You’ve heard me talk about the partner-first approach before. Putting partners first in your program will lead to ROI gains. How are you giving them the leg up they need? Are you creating campaigns focused around your partners and end users? Look for how you can provide convenience to your partners — that will keep them engaged. Providing complex, easy-to-implement campaigns is a great way to start, but I’ll address that more in a moment.

How can you get started on giving your partners a world-class experience? Just like with any other resolution, take baby steps before big leaps. You wouldn’t run a marathon before you’d run a few laps at the gym. The same theory applies to your channel program. Start out small.

For 2019, make your partner the hero. This is a small, but brave step to take. Some bolder vendors are — wait for this — leaving their logos out of campaigns. Why would they do this? They’re leaving space for their partners to put their logos into their emails and assets to establish the partner as the thought leader. This pays off with end users viewing the partner as someone knowledgeable. The end user leaves happy, the partner gets a sale and the vendor gets ROI payoff. Win-win-win.

Speaking of ROI, how are you measuring yours? The most common method is, of course, monetary. How much profit your channel program is earning is one method of measuring success, but is it the best for your specific situation? Look into that. Would it make more sense for you to measure your ROI through the number of partners regularly logging into your portal, or how many emails partners are sending out per month? Use the metrics that make sense for your program? If the channel program is just starting up, you may want to use data that measures growth as ROI as opposed to strictly monetary metrics. You can always change how you define your program’s ROI as it evolves over time. I talked about this at length in 360Insight’s Channel Edge podcast.

Ready to take a bigger step? Take a look at your partner portal. Adding personalization options to your portal is a great way to instantly make your partners feel more at home. Greet them at the door of your portal with the factors that matter to each individual user, whether that’s determined by their region, job role or vertical. The small steps add up to create one bold sprint, and before you know it, you’re running full-tilt towards success.  

Your partners’ experience, and ultimately program adoption, will likely be the main make-or-break factor for your 2019 sales. Give partners a reason to keep coming back and selling your product, or they will focus on other vendors who do.

What are your channel resolutions for 2019? Let us know in the comments, or drop me a line to talk more about why a partner-first approach can work for your program.

The post Check Off Your 2019 Channel Resolutions appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Sure, there’s no burning building or cat stuck in a tree, but there’s still something you can save them from: a poorly-designed portal page that they’ll click around once and then never touch again. They need your guidance on what to do, but what more can you be doing? Are you saving your partners, or leaving them high and dry?

I presented during Demand Gen Report’s and Channel Marketer Report’s Channel Week last week. During the webinar, I talked a fair amount about creating an experience for partners that will keep them coming back. Many partners will log in once and never again. We’re trying to prevent that from happening.

More specifically, how you can integrate this knowledge into a big victory for your program’s portal page? Here’s how you can save the day for your partners:

Keep it simple

You wouldn’t add too many details to your logo. Most superheroes have one distinctive logo and that’s about it. Your partner portal should take this lesson to heart — keep the design of your space simple and easy to process and navigate. Don’t overwhelm your partners with too many options; if needed, you can segment what partners see by their specific verticals. Cater to what will best help them.  

Greet partners at the door

Batman felt most at home in the Batcave. Your partners should feel comfortable with your portal, too. Think of it as an extension of your brand. Partners should find it familiar and easy to step in. More importantly, though, it should feel like you’re standing at the door waving partners inside. An onboarding process that walks your partners through and shows them how to use all your program’s assets will help engagement as well. Your goal should be to get them feeling right at home and activating campaigns for themselves as soon as possible.

How can you make them feel welcome? One of our customers uses an automated educational module with first-time users to help ease them into the platform. Partners log in and immediately have help ready and waiting to assist them.

Acknowledge your partners

I’m a big believer in the partner-first approach — it just makes sense to provide your partners with material they’ll be eager to use to market your product or solution. Your platform should acknowledge your partners’ unique experiences and be personalized accordingly. You know their job titles, their locations, their verticals and the languages they speak. A personalized portal is within your means to achieve. Step it up a notch with customized options and support.

Want more details on the Channel Week discussion? I covered much more than just how helpful your portal can be in keeping partners engaged. Learn how to use your superpowers for good at Demand Gen Report’s site, where you can find a recording of the webinar as well as several useful links to help your partner portal pack a punch.

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You’re providing a good amount of content, campaigns and collateral to your partners, but they aren’t using it. What’s keeping engagement down? Your content perfectly describes your solutions. It adds a space for partners to co-brand. It makes no sense to you that they’re not leveraging the content you’re churning out.

But what you’re seeing isn’t what your partners see. You’re offering them mystery novels over and over again when that’s not what they’re looking for. Give partners a story centered around your product or solution.

Are you tailoring your content to what your partners want, or to your end-users? Partners are going to be looking for different factors in choosing their promotional material, and what you think they’ll like isn’t necessarily what they will. Are you presenting them with content they’re interested in? Will it enable conversations and relationships between partners and end-users?  

Let’s outline that story I mentioned earlier. The first chapter of your story should frame the partner as the hero, the thought leader to end-users. This should be the main point of your story. Your partner, the hero, is going to swoop in and save the end-user’s day with pain point resolution. To close out the story, you’ll validate that your solution is the answer to the problem the hero is solving — a case study would be good to use here. If your campaign offerings aren’t channel-ready, aren’t allowing your partners to be heroes, you are not enabling your partners to succeed as best as they could.

It is hard to get that content out the door, though. Channel teams are often not part of discussions on campaign details, since they are usually not part of the global marketing team making most creative decisions. Your team may not have the resources to handle creating entire new campaigns, but releasing campaigns focused on your product or solution set alone isn’t going to cut it. Campaigns can’t be a couple of emails. You should have an entire nurture flow around the story of your product and solutions.

You’ve got to have content that caters to what partners want. They simply won’t be able to generate the leads you both want if you’re not giving them content that’s relevant. The only way forward is to build campaigns partner-first. Your partners’ time is too valuable to waste with manual campaign activation, so make campaigns easy to activate and as automated as possible. Even your most tech-savvy partners will love that.

Listen to your partners. Talk to them, and get feedback as often as possible on your content offerings. This is especially crucial for B2B IT companies, who do a significant amount of business through the channel. Don’t hand them mysteries when they’re looking for an action novel.

The post Turn the Page for Partner-Friendly Campaigns appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Channel marketing has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years. Technology enabling anywhere, anytime connectivity has altered how companies communicate and interact with channel partners, and partners with customers.

It has also changed the purchasing dynamic, as customers increasingly go online to research companies, products, services, and engage in online forums.

The key driver of these conversations? Content.

Relevance + Authenticity = Engagement

Essentially, the purpose of content is engagement. However, for many organizations there’s often a disconnect between the content available and what partners need to engage customers at various stages of the buyer’s journey. For marketers, it’s a delicate balancing act between creating a thought leadership piece that offers real insight and being too sales-focused.

When you develop content that’s authentic, relevant, and relatable, it not only shows you have something to say, but you’ve taken time to listen and understand business challenges and have the ideal solution. Content that offers genuine advice or enhances knowledge about your products and company can help partners start or continue the sales conversation (and will be better received).

Quality Over Quantity

One of the hardest things to do when it comes to generating content is knowing where to start. Before commencing any type of content, it’s important to ask: does it add value – to partners, to customers? Does it offer solutions to business challenges partners face? Is it relevant or just noise?

The amount of content you offer is less important than its quality. Producing vast amounts of content that’s perceived as not having any value can significantly diminish your brand reputation and negatively affect partner engagement.

The right type of content increases brand awareness, differentiates you from competitors, and establishes you as an industry expert.

Borrowing from the Library

Creating a diverse library of content will keep your partners returning for more as they’re able to draw on these resources to maintain conversations with their customers. The format can be anything from how-to guides, data sheets, white papers, eBooks, infographics, images, videos, blog posts, podcasts – anything that can be utilized by your channel partners to generate leads or assist in moving the sales journey forward.

That’s why it’s important to continually refresh the content available to ensure it remains relevant. It not only needs to offer solutions to current business challenges, it needs to make life easier for busy, budget-strapped managers.

A well-stocked content library will quickly elevate your company to industry-leader status and build your reputation as the go-to source for valuable information.

Don’t be Anti-Social

Today’s business landscape is a mobile one. To further enhance engagement, become an active participant across industry-related social media channels.

These are the ideal forums to gain deep insight into the needs and challenges your customers are discussing. This invaluable knowledge enables you to generate content that acknowledges and addresses those challenges. The more interesting and topical your content, the more value it adds, and it’s more likely people will share it on their own social media channels.

Start Telling Your Story

Content creation can be challenging, but a compelling, well-told story is much more engaging than a straight-up sales pitch. It captures and holds the attention of your target audience and has a higher propensity to elicit the desired action.

Companies experiencing the most success with their content are those that talk directly and personally with their channel partners, and encourage two-way conversations. It focuses on understanding partner needs and offers solutions that save time and money, and lead to business growth opportunities.

The post The Importance of Providing Partners with Relevant, Engaging Content appeared first on Zift Solutions.