Dynamic Communities Magazine

Learn 5 things you need to do to evolve your marketing as a partner in the technology channel.

 1. Technology

Technology is the center of your universe (or at least your channel). You market it, you sell it, you implement it, you customize it, and you support it. You are crushing technology. Then why is it something we see a lot of partners and ISVs struggle with when it comes to their own marketing? Just like you want your prospects and customers to upgrade their ERP and CRM systems, it’s likely time to evolve your marketing technology. There are many different directions you can go with technology for marketing, but let’s focus on one key area –

marketing automation. First, it’s important to note that tools like Constant Contact and Mailchimp are email distribution tools, not marketing automation tools. While you do get some insight about your email campaigns, you do not get as much as you would from a true marketing automation tool. We hear quite often that marketing needs to prove its value. However, it’s difficult to prove what’s working and what’s not when campaigns and events are not tracked consistently. With a true marketing automation tool, you can integrate 

data with CRM and automate many tasks around email marketing, social media posting and even ad campaigns. Not only will you capture more data, you’ll be able to use it to understand how campaigns are being received and responded to. You will also create a smoother, more consistent, and more personalized experience for your prospects and customers. Another big benefit is helping your marketing and sales teams work together to close deals faster and more effectively. Who doesn’t want that?

Think of LinkedIn as a “tradeshow from your couch.” There is a lot of opportunity, but if you just show up and walk the floor, you’re going to get lackluster results. According to TPMG’s 2019 Technology Marketing Benchmarks and Trends Report, less than half the technology marketers surveyed said they were using LinkedIn successfully. A majority of partners are in what we call the “just browsing” phase. Walking the tradeshow floor, with no budget and no presence. To evolve your LinkedIn marketing and see results, you need to:

• Optimize. Strengthen your presence with a content calendar incorporating product event calendars from Microsoft, as well as your own events and activities. Build your brand with original, consistent banners for your company and employee profiles.
• Publish. Post at least twice a week and publish longform articles through LinkedIn Publisher. What should you post?

- Share highlights from your blogs and link back to your site.

- Have all employees write blogs from events and tradeshows they attend.

- Share articles from other thought leaders around the web and add your comments.

• Engage. Content published by companies that involve their employees in their LinkedIn plan reach twice as many people as those who do not have a companywide program. To get better results from your LinkedIn content:

- Train your employees. Share how they can connect to your company and optimize their profiles by adding your company banners and branding.

- Make it easy. Use tools like GaggleAmp to notify employees of all your posts, provide specific actions (post, comment, etc.) and even give them the message to post! If you aren’t ready to implement a platform to manage your employee engagement, be prepared to send out emails.

- Incentivize. GaggleAMP can track each employee’s activities and reward “points” for participation. Or, you can provide companywide rewards when you reach your organizational goals through LinkedIn.

• Amplify Your Reach. Use the FULL suite of LinkedIn tools for more direct lead generation. This includes paid advertising (sponsoring posts to people outside your audience), as well as Sales Navigator for account-based and niche marketing.

 3. SEO

SEO is as important as it’s ever been and, if you’ve been neglecting it, it’s time to make it a priority. Here are a few tips to give you some direction. When writing your content, keywords are still essential. They can help focus your content and give you a peek into what users are seeking help with, but they may not improve your organic rankings. Instead of writing around keywords, write for the prospects you’re hoping will buy your products. Search engine spiders don’t buy anything from you—people do—so make sure your content answers their questions. Not sure what questions they ask? Start with your own sales team or support desk, or create an account on Quora where you can get a glimpse into the type of knowledge your audience is seeking. With Google’s latest update, BERT, content marketing has become more important because the algorithm has been adjusted to understand natural language processing. 

You’ve probably already seen BERT at work during recent searches. For example, you might type into the Google search something like “parking on a hill with no curb” and, in the past, would have received directions on how to park on a hill. With the new update, Google now understands that you want to know how to park on a hill when there is no curb available and will deliver a more relevant result. What does this all mean for you? 

It means you need to get very specific with the content you create. Typically, when you write informational content, the pieces tend to be longer (500 words or more). While you may see much of your long-form content ranking well, the new algorithm doesn’t focus on length of content, but on the QUALITY of the content and how relevant it is to answering the search string. So, tying this back to what type of content you should create, focus on creating content that is unique, informative, useful and compelling. If someone is typing “how to reconcile bank accounts in Dynamics 365 Business Central” in the search box, then that is the article you should be writing. As mentioned, a good place to look for content ideas would be your own support team. Ask them for common questions they hear and write blogs and articles to answer them. You can bet that if one person is asking, there are many more with the same question and why not pull them into your site for the answer. The key takeaway is that you need to create highly specific content, which is the perfect segue to our next topic—going vertical.

 4. Vertical Marketing

At a recent Microsoft Alumni panel, Dan Lewis (ex-Microsoft product manager and founder of Convoy) told a great story. He found himself unemployed at one point and was looking for a project or job that would excite him. It turns out in all his travels, he met a host of disgruntled truckers. Truckers, as you can imagine, put in many hours, travel long distances and are often forced to haul loads that are not very profitable. They often absorb penalties if they’re not able to deliver their loads on time (due to weather or an accident) and can make a poor and unpredictable living. He talked to hundreds of truckers, became an expert in their issues and frustrations and, as a result, founded Convoy. With Convoy, haulers are able to find drivers and the drivers are able to find more profitable loads that fit their schedule and routes. So, what can we learn from Dan?

• Specialize. And by specialize, it means finding the niche where you can be most successful and where competition and solutions are lacking. Even if you’ve been vertically focused for a long time, there are always lessons you can learn. With the latest innovations in IoT, AI, and machine learning, partners and ISVs have an opportunity to evolve and expand beyond selling siloed solutions. Be careful of following others, the idea behind being vertically focused is to be unique, otherwise you flatten the market and diminish your ability to charge a premium. Take the time to review your marketing materials, and using the recommendations we have about content pillars, create 2-3 new items that highlight new or additional solutions you’re bringing to market. Identify unfilled needs: Like Dan, seek to understand the following:
  - Where do businesses continue to struggle?
  - Where are they poorly served?
  - Could you expand beyond your current customer base? For example, if you’re in the Mining sector, is Oil and Gas or Natural Gas Exploration the next best thing for you? Or is localizing your solution geographically within the Mining sector a better option?

Specialized organizations that are well served are unlikely to switch service providers based on price. They place a high value on companies that truly know their business. If you’re expanding to another vertical, look at your marketing best practices and clone them. If there was a specific piece of content or series of articles that resonated well, consider that a starting point. Don’t neglect publications and advertising as a way to build your brand in a new area. Knowing what’s available in the form of industry publications, tradeshows and forums can help you penetrate a new market with an existing solution that may be very relevant. If you’re an ISV building a solution for a vertical market, you will likely be expanding your channel to embrace partners outside of your current focus area.

• Learn about your competitors: Microsoft partners are not your only competition. You also need to look at AWS partners, IBM, SAP, app marketplaces, as well as other global and industry partners and ISVs. Understanding what other competitors are doing can generate ideas on where you may be able to innovate. In some instances, you may want to partner with an app provider to round out your existing solution(s) and then build content and collateral around your newly enhanced solution.
• Expand geographically: Unless you’re in a very large city, geographic expansion goes hand-in-hand with a vertical strategy. You may consider expanding to other states or to other countries, being sensitive to the localization of your marketing materials. Validate your grammar (British English vs. American English), images and demographics. Look at other in-country solutions to get an idea of where to start. At TPMG, we have found that partners with a vertical specialty are 200x more successful than partners who are more horizontal. Vertical marketing results in much higher response rates and more qualified leads.

If there’s one MUST EVOLVE RIGHT NOW in your marketing strategy, it’s content development. And not just any old content—the most important thing driving the need for evolution is the quality of content being created. In a LinkedIn survey, 55% of decision makers used thought leadership to vet organizations they are considering working with. However, only 18% of the thought leadership content they received was VERY GOOD or EXCELLENT. That’s a huge opportunity for you but you’ve got to be willing to invest in original, educational, engaging content. It might require a shift in how you currently create and share your thought leadership.        How can you take your content to the next level?

• Create content clusters. Instead of creating a single piece (like an eBook), create a whole set of content around a central theme that goes deeper into the topic. Look at what content decision makers and prospects may need at the various stages of the sales cycle. An eBook on Wholesale Distribution Technology Trends is great for awareness, but what about the prospect who already knows what he or she needs and is looking deeper into how it might work? Maybe that eBook has a trend that talks about ways distributors can get their goods to market faster. An article or video that dives deeper into that topic could be an ideal piece to add to your content cluster. A case study of a customer who implemented your solution and decreased their time to market is ideal for adding credibility and convincing a prospect in the bottom of the funnel to work with you.
• Provide TRUE thought leadership. The very best content is original. Surveys that can offer original research are one of the strongest lead magnets you can create. Not everyone can do an annual survey and report, but you still need to bring your unique knowledge into any content you create. You want to showcase your expertise with a solution, or in a specific vertical market, by sharing real challenges and what you did to resolve them.
• Tell Stories. People love positive, engaging and relatable stories. One of the more compelling ways to tell a story (and demonstrate that critical thought leadership we mentioned above) is through your customers. Have a specific goal to get more customer stories into your marketing. Be creative with your stories! Use strong visuals, highlight powerful quotes, create short video stories or think outside the box and create customer stories in highly effective infographic formats. Once you have your pieces created, use them everywhere. Don’t hide your case studies on one page of your website. Share them in your social media posts, throughout your site pages, and ALL your marketing touches (including emails).

We understand this is a lot of information to consume, but we always encourage smaller marketing teams to choose one area of focus and build from there. Doing something is always better than doing nothing at all! The Partner Marketing Group’s consultants, writers and designers have been deeply invested in the technology channel for decades. They have evolved and elevated marketing for hundreds of software and technology companies and are passionate about helping you succeed.

Contact the team at info@thepartnermarketinggroup.com to learn about their custom programs and services for partners.