Because at no time has it been more challenging – or more important – to prove the value of the channel in driving revenue growth. While 2020 was the season of change, 2021 is the year where successful channel leaders need bold, new moves to reach buyers through skeptical partners.

We tackled topics such as:

• • What role will the Channel influencer play?
  • Why map and personalize the Partner Journey?
  • What am I missing with funnel and pipeline management?
  • Which programs are at risk of not surviving?
  • What is my untapped competitive advantage?

As it turns out, one hour wasn’t nearly enough time to answer all the questions in the (very busy!) chat. So, we’ve gathered them here. Without further ado, the answers to your burning questions, wrapped neatly with a bow. Happy Holidays.

Proving Your Channel’s Value in 2021 – Your Questions Answered

Can you talk more about incentives for multi-attribution models/teams?

Understanding the buyers journey and touch-points of a sale will help a channel chief put an incentive plan together that takes multi-attribution into account. Combining MDF, Rebates, Rewards and Deal/Opportunity Registration will create a solid incentive plan to help incentivize the proper individuals/company throughout the selling cycle. MDF and Rebates are generally table-stakes for incentive programs, but if you layer in Rewards to target the individuals at your partner organizations and Deal/Opportunity Registration at the company you have a way to layer in touch-points to incentivize throughout the sales cycle.

~Vistex

What do you see as the biggest incentives for cloud based partner programs?

When setting up a partner program specific to cloud based programs, MDF is the first priority. It’s a competitive market for cloud based tools and helping partners focus on marketing activities and build their pipeline is important as this market grows. Rebates, Deal/Opportunity Registration and Rewards will help, but getting in front of the sale and providing MDF will aid the partners in the initial stages of growing their businesses and selling your cloud based solutions.

~Vistex

How can we help partners be successful selling remotely?

The key is to help partners make their digital transformation so that they can use remote tactics like social selling, webinars and multi-touch marketing programs that can nurture leads. Sellers will rely more on marketing tactics today as they are not in front of the customer, so helping them in any way to communicate value to the customer using digital tactics is the way to go.

~Zift

How do you work with partners who don’t know how to measure data for marketing, don’t want to share information or are just plain not interested?

Actually it’s the data that will convince them to join in your marketing efforts. Start by showing them how more and more buyers (up to 67% per Forrester) are using the web to find solutions. Next show them what they can do to attract those buyers and convert them into leads. Once you have done that, use the same approach to describe how much more expensive it would be to find that lead by just calling prospects — it would be hit or miss. Once they are convinced you can start measuring marketing productivity, e.g. for every $1 you invest in marketing, you can grow to $X pipeline. That will get their attention!

~Zift

How do we best encourage our partners to leverage our educational pieces / trainings, when we’re not their only vendor? It’s common that they have ~4 vendors and they tend to pick and choose only a handful of the trainings.

Partners often complain that supplier efforts to train them are typically one-and-done. They also want to leverage training with their customers, for example touting their certifications. So I would combine the two to create an approach that offers partners some form of continuous learning that they can be certified once they complete. Make sure you answer “what’s in it for them” when you invite them into the training, showing them how other partners have gone on to grow their business. Nothing will convince a partner more than another partner reference who has succeeded.

~Zift

Lots of discussion around leads, but what about pipeline marketing? Supporting in closing leads and contributing towards conversion.

I agree with your question, specifically marketing’s role in advancing leads in the bottom stages of the funnel. There are several places where marketing strategies can help you do better here, for example this is one areas where Channel Data Management can help. For example on the ZiftONE platform we’re using data to help make suggestions to partners who have deals that may be “stuck” in the funnel. By analyzing what other partners are doing to move similar opportunities, we can make suggestions on what next steps to take, e.g. invite the prospect to a webinar, suggest a social media blog, etc.

~Zift

How would you approach SaaS products with traditional partners who have no-to very little competence in this area?

Similar to how to incentivize cloud based programs, beginning with MDF will help partners who have little experience in this area. Creating an individualized business plan with the partner(s) that focuses on marketing activities, training and certifications, etc. will help them be able to target the areas you believe, as a vendor, are important to bring a partner up to speed in SaaS products. Ensure the partners have the resources and understand if they are able to dedicate time to this new line of business. Providing them with the content and tools to be able to execute the plans will go a long way to help smaller partners who may not have in-house marketing support.

~Vistex

When you talk influencers in the industrial ecosystem, do you mean a third party that echoes your message, or influencers within your partners?

YES. It could be lead generation / referral partners, it could be third parties who influence during the sales cycle, and/or it could be individuals or companies who wrap services around your solutions and thereby influence your solution…think the Salesforce model.

~AchieveUnite

Have you defined what the journey could look like for different LOBs and influencers?

Yes, as well as where they fit in each of the customer journeys and the touch points. Often the vendors leave out these influencers and partners and we don’t maximize the opportunity to leverage those partners through the journeys, especially as we get into line of business buyers.

~AchieveUnite

Thoughts on expanding the Alliance approach into the rest of the partner ecosystem?

Yes, That is key!! Agree.

~AchieveUnite

The post Proving Your Channel’s Value in 2021 – Your Questions Answered appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The post Zift Solutions Announces a Strategic Partnership with Vistex to Simplify Channel Incentive Management appeared first on Zift Solutions.

So, the needle swung. And it swung far. In conference rooms across the country, Marketing became a math formula:

25% of our whitepaper leads become Marketing-Qualified Leads (MQLs) + Our Sales Development Reps (SDRs) qualify 25% of these MQLs to Sales-Qualified Leads (SQLs) + Our Account Exec’s close 10% of these SQLs to revenue = We need 5 deals a month to maintain our growth trajectory.

And that translates to, “Marketing: Go get 800 white paper leads this month — and we’re also hiring 4 new SDRs next month. They’ll need leads, too.”

And it worked — for a while.

In the world of UX, the term banner blindness refers to “a phenomenon in web usability where visitors to a website consciously or unconsciously ignore banner-like information, which can also be called ad blindness or banner noise.” Nine years after the publication of Predictable Revenue, we’re experiencing the same phenomenon albeit mutated. Buyers have been blasted by nurture programs and sales cadences, all designed to wrap them in a neat, measurable funnel.

And they know it. And they aren’t buying in. So, what’s the plan? How do we as direct or indirect marketers appeal to this empowered buyer?

Go Where the Demand Is — And Double Down

Rather than trying to create new high-intent demand from cold leads (with channels that should lean more toward brand), identify where in-market prospects are doing their research and double down on those channels.

Do you have a presence on websites like G2, SoftwareAdvice, and TrustRadius? These sites allow in-market prospects to read reviews, compare solutions, and form opinions about your business; all before ever talking to a sales representative. The real estate on these pages becomes some of the most valuable real estate in your arsenal. Ensure that the information you’re providing clearly addresses the problems and pains your prospects are facing — and clearly positions your solution as the key to addressing these pains.

How about your own high-value web properties, like your demo or contact pages? As marketers, we spend tremendous money driving in-market prospects to these pages. We should be running regular experiments to ensure that the information and value provided on these pages align with prospect expectations — encouraging them to share their incredibly valuable contact information.

Money spent driving high intent traffic to a demo page that’s all but abandoned is wasted money. And unearned or purchased contact information is a commodity. But a prospect willingly providing that same contact information and explicitly asking for sales follow up? That’s a treasure.

Become a Good Citizen of Your Industry

Ask five different members of your company what the most important asset in your company is, and you’ll likely get five different answers.

• Our direct sales team: They crush it!
• Our channel partners: They’ve extended the reach of our company by 3X!
• Our product: It’s leaps and bounds better than our competitors’ solutions!
• Our direct and channel marketing campaigns: We drive so many leads for our sales teams!
• Our customers: The feedback they provide is essential!

There’s one asset that wasn’t on that list, and it’s an asset that will accelerate all of the above: Value.

Ungated value. Value that doesn’t have an ask attached to it. Value that doesn’t lead someone to a funnel. Value and information for the sole purpose of giving back to the industry you’re earning a living on.

When you stop creating content for the sole purpose of fulfilling a lead obligation and start creating content with a focus on true prospect value, something magical can happen. Prospects start engaging with your content every day, in an environment that facilitates lively discussion with their peers. They incorporate your strategic guidance into their every day. And they want more because you’ve provided them with knowledge to help them be the hero of their own journey. You’ve positioned yourself as not just a vendor — but a trusted advisor that has earned the right to their attention.

Ask yourself: If you’ve spent six months building a sales enablement strategy and are ready to purchase a solution, are you going to call the company that provided daily strategic sales enablement advice and didn’t ask for a thing in return? Or are you going to call the company that you downloaded a whitepaper from and have been trying to sell to you since?

Measure What Matters Most

Let’s walk through two scenarios.

Scenario 1: Your marketing team is producing 300 whitepaper download MQLs per month, which you’re sending to sales. Given the low intent, sales is only closing 5% of them to new business. At an ACV of $10,000 you’ve generated $150,000 in revenue.

Scenario 2: Your marketing team has ungated all their valuable content, and is amplifying it with no funnel-driven call-to-action (CTA) for your target audience. This month, via their analytics platform they know 150 prospects have not downloaded content — but consumed it. Of those 150 prospects, 50 have explicitly asked to speak to Sales — a true MQL. Given the high intent from the prospect raising their own hand, Sales is closing 30% to new business. At an ACV of $10,000 you’ve generated $150,000 in revenue.

Both scenarios have generated the same exact revenue. But that’s not the whole story. Ask yourself the following questions:

• Which scenario had the more valuable MQLs? (Revenue / # of MQLs)
• Which scenario took more of Sales’ time and therefore incurred a higher CAC?
• Which scenario had a higher Opportunity Cost?
• Which scenario fostered a more trusting relationship between Marketing and Sales?
• Which scenario promoted a more positive brand image?

So what really matters? Not just leads. It’s certainly not just lead volume. And despite it being the north star metric for the large majority of the work we as marketers do, it’s not just pipeline. It’s how we get there, and the resonation from that journey. Whether it’s internal between your own teams or the perception of your brand from the prospects that you ultimately need to grow.

The winds are shifting yet again. I hope you’ll take a few minutes to listen to me talk about these and more best practices for digital marketing on this week’s episode of Channel Chatter LIVE. Take a listen to the podcast and let me know what you think in the comments section below.

The post Tracking the Winds of Change in Growth Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Put Keywords in the Backseat

Want to set yourself up for SEO failure? Treat all keywords the same. Beneath every keyword is search intent. Understanding and creating content for that intent is more important than any individual keyword. What do we mean?

Keywords can generally be organized into four different “buckets of intent:”

• Navigational: When users search for a brand name or a specific description of a brand. Example: Zappos website
• Informational: The user has a question, and needs an answer stat. Example: How to lace a shoe
• Investigational: The user has a query that straddles the line between informational and transactional. Example: Compare Doc Marten prices.
• Transactional: The user is seeking to purchase something, and uses buy-centric verbiage. Example: Buy red Doc Martens.

As a marketer, each example above is an opportunity to craft content to fulfill your users’ needs. How to lace a shoe? Great example of a “how to” article for your blog. Compare Doc Marten prices? Offer up a quick and easy table that compares top vendors online that sell boots. Buy red Doc Martens? That better lead to a well-optimized product page, because that’s a hot selling opportunity.

Takeaway: Give users what they ask for. If someone searching for “Buy Doc Martens” ends up on your FAQ page, they’re going to spend little time on your website, bounce quickly, and are unlikely to return.

Link Building is Dead! You Heard it Here First!

Does this email look familiar?

Hi [insert some name that may or may not be yours],

Saw your blog, and I have to say, it’s great. I really like the article about [insert an article here that’s not on the first page of your website so it looks like they did their research]. My company talks about very similar stuff, we have so much synergy! I think it would really benefit your readership if I wrote an article about [insert topic that’s only, and just barely, relevant]. I think it would also benefit your readership if, in this amazing article, I used the anchor text “BUY RED SHOES ONLINE” and linked back to my website.

I expect this sounds good to you. I’ll start the article now.

Again, awesome website!

Thanks,

Mr. I Sent This Same Email to 50 Websites

Don’t be that guy. Instead, focus on creating a wide variety of content that is so good that other websites feel the need to link to it. Write an article that’s twice as useful as the top-ranking article on Google. Create a video. Create an interactive infographic. Create a downloadable template. Create material that establishes you as the leader in your niche.

Takeaway: Don’t spam people for links. Create authoritative, leading content that other websites can’t help but link to.

Back to Basics: Is Your On-Page SEO Solid?

While the world of SEO is ever-changing, one core principle has remained: Make sure your on-page SEO is solid. What is on-page SEO? Moz offers a great description: “…the practice of optimizing individual web pages in order to rank higher and earn more relevant traffic in search engines. On-page refers to both the content and HTML source code of a page that can be optimized, as opposed to off-page SEO which refers to links and other external signals.”

Let’s say you’re writing an informational blog article on channel marketing best practices. Take a look at the elements below, and choose the option that best answers the question: Does Google know what this webpage is actually about? More importantly, are users satisfied if they land on this page after using the search phrase, “channel marketing best practice guide”?

Title Tag:

1. Channel Marketing – Get a Demo | The Channel Guy
2. Channel Marketing Best Practice Guide | The Channel Guy
3. Channel Marketing Best Practices | The Channel Guy

URL:

1. https://www.thechannel.com/channel-marketing-best-practice-guide
2. https://www.thechannel.com/channel-marketing-definition
3. https://www.thechannel.com/channel-marketing-demo

H1:

1. Channel Marketing Best Practice Guide
2. Channel Marketing
3. Channel Marketing – How to Win

Meta Description:

1. Learn channel marketing best practices.
2. Need to improve your channel? Learn how today.
3. In this guide, learn channel marketing best practices for 2019 that will set you apart from your competitors. Read today!

Answers:

1. Title Tag: 2. The full keywords are right in the title, and it’s very clear what the web page offers.
2. URL: 1. Matches the title tag, and again offers clear insight into the topic of the page.
3. H1: 1. Reinforces the title & URL slugs
4. Meta Description: 3. Clearly tells the user what to expect, and ends with a proper call to action.

Takeaway: SEO is always changing, but its roots are in proper on-page optimization. Neglect it and it doesn’t matter what else you do — Google won’t reward you with targeted organic traffic.

Mobile-First Indexing is Here

In the past, Google’s web crawlers analyzed the desktop version of your website and populated the Search Engine Results Pages (SERP) accordingly. In April 2015, Google officially began rewarding websites with a well-optimized mobile experience. In 2018, two important mobile landmarks occurred: There were officially more mobile searches than desktop searches, and Google released Mobile-First Indexing, which means that web crawlers would specifically look at your mobile website for ranking and indexing.

Don’t offer your users a rich mobile experience? Time-on-site will go down, bounce rate will go up and your SERP rankings will suffer.

Takeaway: Optimize for mobile. Don’t use technology on your website that most phones do not support (Flash), implement responsive design and make your mobile website as easy to use as possible.

Marketers, we want to hear from you. How has your SEO strategy shifted for 2019? What’s working? What’s not working? Leave a comment below!

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