Episode 13 - Partner Marketing Tools

Transcript

Sales partners expect more from their providers these days but as we all know there many complexities to building a successful channel strategy. Providers that are winning the channel game have adopted agile and innovative solutions to control their message, push their sales strategy, and provide the right tools, all while responding to constant change in their business and in the marketplace. 

Most of the providers that Convey works with would love to have partners use marketing to promote their services, but the reality is that partners rarely do what we think that they should.  So why is it that partners don’t use the same marketing strategies that have proven so effective in the technology marketplace?

First, partners just don’t have the time to devote to marketing.  Partners are generally attached to very small agencies, so they are having to do it all.  They have to secure more customers, educate them about services, manage the order and installation process, and respond to issues when the technology doesn’t work the way they expect.  Marketing is generally last on the list.

Second, being creative doesn’t come easy for partners.

In a former life I was an English teacher and taught writing, among other things.  I consider myself pretty good at it, but the vast majority of people I work with struggle to put the right words together.  So, imagine the difficulty in creating a marketing email, a social media post or a blog if you can’t think of what to say.  

Third, partners don’t know how to generate a lead list to market to.
If you are going to deliver an email campaign, target people to invite to an event or even try and influence people on social media, you have to have a way to generate a list.  Partners don’t really have the understanding how to create lists of people that they can work with and then what to do even if they had a list. 

Convey’s philosophy has always been that if you do the work for partners, provide them marketing tools, and then show them how to get a good list they will be much more likely to add marketing to their revenue strategy.   We’ve built marketing tools inside the Convey portal designed to motivate partners to use them. 

We’ve added an easy way for partners to share content. 
You’ve uploaded a case study, a white paper or product information that’s meant to be shared with customers.  Partners have two easy sharing options every time they access content.  An obvious thing they can do is to download a file if you havean uploaded one for viewing but an even easier process is our One Touch Email Share.

Here is how it works.  Partners see that case study or product literature and then click the email share button.  No matter what email client they use, it opens automatically with a link to the content post already in the email.  The partner just adds a personal message, then sends the email to their customer or prospect.  When the prospect clicks the link, they don’t come back inside your portal, but they do come back to a landing page to view, download or reshare the content.  Easy email marketing!  And the best news is that our reporting tool shows you which pieces of content were shared, and which partners did that.

For partners that really want to commit to an email strategy, we have a unique service inside of every portal called Conduct.

For those of you who are now thinking that email marketing is dead, think again!  Email marketing is up to 40 times more effective than social media, according to a study done by McKinsey & Company. The same study also shows that the buying process happens 3 times faster with email than in social media. Moreover, it is also said that most individuals prefer to receive business information via email