASBIS Middle East is now an official distributor of Apple products in 14 more African countries. These countries include Algeria, Benin, Mali, Mauritania, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Niger, Guinea-Bissau, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Cabo Verde, and Togo. ASBIS’ Apple distribution is now available in 25 countries globally.

ASBIS benefits from this as well, as it allows us to deepen our product portfolio within this region with another high-end technology. In addition, we can confirm our status as a reliable distributor of value-added services who can support global vendors even within such complicated and diverse markets.

In terms of marketing opportunities, it would be necessary to focus on promotion, education, development of awareness, as well as the Apple ecosystem development in this region.

Have there been any other notable vendor additions or strategic partnership announcements?

Of course, ASBIS keeps expanding and strengthening its vendor portfolio in several strategic segments of technologies. For instance, there is cooperation with Phison Pascari and Micron for enterprise SSD solutions in EMEA, which is an expansion of the data centre and enterprise storage portfolio and Razer for gaming products.

ASBIS has been also strengthening its presence in the West African region through opening new local distribution centres in Accra, Ghana, and Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. This is a significant point in relation to regional development, as local presence is very important.

Moreover, ASBIS collaborates very effectively with an impressive portfolio of international vendors from processor, storage, server, networking, collaboration, printing, gaming, consumer and enterprise segments. It’s not just the number of brands we deal with, it’s about how we add value into our ecosystem of business relationships.

The market is clearly going into solution-based distribution, and this is how we develop our relationships with vendors. We concentrate our efforts on cooperation that is innovative, profitable and prospective.