Accomplish more by following this powerful partner marketing strategy

By T.C. Doyle

Here’s a bold thought: make your partner marketing FREE.

That’s right, FREE as in Frequent, Relevant, Empathetic and Empowered. Here’s what I mean.

Vendors struggle with partner marketing basics every day. They grapple with what to say, how often to say something and in what format. They need not, according to experts. There is a cadence, tone and significance to proper partner communications that can be easily achieved if you follow the simple FREE concepts recently discussed by experts in Channel Growth Hacking, a new, bi-monthly discussion hosted by Impartner and the JS Group. Channel Growth Hacking takes place on the second and fourth Thursday every month on Clubhouse, the drop-in social media platform.

To better understand the FREE concept, which is a modern update on the venerable marketing adage that says good marketing should be recent, frequent and monetizable, let’s break each element down into simple bites starting with frequent.

Frequent

Just like good journalism, good marketing depends on consistency. In addition to being objective, timely and accurate, a good newspaper, in other words, must hit a reader’s driveway or inbox at a predictable time. When it comes to channel marketing, experts including Heather K. Margolis, the founder and CEO of two well-known advisories, Spark Your Channel and Channel Maven, advises vendors to think in terms of weekly touch points. Communicating via LinkedIn, she suggests, should be done three-to-four times per week. “Go nuts on Twitter,” Margolis says, but post judiciously on Facebook due to the mix of business and personal audiences.

While every vendor’s needs differ, establishing a cadence and then sticking to it are musts in order for your messaging to connect with your intended audience. While it sounds counter-intuitive, sometimes being predictable is the right thing to do with communications, at least as far as frequency is concerned.

Relevant

After you determine when to say something, you must determine what to say. This is perhaps the most difficult step to master. Why is simple: what you want to say is often at odds with what resonates with your audience. The reason is relevancy.

Typically, vendors want to promote their solutions and services at every turn. But communications anchored in product messaging often fall short in terms of relevancy because they fail to factor in what partners are attuned to. Consider channel partners in the tech industry. Their customers no longer prioritize faster and cheaper products. Instead, end customers want answers to business problems. If your messaging to partners is rooted in solutions, great, then partners will respond positively to your message. But if your messages are little more than spec sheets about innovations and not about answers to their customers’ problems, partners will ignore you. That’s a major problem, says Dan Tomaszewski, president of Everything MSP, a tech advisory for channel partners. “If partners don’t know you, they won’t feel comfortable with you.”

Empathetic

Good partner marketing must be “stinking empathetic,” says Janet Schijns, founder and CEO of the JS Group, a Florida-based consultancy that helps organization refine their go-to-market strategies. By “stinking,” Schijns means messaging must be so obviously empathetic that it reeks of compassion and inspiration. This differs from relevancy, which appeals to a potential customer’s brain. In contrast, empathetic messaging connects with audiences in a much deeper way.

If you appeal to an audience’s desires and ambitions, for example, you establish a much deeper level of credibility and authenticity. This helps your audience escape the confines of traditional thinking so they may see problems and opportunities in a new light, Schijns says. When this occurs, intangibles such as quicker, better and more long-lasting seem very attainable.

“You have to remember that you are selling a dream,” says Schijns. “Your messaging, thus, shouldn’t be all about ‘look at me,’ but instead ‘look at you.’”

Empowered

One of the challenges marketers face today is scaling successful messaging. This is due to the sheer volume of messaging that your content must compete with. Good content not only resonates, it also scales.

Today, scale depends on automation more than ever. Without proper tools, marketers cannot reach broad audiences, measure messaging effectiveness or follow up on responses in a timely manner.

In a bid to overcome these limitations, many organizations have developed or invested in various tools. But their scattershot approach leaves them saddled with gaps in functionality that more nimble and/or automated rivals can exploit.

For context, Channel Growth Hacking co-founder Michelle Ragusa-McBain notes the overwhelming majority of decision makers look to five different pieces of content about a service or product before they ever talk to a salesperson. Following a person on their journey and then offering influential content at the appropriate moment requires a level of automation that basic tools simply do not provide.

As a marketer, you must be more than a voyeur or “lazy liker” on LinkedIn, says McBain. You must be a thought and technology leader.

Making partner marketing FREE might not be the first thing that pops into your head when you think of ways to improve your messaging and communications, but it might be the best idea for your improving business.

For more on how technology can help you embrace FREE marketing concepts, be sure to check out what the world leader in partner automation technology, Impartner, has to offer. Ask for a free demo today.

“Impartner will be hosting a multitude of session and breakouts that you don’t want to miss.”

“Impartner’s 10 Minutes 2 Modernize Your Portal, provided a customized look at your company’s instance within Impartner’s portal.”

650 breakout sessions and more than 170,000 attendees compile just a few data points from this year’s Dreamforce event. Impartner was honored to attend the show this year alongside some of the industry’s leading companies.
Impartner hosted several informational sessions on and off the show floor this year. As we engaged with each of you, we were able to see how Impartner helps provide the results channel programs require that no other PRM offers.

Impartner Customizes Portals on the Spot

Taking a new approach this year, Impartner’s 10 Minutes 2 Modernize Your Portal, provided a customized look at your company’s instance within Impartner’s portal. Our product gurus worked tirelessly to deliver hundreds of customized demos right at our booth, proving to be a real crowd-pleaser. Click Here for more information. Click Here to view your customized portal.

Top IT Leaders Join Live Panel at Dreamforce

Impartner’s own Chief Marketing Officer, Dave R Taylor, joined a plethora of IT leaders for a live panel, Tech Stack Secrets from Top IT teams. Alongside him was, Lief Koepsel, Fortinet, Armin Moaddel, Marketo, Margaret Back, McAfee and Kevin Sequeira, Splunk. If you missed the live panel, Click Here to view.

Can You Guess the Secret Ingredient?

We always seem to make a buzz with our famous secret ingredient in our gourmet chocolates, and this year was no exception. Giveaways at both our booths included wireless chargers, stickers, hoodies, and Starbucks gift cards.

Still Seeing Impartner Yellow

With an abundance of compliments on our coordinated matching yellow shoes, we left the show feeling inspired and proud. At such an enormous show it can be easy to feel like a small fish in a huge pond, yet Dreamforce leaves you feeling stimulated and renewed, dreaming up new ideas to show the floor what more you can bring in the many years to follow.

Check out the top ten highlights of Dreamforce on the Salesforce blog here.

Featuring Marketo, McAfee, Fortinet, and Splunk

Dreamforce is a sprawling showcase of today’s technology leaders, vying for attention from top corporations to be part of their tech stacks. The field is crowded, and the overwhelming amount of choices can actually slow down, not speed up the process of ensuring a company’s set of tech solutions is truly helping them stand apart in the market.

Fortunately, there are secrets to navigating this process, and at this year’s Dreamforce, Impartner is hosting a live webinar on Brighttalk, “Tech Stack Secrets from Top IT Teams, featuring top IT and Channel Leaders from Marketo, McAfee, Fortinet, and Splunk.” These powerhouse leaders, from four of Impartner’s customers, who absolutely set the bar for how the nimblest, fastest-moving companies quickly and efficiently build a world-class tech stack.

During this 45-minute conversation, hosted by Impartner’s CMO Dave R Taylor, we’ll pull back the curtain on how these companies navigate working with their business counterparts how they decide to make or buy, and how they decide whether to use functionality from an existing vendor or bring in a totally new technology provider.

“These are the top issues top IT teams are and should be asking, and we couldn’t be prouder to have representatives from our customers with world-class companies help provide these insights,” said Taylor.

As you head to Dreamforce and/or consider the technologies you’ve seen there or are considering in general, sign on here to learn the secrets these top corporations rely on to set the pace for their industries and the market in general.

“Whether you are looking to obtain tangible or intangible goals, staying within budget is a key component to planning a successful event.”

You consider your partners to be your most strategic asset, which means you put a significant amount of effort into meeting their expectations.

Channel events are not only a great way to network, but a prime opportunity to show your partners how much you care about them. There are several components to consider when planning and promoting an important event such as this. We have put together a few guidelines and strategies to ensure your next channel event is executed successfully and your attendees are satisfied.

1. Do Your Homework

Identify what you think your partners want. Analyze your past successful events and if this is your first event, evaluate recent events you have attended. Narrow in on the aspects you liked and disliked and what you thought was beneficial. Determine the most important takeaways you want your attendees to leave with. Stay informed about upcoming trends and be sure to implement these into your event program.

2. Set Goals and Budget

Keep in mind your overall event budget includes your marketing plan. Be sure to set goals that pertain to your budget and stay on track. Whether you are looking to obtain tangible or intangible goals, staying within budget is a key component to planning a successful event. Setting limits and staying within your means will ensure you are trustworthy and give you the opportunity to offer your expertise for events in the future.

3. Prepare Your Team

While planning and prepping yourself is essential, preparing your team is the key to a successful event. Create several documents outlining the specifics of your event. Include things like attire, agenda, duties, and any other information you think the team might need to know. We cannot stress the importance of a well-informed team enough. So many events fail or look poorly planned when the entire team isn’t up-to-date. Preparing your team makes the organization look successful, which will ultimately benefit partner relationships, and result in satisfied customers.

4. Promote to the Right People in the Right Places

The number of people that attend your event ultimately defines the success of your event. First, we suggest identifying your target market, then establish which platforms the best fit. This circles back to doing your homework. Once you have found your audience, you can begin to create marketing content to promote your event. Email campaigns are a great place to start your marketing. We suggest including content from previous events and even using teasers to increase your attendance rates.

5. Plan Your Follow Up

As important as getting people to the event is, following up with them is what ensures a long-lasting partnership. Thank you emails and surveys are a great way to keep your contacts engaged. We like to include personalized details from the event, this reinforces a solid foundation for your event attendees and gives them the incentive to register for your next event.

Planning an event takes a great deal of time and planning. These steps will ensure you have the right tools to take your next channel event to new heights.