Just that: What? Utter confusion. Maybe there was no context to the text, or something was spelled incorrectly and threw off the meaning of a sentence, or a wrong number contacted you. The important thing here is: You got a text and either didn’t respond or had to ask for further clarification. We’ve all been there.

Communicating via text and even email presents its own specific brand of challenges. You have to communicate entirely without tone to help the recipient along. When so much of what we say in person is conveyed not with words but through body language and vocal tone, how can you express what you need to say without being misinterpreted?

Let’s put this in channel terms. Finding out what will motivate partners or customers to take the action you’d like them to make is crucial. We say an awful lot without saying anything at all. So how can you be sure your partners or customers are receiving your messages as you intend them to be received? How can you prevent that moment of “What?”

Get Your Strategy Straight

Applying a cohesive and proactive strategy to your partner communications will work wonders for your channel program. Saying that series of words sounds impressive, sure, but what does it actually mean?

Have a meeting with your channel team and come up with a plan for what you need. Keep these questions in mind when you’re brainstorming:

• What do you want to achieve through your channel program? This message should be an overarching theme for all your communications. Thread this goal into everything you do, whether it’s centered on promoting a specific product line, reaching into an untapped market with new service, or something else. You’ll need to repeat it more than you think to reach partners.
• Are you using segmentation to target subsets of channel partner profiles with specific messaging? You should be. Lower performing partners may need more motivation with more frequent or tailored messaging to get them engaged. And you’ll want to maintain a great rapport with high-performers to keep them active. (Learn more about the importance of partner segmentation here.)
• What are the main messages you want to deliver to channel partners? If you can’t answer that, think about this: What do you want your partners to do after they read your message? If that point or call to action isn’t clear in your messaging, partners will move on to the next thing on their to-do list.
• What communication medium or platform are you using to get in touch with partners? Email blasts, social media, the partner portal or phone calls are common methods, but what works best for your needs and the urgency of the message you’re delivering? Just like digital marketing outreach, a multi-touch approach works best for to-partner communications. Consider the timing and cadence of your messages as well.
• Who will be delivering the message? Identify the team member who will be communicating with your channel partners and have a specific owner for each medium, so a point person assigned to email, portal or social media, for instance.

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

Now that you know what you’re saying and how you’re saying it to partners, it’s time to collaborate with partners on your customer communications strategy. You’ll need to get on the same page with partners and make sure your objectives are aligned to make the most impact. Here are a few points to consider when messaging customers, through-partner or not:

• What’s the purpose of your message to customers? This seems obvious, but keep in mind that your purpose and your partner’s purpose may differ.
• What is the main message you are delivering to customers? What message will your partners deliver? A unified front may seem to be ideal, but try to keep your messages complementary — they should build on each other. Though your goal is “sell X amount of this product line,” your partner’s goal can be “sell the remaining stock of a subset of X,” and not interfere with your main objective.
• Team up on communication methods. Planned communications to customers is ideal for everyone’s peace of mind. Identify who will be reaching out and at what stage of the customer lifecycle.

With clear objectives and precise details on who is handling each task, you stand a good chance of connecting with partners and customers.

Leave a comment with tips on communication methods you’ve found to be successful and be sure to check out our blog, Lost in Translation: Connecting with International Partners. It’s packed with things to consider in your communications with global partners.  

The post Not So Dazed and Confused: Refining Your Messaging to Partners and Customers appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Look, I’ve been in marketing a long time, so I’m no stranger to today’s marketing speak and business jargon.  Every day my head swirls around the alphabet soup we’ve cooked up in our work world. We try to one up each other on the latest, buzziest, trendiest way of naming something new or, heck, even changing up something we already knew.  

But lately we’ve been having a conversation among the Zift marketing team about how all of language in general creates a “voice” and how it gives us our Zift voice.  

Among all the words we use, all the acronyms and tech talk (I’ll take a side of CHaaS with my ChanTech, please…), we also use words like MORE and DIFFERENT.  

And on my morning walk to the break room to get coffee, I am reminded that those words don’t just serve as marketing speak. MORE and DIFFERENT define us.

Zift is made up of 200+ strong, all of whom bring more than resumes and technical expertise.  While we “do” technology, we know our customers need – and deserve – more than that to be successful in today’s competitive channel landscape.  That’s why we’ve built a company that doesn’t just sell software but also provides expert services and intelligence.  We’re doers. We’re fixers.  We’re fighters. We’re dreamers.  

We are also artists, singers, musicians, and photographers.

We are amateur gourmet cooks and (ridiculously) good bakers.

We do cross-stitch and pilot airplanes (really).

We do cosplay and Krav Maga.

We do parkour and jiu-jitsu.

We coach and mentor and volunteer.

We are (former) soccer stars and spelling champs and semi-pro hockey players

We run book clubs and run our kids to and from practice.

We want to better introduce you to the characters and creativity and moxie that makes Zift, Zift.  So on your future scrolls — up, down, all around — we’ll be sharing more of our voice here on Channel Chatter.  More about our people and our “Why.” We’ll be bringing you closer to the folks that really make our tech “tick.” We’re gonna “walk the walk” while we “talk the talk.”  We’re going to take it the “next level.”

We’re gonna show you what makes Zift different.

The post One Voice appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Following tried-and-true email templates is easy — slide in your new text, click on what segment of channel partners you’re targeting and hit send. But that approach is unlikely to give you the results you want. Consider how much information partners are already receiving. We’re all facing inbox overload. The average office worker receives 121 emails per day. Would you read an email that looked like it had been given very little thought if you didn’t absolutely have to?

How can you get heard over the chatter? Rise above the ruckus of your partners’ inboxes with relevant information they’ll want to know. Personalization is, of course, another important consideration — it generates higher open and click-through rates. From “Hello [FIRST_NAME]” to targeting partners by their specific role or vertical, personalization makes a difference. Modern audiences expect it.

Here are some more tips and trends you can use to keep partners engaged in your communications.

Dynamic Surveys

Surveys can help you learn more about what keeps your channel partners up at night, so you can resolve those issues and proactively anticipate future snags. Here’s a tip: Instead of redirecting partners to another link for the survey, embed dynamic questions directly into your email so recipients can respond instantly. By putting the survey right in front of partners and not having to click a link to a new page, participating in the survey is so easy, they might just do it.

Deadline Countdown

Want a sense of urgency in your mailing? There’s nothing better for that than a countdown. It’s just like watching the New Years’ Eve countdown of your choice (our Cary, NC office is partial to the Acorn Drop). Consumer emails use this with limited-time offers or using the word “urgent” in their subject lines, and you’ve likely seen it in countdowns to events.

Adding a dynamic countdown timer in prime real estate at the top of your email that displays the actual time remaining will ratchet up the sense of urgency — and likely catch your partners’ attention.

Convenience Features

When it comes to partner satisfaction, making it easy for them to get work done is key. Anything you can do inside your email to help them out will reflect well in your engagement rates. Want examples? Add dynamic features that, when clicked, instantly add an event to their calendars or send a direct message to customer service, instead of routing them to your “Contact Us” page. Going the extra mile pays off.

Videos

Video content is here to stay. Everyone is applying it to their marketing strategies, so why not use it in emails too? You’re probably creating videos for your partner portal and using them in Learning Management Systems and using them for social media. Carrying them over to partner communications makes sense. Embedding muted autoplay videos not only captures and holds attention, but research from Wistia shows that viewers stay 2.6 times longer on pages with video than pages without.

Social Networks

You’re already likely taking full advantage of every social media marketing opportunity you can. Given the amount of audience reach social networks provide, it’s an easy investment to make. Chances are, you’re already delivering relevant content to your partners. Why not leverage this elsewhere? Embedding real-time social feeds in your emails lets you kill two engagement birds with one stone. Dynamic social feeds mean partners can open and receive the email, see live feeds of your social accounts and click through to interact with the actual social site, doubling your potential reach.

Making your communications more dynamic, no matter what method you use, is a good way to up your open and click-through rates. What have you done in the past to get partners clicking and reading your emails? What worked and what didn’t? Let us know in the comments.

The post 5 Examples of Click-worthy Trends for Partner Communications appeared first on Zift Solutions.

There was plenty to chat about in the channel this year.  Check out the most popular posts of 2017 in our top ten countdown:

10. Prepare for Global Domination: Zift Adds WeChat

“During the past decade, social media has reshaped the sales landscape along with the way people and businesses communicate. Today, B2B organizations and their channel partners are using social media to reach a much broader audience, demonstrate expertise and nurture ongoing conversations with prospects and customers. But to truly dominate the social media realm, you must move beyond just Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.”

9. Stepping Up to Solve the Integration Challenge

Ken Romley’s words at the launch of our Channel as a Service platform have become our mission and we’re seeing the benefits it brings customers.  “I can assure you that Channel as a Service comes from listening to our customers, hearing what channel leaders desire — and stepping up to deliver on the bigger picture.”

8.  Filling Some Big Shoes

This guest post by channel marketing expert, Mike Gallagher, is all about seeing things from your partner’s perspective.  “Sitting in a typical vendor organization, it is natural to design marketing programs centered on driving your brand.   You are measured on driving your marketing KPIs and growing partner leads and pipeline for your products or services.  But when designing those marketing programs or writing those MDF policies, it is wise for the vendor to spend some meaningful time standing inside of those mighty big shoes of their partners.  The world suddenly looks very different.”

7. Dispatches from Dell EMC World 2017 Global Partner Summit: 3 Best Practices for Digital Marketing in the Channel

Zift’s Chief Strategy Officer, Laz Gonzalez, shares the good stuff from his special presentation at Dell EMC World in May.  “The fact is, the modern marketing landscape has changed dramatically – and your channel marketing efforts must change with it, particularly when it comes to helping partners embrace digital marketing.  Digital marketing works – but partners need the right tools, skills and support to execute digital to provide measurable results.”

6. Blending the Art & Science of Digital Marketing

Digital ads that convert take the best of both good creative and sensible use of metrics. “Blending the art and the science of digital media marketing means staying ahead of the curve. In today’s digital marketing landscape there are two important ways that help achieve this; leveraging metrics and developing intuition.”

5.  The Deal on Leads

Laz Gonzalez calles “time-out” to set the record straight on the difference between lead management and deal registration.  “Lead management and deal registration, two critical components of channel sales and marketing, are often confused and misused among the majority of business to business (B-to-B) channel programs.”

4.  Channel Breakthrough: Tapping into the Power of Partner Currency

This year, we were thrilled to share knowledge from Pino Soro.  Don’t know Pino?  Time to get an introduction – Pino was featured on CRN’s “100 People You Don’t Know But Should.”  Here we break down his key takeaways when leveraging channel partner currency, including brushing up on lessons learned in Psych class.

3. Digital Advertising KPIs: Your Keys to Measuring Performance

Zift’s Director of Digital Advertising Services, Charles Machalicky, gets to the point on what you really need to focus on when measuring success.  “Knowing the answer depends on who is asking the question in the first place. Depending on whether you are a supplier, a partner, or a member of the Zift team, you may have a different definition of what success means.”

2. Driving Channel Adoption and Sales Pipeline through Partner Marketing

Andrew Sigmund brought his unique experience working with channel partners to Channel Chatter. “In today’s oversaturated channel environment, suppliers must enable partners collaboratively with both sales and marketing tactics to create true value. As a Senior Manager of Channel Engagement at Zift Solutions, I’ve had the advantage of working with many different channel programs over the years and have seen what does and doesn’t work. Simply signing up a channel partner then expecting their participation and success in promoting or selling your products won’t cut it.”

And the #1 Channel Chatter post of 2017 is…..

Wish List 2017: What’s on Top Channel Leader’s To-Do Lists?

Where do we start with recapping everything that was 2017?  The beginning, of course!  This post kicked off our year and featured top channel experts including Maria Chien, Seenu Brahmarouthu, and Heather K. Margolis sharing what was tops on their wish lists for the year.  Do you think some wishes came true?  Comment below!

The post Top 10 Channel Chatters of 2017 appeared first on Zift Solutions.

If your organization has built a successful and growing channel program, you know the tremendous value that automating channel partner relationships can bring.  But if you haven’t and don’t know if you should, here are five top reasons why it’s time.

1. Your competitors are doing it

Channel partners will always favor the supplier that is easiest to work with.  The most forward thinking of your competitors are already adopting partner relationship automation, positively transforming the experience and effectiveness of their channel partners.  In addition to boosting competitiveness by boosting productivity of their partners, at the same time they are vying for the loyalty of your partners.

2. Your time is better spent on partner engagement

By automating administrative tasks related to partner onboarding, training and enablement, vendor channel professionals can focus more time doing the things only they can do – responding to the real-time needs of partners.  Your team’s time is best spent engaging partners, as this will have the most dramatic impact on partner satisfaction, loyalty and performance.

3. Today’s real-time analytics can help you get more out of your channel

Performance-targeted data analytics can tell you volumes about your channel.  Good Partner Relationship Management (PRM) creates data-driven insights by dynamically identifying high-impact channel behaviors and encouraging widespread adoption of these behaviors, measuring partner performance, engagement and demonstrating ROI. Unleashing this channel data is key to unlocking new levels of partner performance and business growth.

4. Time is money, and time is ticking

Every minute you go without automating PRM could be a missed revenue opportunity – making now the perfect time to automate. You can realize greater partner-generated revenue and accelerate channel growth.  

5. Shared partner knowledge is business-critical

While traditional PRM solutions give partners access to relevant enablement tools, the next generation PRM (like Zift) provides collaborative forums for partner reps to share knowledge.  It’s about more than improving partner access.  It’s about building a thriving channel ecosystem by cultivating dialogues within and between reps, partners and their vendors.

There’s more to the story.  Get your hands on the latest “Supercharge” series from Zift and learn how to turn all the reasons into results:

How To: Supercharge Partner Recruitment

How To: Supercharge Partner Enablement

How To: Supercharge Partner Engagement 

The post 5 (More) Reasons to Automate your Channel Now appeared first on Zift Solutions.

• How viewing your channel partner (reseller, dealer, distributor, etc) as a member of your own sales team increases your influence on their message.
• What “secrets” you can leverage from the biggest and best channel brands (spoiler alert:  think ongoing training programs, and clear and scalable processes.)
• How stringent certification programs help keep your partners on point when communicating your brand value, and more confident in expressing product level details and end user benefits.

Check out more Channel Visions episodes featuring the leaders in channel marketing and partner relationship management at ChannelVisions.tv

The post Pillars to Build a Successful Channel Strategy appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Just ask Cayan’s Vice President of Channel Marketing, Bradford Giles.

Giles believes the days of getting channel partners engaged and effective in your channel program has long moved away from a round of golf or country club dinner.  Vendors now need to think beyond the traditional approach to building channel relationships, and really get down to business when it comes to becoming better business allies.

In this episode of Channel Visions, Giles also shares how emerging technology is helping foster relationships that are mutually beneficial for the vendor and the channel partner.

Visit ChannelVisions.tv for more videos featuring leading thought leaders in the channel marketing and management (CMM), and partner relationship management (PRM).

The post Channel Visions: Becoming a Better Business Partner in the Channel appeared first on Zift Solutions.

1. He is on CRN’s list of “100 People You Don’t Know But Should.”
2. He is obsessed with college basketball, specifically UConn Huskies.  (As a lifelong Pitt fan, respect.)
3. He knows how to generate demand and win through 100% channel models.

In his 18 years as a marketing strategist for technology companies, Pino has experience working in highly competitive environments.  He now serves as the senior director of demand generation at CyberArk – a security software company that specializes in protecting enterprises against cyber attacks and threats.

As Pino noted, years ago it was enough for suppliers to expect partners to register deals all day.  But as demands and attention shifted, partners wanted something more in return.   These “somethings” are the building blocks of your partner currency.

Currency, as formally defined, is something of value that is in circulation as a medium of exchange.  Related to the channel, Pino offers a slightly different definition.  He says to think of currency as anything that can be used, that has value to the partner and can incent them to create a reciprocal relationship.  

I wanted to share with Channel Chatter readers a few key takeaways from Pino’s excellent Channel Breakthrough presentation on the power of partner currency:

“Live in reality not theory.”

Once you’ve determined the currency types you have in play, map them.  This helps you graduate from the “theory” of the exercise to reality. Rebates? Exclusive campaigns?  Speaking opportunities? SPIFs?  List them and be sure to include not only the currency type but the target audience for that currency (field sales rep? marketer?), and an estimated dollar value of that currency type.

“Go back to Psych 101.”

Pino recommends getting started with a crash course in psychology.  Your partners are people  so take time to really understand what your partners care about, and what they’re going to dismiss as not important to the relationship. Or, as Pino puts it, what’s going to make them laugh you right out of the room.

“Find your champions.”

Go into the partner organization bottoms up, rather than top down.  Tightly align yourself with the field level and spend time building relationships and exchanging currency with the boots on the ground for relevant wins.  Once you have a critical mass of wins, it’s time to elevate what’s working upstream to leadership.

“If it’s not on paper, it doesn’t exist.”

Involve partners in planning – then make sure it’s documented.  No matter what currency type you use, create clear objectives and remember to demand (nicely) a return.  Your partners should be savvy enough to know you’re offerings aren’t charity with an endless supply of resources behind them. There should always be an expectation of return. Whether it’s pipeline or data you expect from the activity, make sure everyone is on the same page.

What’s on your list of partner currency?  Share in the comments below.

The post Channel Breakthrough: Tapping into the Power of Partner Currency appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Channel expert Sherman Tam is back in a new episode of Channel Visions.  In it, he shares with viewers the need for suppliers to be flexible in what they provide in terms of processes, content and tools to effectively meet partners where they are at their marketing and sales maturity level.

Learn more by watching Tam’s video along with others from thought leaders transforming channel marketing and management.

The post Adapt or Fail: Evolving with Today’s Channel appeared first on Zift Solutions.

In this new Channel Visions video, Tam stresses the importance of developing a foundation of content channel partners can use, regardless of their size or go-to-market plan.

Channel Marketing at the Push of a Button

According to Tam, there is simply no “one size fits all” when it comes to providing marketing and sales support to channel partners. That’s exactly why channel tools matter. Developing and delivering campaigns and content for the wide array of partners that most channel organizations have today takes time and money. The right channel technology and processes can lift a lot of that burden from both suppliers and their channel partners by providing multi-tactic channel marketing at the push of a button.

Follow Tegile and Tam’s lead to increase partner engagement and drive sales:

• Provide pre-packaged campaigns. These work especially well for partners that don’t have the tools, resources or expertise to develop lead generation and nurturing tactics on their own.

• Realize integration matters. Time is money. Being able to access content, campaigns and value-added assets quickly, within the systems they already know and use, is vital to partners who are already feeling overburdened.

• Recognize shifting market demands. You can’t ignore the consolidation happening at both the vendor and partner level, along with rapidly evolving technology, in today’s channel landscape. Be willing to provide strategies and small pieces of information partners and prospects can digest quickly.

Learn more by watching Tam’s video along with others from thought leaders transforming channel marketing and management here: https://channelvisions.tv/

The post Time is Money: Why Channel Tools Matter appeared first on Zift Solutions.

As you’ll see in our latest eBook, we’ve got a touch of Spring fever here at Zift. You’ll likely catch it as you flip through The 7 Steps to Growing a Profitable Channel Partner Ecosystem with Partner Relationship Management (PRM).  We’ve pulled together the top tips for planting the seeds of profitability across your channel partner ecosystem with PRM.

You’ll learn:

• Why changes in the channel landscape make PRM essential for B2B organizations (even those with CRM and SFA systems)
• Best practices for identifying, targeting and onboarding the RIGHT partners
• How to lay the groundwork for fruitful, long-lasting and lucrative channel partnerships

Kick off those winter boots. Find your flip flops. And see firsthand how you can maximize yield and return from PRM with this fun and informative new eBook.

Download It Now

The post Watch Your Partnerships & ROI Bloom with PRM appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The post Zift Solutions – Spring has Sprung World Tour 2017 appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Leveraging Metrics

In the age of big data, there is one cardinal sin – making a decision based on a single anecdote. The Internet, social media, search engines, mobile tech, haptics, and gamification are being used to generate more data than a human being can even think about. Human behavior in digital spaces is complex. The behavior of crowds in these same information environments is more complex. For that reason, making decisions based solely on intuition can be ruinous.

In digital marketing, there are ten essential metrics that must be tracked ruthlessly. They are;

1. Overall Traffic: the number of total site visits
2. Channel-Specific Traffic: indicates where visitors came from
3. Conversions: indicates when a visitor becomes a paying customer
4. Bounce Rate: the number of visitors who visit once only
5. Search Trends: indications of forces beyond your control
6. New vs. Returning Visitors: indicates a site’s growth potential
7. Queries: Clicks, searches and other behavior- often protected, valuable when you find it
8. Top 10 Organic Landing Pages: AKA ‘landing pages,’ they are your most ‘visible’ pages
9. User Demographics: traditional user information indicating geographical location, and other cultural considerations
10. Brand Sentiment: perhaps best measured via social media, this tells you whether or not the exposure your brand gets is positive

When it comes to taking and leveraging these metrics, there are solutions and experts that can be tasked with the job- and if you’re new to the practice- it’s ok to ask for help. Managing and interpreting metrics can sometimes take a village, but they can also be handled by someone with vision, someone who is inspired to take the time and expend the mental energy to commit the information that metrics provide to the imagination.

Developing Intuition

Humans are supremely intuitive beings, and all creative efforts are inherently the products of intuition- even information technology itself. People who are immersed in a subject long enough- and with sufficient interest- develop an intuition for it. That’s why those who grew up with gadgets and computers are the family IT experts. In digital marketing, the same rule applies. Developing the intuition to forecast trends means being immersed in digital media. To this end, for those who do not have it naturally, taking some time to get submerged in social media could be a good way to enroll one’s self in a crash course in digital marketing forecasting.

Developing, blending and using these two critical components of digital marketing is no small task. It will take dedication; real-world practice; and a generous serving of inspiration. But for anyone who wants to master blending art and the science of digital marketing it can be done.

The post Blending the Art & Science of Digital Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

It is easy to think of automation as simply a way to facilitate some of the less mission-critical parts of the marketing and sales process. But the truth is that channel marketing automation can greatly benefit your lead generation strategies when used to their full potential.

Let’s take a quick look at three ways channel marketing automation can be used to generate more leads.

The Power of Email Campaigns 

Long understood to be a great lead generation strategy, email is still a top way to get more leads. Give your channel partners the email content and campaigns you’ve created to use in their own marketing efforts.  It’s that simple.  Not only does it foster a unified brand message, it also makes your partners happy that they don’t have to start from scratch.  A platform can make it easy for you, the supplier, to give them the content but also provide the partner flexibility to personalize parts of the message for their specific needs. From there, more automation allows you to segment your target audience and send emails targeted specifically to where the customer is in the buyer journey. This would be virtually impossible to do manually, given the scope of your customer base.   This level of personalization in your email campaigns leads to a better customer experience, which in turn helps to generate highly qualified leads.

Social Media Marketing Automation

Forbes observes: “Businesses that anticipate future behavior can address unique concerns via different sales and marketing approaches.”  Social media is one of the most powerful mediums but it comes at a cost.  Channel partners, especially smaller ones, often lack the time and resources to do it well.  Similiar to share email campaigns, automate your social media syndication to keep a steady stream of content running on social sites.  By going on step further and using analytics tools as part of your social media syndication program, you can see which channel partners are using content effectively, and what your social reach is across the channel community. Armed with this information, you can design social media campaigns that appeal to both your channel partners and customers.

Web Content Syndication

Few would argue the fact that a well-designed landing page is the key to quality lead generation. Marketing automation tools enable you to design and test landing pages and web query forms to ensure they are optimized. And if you have some type of dynamic content syndication, you can target content based on website visitor behavior or characteristics, increasing conversion which means more good leads.

It All Comes Back to Leads

You’ve automated content delivery to your channel partners.  You’ve got more leads.  Now what?  You want to know what’s happening with those leads.  With easy integration to mission critical systems such as Oracle, Salesforce, Sage, and more, you can get insight into lead activities and track results with automated closed-loop reporting.

And then you can really watch your garden grow.

The post Want to Grow Your Leads? Automate, Automate, Automate appeared first on Zift Solutions.

10. 6 Email Marketing Best Practices to Generate More Leads – If you find yourself constantly questioning the meaning of life and the success (or failure) of your email marketing campaigns, then this post is a good starting point for you.

9. Writers of the Lost Art: Email Subject Lines – A sleeper hit, this post just joined the Channel Chatter ranks in December which proves something as “simple” as subject lines resonates so deep with so many.

8. Adapting to Channel Change: The Cisco Story – Guest blogger, Chad Reese, Director of Partner Digital Marketing for Cisco Systems hits the high notes on what Cisco has done to adapt to shifting customer and prospect buying behavior.

7. Content Marketing & The Buyer’s Journey – We’re big believers that no matter what your channel partner’s sales cycle looks like, when it comes to the buyer’s journey there are some fundamental truths about the type of content you should use along the way.

6. The Shrinking Sales Cycle: How to Win the Online Content Game – A decade ago it took about 5.6 interactions between a prospect and your brand to make a sale.  Today, it’s less than 2 interactions.  Shrinking? Yep.

5. Tis’ the Season for Giving Once Again – Zift’s annual “you choose, we give” campaign.  Not that we ever doubted, but the fact that this comes in at #5 on our greatest hits list shows that Channel Chatter readers have warm hearts to match the sharp minds. Thank you for caring.

4. What Makes Them Click? Digital Ads in a Noisy World – A question as old as digital advertising itself.  While no one can claim to have the end all be all answer (that would be no fun), we do have data on things that work and things that don’t.

3. Automation Fusion: Blending Platforms to Drive Direct and Indirect Channel Revenue – What do you get when you throw the leading thought leaders in the channel and marketing automation on a webcast together?  Gold.  Pure gold.

2. Manufacturers and Channel Partners: A State of Disconnect [Infographic] – This year we did some pretty cool research with the Manufacturers Alliance for Productivity and Innovation (MAPI).  (And who doesn’t love a good infographic?)

And the number one Channel Chatter hit of 2016 is….

1. How Often Should You Update or Rebuild Your Website? – A classic with a free “Do I need to update my website” checklist!

We look forward to you joining us for more channel marketing and management content and conversations in the new year. Subscribe to our biweekly digest and get the latest posts delivered right to your inbox. Simply enter your email address on the top right of the page and click the big orange “Subscribe” button.

From all of us at Zift Solutions, have a happy, healthy, and happening 2017.

The post Channel Chatter Countdown: The Top 10 Posts of 2016 appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Keep the Best Ambassadors of Your Brand

If you’re a regular Channel Chatter reader, you’ve heard us say that you should treat your channel partners as if they were leads.  If you don’t properly nurture these critical relationships, partner happiness could suffer leading to low adoption in your marketing programs. Respected and engaged channel partners can be one of your biggest assets when it comes to driving more business.  Keep the best working for you and your channel programs and revenue numbers are sure to be rewarded.

Be Picky (It’s Ok)

Some channel sales managers search for as many channel opportunities as they can find to bring in the most revenue.  However, as is the case most of the time, quantity over quality is not the answer.  You have a right to be “picky” when evaluating new channel partners.  You are allowed to be particular when it comes to channel performance.  Being selective will allow you to focus on better channel partners that will do more for your business instead of requiring you to manage multiple partners that underperform.

Fuel Channel Motivation

There are times when you may notice that a normally high performing channel partner starts to decline. While this can be attributed to many different things, there are some steps you can take on your end to reverse it and prevent it in the future. Motivation is key. The relationship must be mutually profitable to both your company as well as the partner in order for it to work. Focus on this motivation and continue to monitor whether or not it is a good business relationship. Reward channels that do excellent work. Bring them into more conversations around your objectives and goals. Building their commitment to your company can further the relationship and pay huge dividends.

What’s your mantra? Share in the comments below.

The post Three Mantras for Channel Sales Managers appeared first on Zift Solutions.

But in a world where content marketing noise can be as loud as the day is long, the email subject line is often a second thought as we move onto the next thing we want to say.  It’s becoming more of a lost art than a shiny treasure in your content initiative.

So let’s pause, regroup and revisit the foundational four of a solid subject line.

Writing the Ideal Subject Line

1. Keep it short.  You should try to keep it at 60 characters or less. The main reason for this is a focus on brevity as well as making it easy to read on a mobile device. Your phone will only show so many characters so if someone is reading it on their mobile, you want them to be able to read the subject.
2. Keep it simple.   Be creative, but not at the expense of being too vague as to what’s inside. It’s important to be clear about what your reader will get with an open click. Include a highlight of the email in your subject, and then tease the heck out of it.
3. Keep it timely.  If an action is needed soon but not right away (don’t you just love those?), you have more room to focus your character count on something witty in the email content. However, if your offer or event expires soon, let it be known and get right to the point. 
4. Keep it together.  Don’t start a sentence in the subject and end it in the body of the email.  Please.  For all of us.

Ensuring you create an email subject line that entices readers and gets your message opened is still the front line of a successful email marketing campaign (not to mention all of your day to day messages).  Stand out from the rest, respect your reader’s time and cluttered inbox, and go create some good emails.  

What’s your tip for a good subject line? What do you absolutely hate in a subject line?  Share in the comments below!

The post Writers of the Lost Art: Email Subject Lines appeared first on Zift Solutions.

That’s both good and bad news. The good news is you can get more sales faster, while saving money on content and strategies designed to move prospects along. The bad news is, buyers are making up their minds based on what they see and read on the world “wild” web, and not based on what your sales and marketing teams are feeding them. Basically, if your online content game is bad, it’s not likely your sales team will score a conversion.

Why the Sales Cycle is Getting Shorter

The shrinking sales cycle is a direct result of more savvy online buyers who do most – if not all –  of the research it takes to make a buying decision online before a salesperson is involved. Information that used to be asked and answered in a sales call or during a face-to-face meeting is now passed along via online websites, company videos, blog posts, social media accounts, and even those sources outside your control, like online customer review sites.  It is now essential to build a strong online presence because that’s likely the only consideration your brand is going to get.

The trend applies equally to B2B, B2C, and channel marketing, including those in industries that are typically heavy on the in-person sales calls, like manufacturing, healthcare, legal, and consulting services.

How a Shorter Buying Cycle Changes Your Channel Marketing

A shorter buying cycle is both good and bad news for the channel marketer. It saves money and reduces the time it takes to generate revenue, but if your online content game is weak, you’ll lose them before you even meet them. This makes each piece of online content many times more critical than before. All of your content has to include strong calls to action (CTAs) that fully express your value proposition, clearly define your brand identity and establish your brand’s uniqueness within the industry.

Does this make your sales staff less essential? No, not at all. Though the buyers come into the sales conversation armed with more information than ever before, it is still necessary to have a knowledgeable and caring sales human being to oversee the conversion process. What has changed is the need for sales reps who are even more effective at instilling confidence in the prospect that they’ve made the right decision after all. Ending the sales cycle with a sales rep that fails to impress makes the prospect question whether or not they made the right decision to go with your brand.

How to Manage Shorter Sales Cycles in Channel Marketing

To start, focus on building a complete and engaging online brand identity. Reinforce your advertising content with excellent video tutorials, buying guides and checklists, product comparison charts, and other content that explains how your brand delivers value. Then crown your buying journey with the finishing touch — a salesperson who knows their stuff.

Channel marketers are playing in an entirely different field than they did even a decade ago, and it will be interesting to see how sales cycles and buyers’ journeys continue to evolve over the next ten years and beyond.  Has your sales and marketing staff caught up? What changes do you anticipate in the future?  Share with us in the comments below.

The post The Shrinking Sales Cycle: How to Win the Online Content Game appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Developing Content for the Awareness Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

At the awareness stage, the customer is just realizing they have a particular need and that a product exists to meet that need. The Awareness stage is marked by the customer’s recognition that they have a need or a problem that a certain type of product can address. This is often called a “pain point.” Customers usually buy to relieve a perceived pain. The pain could be as significant as needing a massive software system to manage a business, or as simple as “needing” the latest fashions to impress their peers.

No matter the “need,” the strategy is the same: highlight how the product will fulfill  that need. Instead of focusing on the features of the product, use content to explain how the product or service meets that need. For instance, write about “X Ways ERP Makes Your Work Processes Easier” instead of “X Features of ERP Software.”

Excellent types of marketing content for customers at the Awareness stage of the sales cycle include:

• Whitepapers
• eBooks
• Tip sheets
• Checklists
• How-to guides & videos
• Webinars

This isn’t time for the hard sell though. Right now, you’re generating interest, asking questions and gently moving them along the steps of the buyer’s journey.

Developing Content for the Evaluation Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

Depending on how crowded the marketplace is, there could be many different products available to meet the shopper’s needs. Your job is to prove your channel partner’s option is the best. Tout their selling points: cheapest, highest quality, easiest to use, best color selection, etc.

The Evaluation Stage of the buyer’s journey is the point at which the shopper realizes their need and understands that a product is out there to meet the need. However, they haven’t decided which product to choose. It’s your job to promote your channel partner’s product, showcase how it’s the best option and to remove friction out of the selection process. Friction is anything that slows or halts the process toward conversion, such as high prices, questionable quality or worries over how well the company will support the product after purchase. You can focus on:

• Why the product is the best option
• Why your channel partner offers the best customer service
• How your channel partner delivers the best price or value

Whatever your channel partner’s key selling points are, that’s what you focus on in the content developed for this stage of the buyer’s journey. This is essentially a point of extended engagement. Good types of content for the Evaluation Stage include:

• Case studies
• Webinars
• FAQs
• Data sheets
• Demo videos
• Sample products

Developing Content for the Purchase Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

It’s time to close the deal. Make the negotiation and buying stage as fast, friction-free, and simple as possible. An easier process means fewer buyers drop out before the finish line.

Now comes the CTA — the Call to Action. Before now, you’ve been gently guiding them along the buyer’s journey. Now, you’re point-blank asking them to make a move.

Depending on the types of products you’re helping a channel partner sell, this is the stage where you begin making deals and negotiating contracts. The best types of content for this stage of the sales cycle are:

• Free trials
• Live product demos
• Free consultations
• Free estimates
• Coupons, discounts, special deals

Make sure you help your channel partners every step of the way, with the right content, resources and tools. Utilize insights to create content that will improve the way you manage leads, take advantage of marketing automation and syndicate customized collateral to build long-lasting effective relationships.

The post Content Marketing & The Buyer’s Journey appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Every day, Americans see about 5,000 different advertisements. How can you get them to pay attention to the one that’s yours?

Even in this age of advertisement inundation, people click. But what does it take to get that click on your banner ads, paid search, and social media, like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter ads?

Here are factors that make the difference – some of which you can control and some you can’t. But being aware of all the reasons that cause people to click (or not to) gives you, the digital advertising marketer, more control of your own destiny.

They Click Because They Need to Know That Information

This is something you can’t control, except to have the marketing data to understand what your target audience wants and place your ad where they tend to look for it. Investing in paid search ads, content syndication and social media advertising are the most powerful ways to reach audiences looking for your kinds of digital advertising.

They Click Because They’re Interested in a Product Like that

Though more nebulous, you can still target these prospects based on the types of products they tend to search for and buy with prompting from digital advertising. That’s less targeted than appearing at the top of the Google search results when they look for “widgets for auto manufacturers,” but it’s not a total shot in the dark, either.

The trick to nailing it with these prospective customers is being able to track them across channels and online identities. For example, can you track the supply chain manager when she leaves her desktop computer and starts browsing with her tablet or smartphone? Being able to deliver the right content across devices and online profiles means reaching Teresa when she’s away from her office, which means she’s probably more relaxed and ready to pay attention to your ads.

They Click Because They Trust the Advertiser

To understand this, it’s important to know why people don’t click. The most common causes for pauses are:

• Fear of getting a virus
• Fear of getting spammed
• Fear of their online activities being tracked

Some also don’t click because the ad isn’t relevant to them or they don’t want to get distracted. The point is, they are far more likely to click when they trust the advertiser. Don’t hide who you are, especially if you’ve done a good job with brand recognition. Just don’t be the kind of company people don’t trust, either.

They Click Because You Told Them What to Do

If you use strong CTAs that make it very clear what action they should take and what happens when they do, you’ll significantly improve the chances that they’ll click. A strong CTA is essential for connecting with people. Make it absolutely clear what they stand to get out of clicking, and what they’ll miss if they don’t click.

Learn more about automating digital advertising programs, including digital advertising from Zift paid search marketing, LinkedIn advertising and ad retargeting.

The post What Makes Them Click? Digital Ads in a Noisy World appeared first on Zift Solutions.

“Without a Heart, it’s just a machine.”

With all due credit to Southwest, it got me thinking about how meaningful this sentiment can be in so many lines of business.  Airplanes, automobiles, smart phones, and even channel marketing and management software.  

At Zift, we are more than technology.  We are a team with a lot of heart.  So as we enter the season of giving thanks, Channel Chatter asked Zifters to share what their hearts are thankful for this year.

I’m most thankful for friends and family. I got married in January and gained a husband, a Plott Hound pup, and a whole new side of the family. It has been a fun adventure!
Kaycee McAdams, Project Manager

This is my first tech job so I’m thankful for the opportunity to learn from more experienced developers.
Matt Pilcher, Jr. Web Developer

Thankful for my father, Sid Sacek, who is the hardest working and most generous person I know. Also thankful for my wife, who supports me in more ways than I can count.
Jon Sacek, Web Developer – Production Team

I’m thankful for Aimee Tracy, Zift’s lead development manager.  I’m new to my role and she has been the very best trainer – kind, patient and fun!
Jeri DiCostanzo, Sales Development Representative

This year my daughter started first grade.  I’m thankful for my healthy, beautiful, and  smart little girl!
Damian Rochman, VP of Product

I’m thankful for both my mom and brother always being there to support me in everything that I do, pushing me in the right direction and loving me unconditionally. I’m thankful for my fiancé, Liz Saelens, for saying “Yes” on November 5, 2016. Lastly, I’m thankful for a everyone at Zift for helping me grow in both my job and as a person. Special shoutouts to Mary Flannigan, Erika Ivey, Allison Guckert, and Andy Wilson – Thank You!
Drew Beason, Customer Success Manager

While I’m primarily thankful for my family’s health and well-being, I’m also very grateful for my new home at Zift and the kindness and enthusiasm shown to me as I made this important transition in my career.  Thank you, Zifters!
Laz Gonzalez, Chief Strategy Officer

I am thankful for my kids and husband being happy and healthy and being surrounded by such amazing people in our lives.
Jen Serino, Designer, Production Team

I’m thankful to work with a great team of Zifters who make it a joy to come to work every day. I’m also grateful that I have the opportunity to work with our channel partners to help them reach their marketing and sales goals!
Lauren Phelps, Channel Engagement Manager

What are you most thankful for this year? We’d love to hear your sentiments, too.  Share them in the comments below.

The post Zifters Give Thanks appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Research has shown that the average channel partner is managing between 5 and 13 different supplier relationships at any given time. There simply isn’t enough time and money to represent all of those with the vigor needed to be successful.

Step 1. Building an Effective Marketing Campaign

You already have the campaigns and content, it just needs to be re-purposed for your channel partners’ use. What percentage of the channel marketing should come from you, the supplier? You should be supplying about 90% of the content needed for successful channel marketing campaigns. You already have much of this marketing infrastructure in place: your website content, product descriptions, webinars, whitepapers, newsletters, marketing campaigns, and special promotions and offers.

Simply re-brand and re-purpose this content for your channel partners to use in their own campaigns and promotions. Be sure to collaborate with your channel partners continually, helping them to utilize the content, develop and deliver the campaigns, collect and measure the metrics, and other important channel marketing endeavors.

Step 2. Get the Buy-In of Your Channel Partners

Since a marketer’s job is never done, you now have to “market” your marketing materials to your channel partners. In other words, you have to get your partners to buy into your marketing strategies and campaigns. If you’ve done a good job collaborating with your partners to develop and re-purpose content, this step will be much easier.

Be sure your channel marketing is tailored to your partners, so that it represents their value proposition within the industry. Does your content strategy line up with their marketing strategies? How easy is it for them to take your content and put it towards their own purposes? Create as little friction in this process as possible. Ideally, you’ll deliver content to them that’s already tailored to their needs and is ready for them to distribute as-is.

Step 3. Deliver Continual Success Via Optimization

Use key metrics to refine your marketing messages until they’re perfectly targeted to your channel partners’ audiences. As mentioned before, your channel partners may lack the resources necessary to accurately monitor the marketing metrics. Without these metrics, it’s impossible to prove an ROI on your channel marketing efforts.

These metrics also help you track trends within the marketplace that indicate it’s time to adjust or refocus your channel marketing messages. Set up a means for collecting, analyzing, tracking and reporting on relevant metrics. This includes setting up a strategy to tweak marketing messages as necessary to remain relevant and stay ahead of industry trends. Your channel partners will thank you and reward you with continued relationships and improved sales and revenue.

The post 3 Steps to Start Driving Channel Sales appeared first on Zift Solutions.

We asked a few Zifters to reflect on their academic years – from kindergarten through college – and share one thing they learned in school that has stuck with them through today.  Do you relate?

“No matter how hard you work on something, and how solid the work may be –  if it’s not packaged and presented well – you can and most probably will still fail.”
Scott England, vice president of alliances and strategic partnerships

In abstract math class in college, I learned how to mathematically prove 0.9r (repeating to infinity) is the exact same number as 1. Not just really close or rounded up, but IS 1. I got a solid F in the class but it’s the one thing I learned from it, and I still show it off to impress fellow nerds to this day (Disclaimer: does NOT win over the ladies.)

• • Step 1: Set x=.9r
  • Step 2: Times both sides by 10 to get 10x =9.9r
  • Step 3: Subtract x from both sides to get 9x=9
  • Step 4: Divide both sides by 9 and now you have x=1
  • Thus .9r = 1”

Ben Smith, production design manager 

“Don’t be afraid to ask questions.”
Andrew Sigmund, senior manager channel engagement 

“Sometimes, mother does not know best…especially when it comes to fashion choices. (Sorry, mom!)”
Lauren Phelps, channel engagement manager

 “Make friends with the parking lot attendant so they don’t turn you in when skipping class!”
Dede Houston, director of marketing demand generation

 “Don’t tell your fraternity that their hazing is weak.”
Ches Spencer, senior manager of customer support services

 “Don’t register for a lab that starts before 7:45am. Or anything before 11.”
Beth Darst, customer support specialist

 “Kindergarten rules still apply in the workplace. Share nice and don’t eat the rubber cement.”
Steve Levesque, director of finance.

 “It doesn’t pay to be the class clown all the time. Just when the teacher is away.”
Vincent Quarles III, channel engagement manager

 “I was a teacher and used to always tell my 5th graders – say it and forget it, write it and regret it. On social media- once it’s out there, it’s OUT THERE. You can’t deny it.”
Jennifer Mueller, customer support services

 “Don’t think that just because you are done with school you are done learning.”
Nick Mandikos, sales operations manager

 “You spend a 1/3 of your life sleeping and a 1/3 of your life working. Invest in a great mattress and a great career.”
Edward Mitchell, software engineer

 “Remember Who You Are. This is something my mother would say to me almost every time I left the house. At the time I didn’t think much of it, but looking back now it means so much more. To me it’s about values and recognizing what makes you a better person whether it is in school, your career, your family or whatever. Don’t ever forget what makes you who you are. Don’t get pulled into things that would cause you to go against your values. Instead use those values to become who you want to be. There is a great video that supports this idea. Enjoy.”
David Buffaloe, vice president of marketing

 Awww, David.  

 And on that note – What did you learn in your school age years that has impacted your life? What lessons drove you to the place you are today? We’d love to know.  Share in the comments section below!

The post Zifters Go Back to Class appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The short answer is: no. The blog is not dead. It’s not only alive, but it’s still kicking up quite a ruckus as marketers build and develop new strategies and tactics for emerging markets. Here are some reasons why a blog still belongs in your repertoire of digital channels.

Blogging is Still the Best Way to Achieve Good SEO

Most channel marketers need to target many different keywords, along with a hefty list of long-tail keywords. It’s simply impossible to work all these keywords into your website pages seamlessly without having a blog. With a blog, you can target a theoretically endless string of keywords and long-tail keywords, without bloating your other web pages. A strong blog writer can boost your SEO rankings for every keyword you need to target while remaining authoritative, relative, and interesting.

Blogging Allows You to Distribute Lots of Content

There’s often a limit to how much other content you can get out there with your channel marketing efforts. For example, how many videos can you afford to produce each quarter? How many PPC or banner ads can you afford to place per week? Blogs are inexpensive to produce and can be published quickly. You can publish as many blogs as your marketing team can crank out. It’s cheaper, faster, and much less limited than most other marketing channels.

Blogging is a Great Way to Promote Other Content You Develop

Did you just develop a killer ebook? Maybe you just finished a brilliant white paper or an awesome new promotional video. Whatever it is you’re trying to distribute, a blog can get it in front of more people more quickly than most any other channel. When you simply build a landing page and try to lure people in via keyword search, you’ll only bring a relatively few people in. Blogging makes it possible for you to reach a much larger target audience for your content than you could with any other method. Plus, blogging is far cheaper than most other tactics.

Blogging is Easy to Share Via Social

Struggling to fill your social media feeds with enough interesting and relevant fodder? Your blogs are natural sources of social media posts, and you can even set your blog up to automatically post to your social media feeds when published. It’s a rare easy win for social media marketing, and if you’ve included stellar images with your blog, you’ve automatically upped the ante. Social posts with strong images and eye-catching headlines generate far more clicks, likes, and shares than those with text only (or lame headlines — nobody reads posts with lame headlines).

Blogging Builds Your Brand Reputation

Building a solid, memorable, powerful brand reputation is one of the hardest things for channel marketers to do. Blogging gives you a platform for repeating your message without becoming repetitive. Reinvent your messages over and over again in the form of blog posts. Spin the message around newsworthy events,industry trends, and other current media buzz. Your brand reputation will grow and prosper before your eyes.

Blogging Establishes Your Company as a Thought Leader

In the realm of channel marketing, becoming an industry thought leader is no menial task. There are lots of people out there with excellent ideas, insight, and opinions. A blog provides an ideal platform for putting your executives, developers, and other talent into the spotlight, highlighting what they have to contribute to the discussion. Most large corporations already do this successfully: Microsoft’s developers have their own blogs, as do VMware’s developers, and many others. You can also see this in fashion and interior design, where designers have their own blogs, and in industries like finance, where company executives help people spot trends, capitalize on opportunities, and avoid unnecessary financial risks via their blogs.

Blogging Helps You Nurture Leads & Build Strong Customer Relationships

Blogging is also a powerful tool for pushing customers through the marketing funnel. Through your blog, leads get to know your company and your brand, therefore it is an excellent way to nurture leads. Channel marketers also have to keep up the banter with existing customers, and a blog is the best way to do that. Use your blog to highlight interesting use cases for your products. Use it to highlight how your brand is helping to promote a clean environment. Use the blog to explain how your products meet needs and alleviate pain points.

Blogging is most certainly not dead. It’s just grown up a bit as digital marketing itself matured.

The post Does Blogging Still Fit in Today’s Marketing Mix? appeared first on Zift Solutions.

What steps should you be taking to help your partners when it comes to effectively marketing your products? You need to start by developing a stellar marketing campaign. Then you must work to get your channel partners on board with your great new campaign. But it doesn’t stop there! You have to continually improve the campaign over time, so that what you end up with is even better than what you started with.

Developing a Smart Marketing Campaign

Your primary goal as the supplier is to make it easier to close the deals. This means supporting your partners’ efforts when it comes to sales. Your resources can be invaluable for creating content, materials, and other elements of a strong campaign that your channel partners can use to sell your products and services. There are many things you can create to do this:

• A well-designed website with solid content
• Whitepapers
• Webinars
• Newsletters
• Special offers and promotions

Notice that all of these can be distributed across various channels: both online and in physical representation. It’s essential to employ a digital marketing strategy to work in concert with your other promotions (such as brochures and live events). Long-term success depends on marketing across these channels. The silos that exist in your sales and marketing departments need to be merged. No longer is it acceptable to have one team working on printed materials, another focusing on TV advertisements, and a separate team working on your digital or online marketing. The barriers must come down. Merge this data and allow your teams to work together in support of your partners.

Getting Partners to Buy Into Your Campaigns

This really means that you have to start marketing your marketing! It’s a marketing process to get channel partners to embrace the campaign you’ve developed so that in turn they can market your wares to the public. The closer you can align your marketing strategies with their marketing and sales strategies, the better. Make it as easy as possible for them to use your campaign, and be prepared to actively embrace and promote their campaigns, as well. This involves making it easy to adapt your campaigns by delivering simple, straightforward strategies.

Improving Your Campaigns Over Time

Here’s where good metrics come in. As trends build and wane, suppliers have to be able to collect and accurately analyze the data. Partners should be given access to all of the metrics that are relevant to the campaigns they’re working on. Track how your campaigns are being used, as well as how those campaigns are delivering value, both to your partner and to your own business. Make adjustments where necessary — if one metric or another isn’t performing as well as it should, address the issues promptly so that your partners know they can depend on you for support. It is, after all, a partnership and partnerships are dependent on trust that the other party will do their best.

The post Successful Channel Marketing Begins with an Effective Marketing Campaign & Collaboration appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Here are five reasons why summer is never the right time to cool down your channel marketing activities:

1. It’s Easier to Build on Momentum

Ask any sports hero, any successful book author, or any musician that’s successfully produced a series of hit albums — there’s something to this momentum thing. Resting after a big success should be kept brief, because that momentum built on a big win dies quickly, and it’s hard to revive. If your channel marketing blasted through the holidays and spring, taking off for the summer will mean you have to regroup, reinvent, refocus, and breathe new life into your campaigns this fall. It’s much easier to keep the momentum going and in top shape when it’s time to buckle down for the fall.

2. This Always-On Society Never Closes for Business

Even if your business is seasonal, shopping has now bled across the entire calendar. It’s easy to see. Retail stores roll out the next season’s merchandise the moment a current season ends. Social media means people are passively shopping even when they aren’t thinking about buying. Marketing is the same way. In order to be successful, you have to keep your messages in front of your audience year-round. For example, if you’ve seen an ad for your absolute favorite product every day for the past three months when it comes time to buy you’ll be much more likely to invest your money with them than with a business that you haven’t seen hide nor hair of since the last buying cycle. Be the constant in an ever-changing world, and cater to your shoppers, who are always on, even when they aren’t actively seeking your products.

3. Your Brand Reputation Has a Shelf Life

Building a brand reputation is a marathon, not a sprint. This is true no matter how long your buying cycle is. It takes a long time and a lot of careful effort to establish and position your brand name. As soon as those efforts halt, the reputation begins to fade. Buyers live in a world that’s always changing. There are always new products and services demanding their attention. If your marketing department isn’t an ever-constant, it will be all too easy for customers to lose focus and begin eyeing a competitor.

4. Customer Profiles Aren’t Static

Customer profiles are a moving target. You develop new markets for your products, markets change, and new competitors roll on the scene as older ones bow out. If your marketing takes off for the summer, your customer profile could shift considerably — and this is especially true in an election year when the world economy is in a fragile state. If you want to stay on top of an ever shifting customer profile, it’s important to be collecting metrics, analyzing tactics, and revising strategies all summer long.

5. Generating More Leads Allows Your Business to be Choosy About Its Customers

Is there such a thing as too many customers? When your marketing is able to keep them coming, your business can actually be picky and choosy about which customers you do business with. Building a waiting list for your products and services is your insurance policy for when customers are harder to come by. Marketers should take notes from the squirrels, which spend their summers stocking up for winter. This is what keeps your business afloat in slower seasons or tougher economic conditions. Take a lesson from Game of Thrones: Winter is Coming.

Keep up your channel marketing efforts all summer long, and come fall, your company will be in the best position to capitalize on those efforts.

The post 5 Reasons Your Marketing Should Be Denied a Summer Vacation appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Often, these Internet phenomena occur by pure luck. Other times, they are the result of well-orchestrated campaigns executed by savvy social media marketers.

Here are 5 of the most memorable social campaigns of all time and what made them so successful.

1. The Ice Bucket Challenge

It’s not every day that a social media campaign entices 17 million people to post videos on Facebook and also generates $115 million in charitable donations within 6 weeks. The Ice Bucket Challenge was a game-changer. In the summer of 2014, it compelled millions to dump water on their heads, post a video of it online and challenge friends to do the same in lieu of a $100 donation to the ALS Association (many donated anyway).

Here’s the interesting part: the campaign wasn’t organized by ALS. In early versions of the challenge, participants selected the charity of their choice. But after a well-known ALS advocate shared the challenge with his large social network, it became permanently associated with the ALS Association. The organization acted quickly to take ownership of the campaign. The challenge is now an annual fundraising event for the company.

2. Kony 2012

In 2012, a little-known non-profit group posted a 29-minute video on Vimeo about a Ugandan war criminal. By the end of the next week, it had become the fastest-growing viral video of all time, racking up over 100 million views in 6 days.

The New York Times attributed the video’s success to its powerful simplicity. It had a clear call to action: share the video to raise awareness of Joseph Kony worldwide to aid in his capture, and encourage celebrities to do the same. It worked. Within the first week, the video had been shared by many high-profile figures, including Oprah Winfrey, Mia Farrow and Bill Gates.

3. The Old Spice Guy

When in doubt, go zany. That’s what Proctor & Gamble did in 2010 when deciding how to reintroduce their iconic Old Spice brand. It released a commercial starring a comically straight-faced Isaiah Mustafa, standing in a towel, telling viewers to “Look at your man. Now back at me. Now back at your man. Now back to me.” The ad became an Internet sensation, racking up over 13 million views. It later aired on television.

Aside from the sharable “weird” factor of the video, the campaign worked so well because of the way the company leveraged social media to connect directly with their audience. According to AdWeek, “the real success of the campaign came when Old Spice launched their response campaign, in which [the Old Spice Guy] interacted with fans” via Twitter and other platforms.

4. Dollar Shave Club

If you spent any time on social media in 2012, then you probably saw the 90-second video for a new razor blade business called Dollar Shave Club. A seemingly straightforward ad at first, it featured the company’s founder Michael Dubin, who says to viewers: “Are the blades any good? No. Our blades are [expletive] great.”

Much like The Old Spice Guy, this campaign was a hit for its sheer cheeky value. Dubin told the New York Times that more than 12,000 orders were placed within the first 48 hours of releasing the video. By the next year, the video had been viewed 10 million times.

5. Like a Girl (Always)

Procter & Gamble had another social media hit on its hands in 2014 with its “Like a Girl” video, which became the company’s most watched video in history with more than 76 million views. But unlike the company’s zany Old Spice campaign, this one broached more serious issues of gender stereotypes and empowerment. A promotion for Always, the video was widely shared on social media and became a fascinating case study on how to make a female hygiene brand go viral.

The success of this campaign lies partly in its social experiment guise. It engages viewers by showing women of different ages being questioned in front of cameras on what it means to “run like a girl” or “fight like a girl.” And just like that, the Like a Girl video (and #likeagirl hashtag) took off. The video was also re-released in 2015 as a Super Bowl ad.

What’s your favorite campaign? What brand do you think will be next with a breakout social media campaign? Who do you think missed a prime opportunity? Share your thoughts in the comments.

The post 5 Most Memorable Social Media Campaigns of All Time appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Marketing Your Marketing

Suppliers have to establish themselves as the go-to source for all of the channel marketers when it comes to nurturing the leads through that sales funnel and getting those deals closed. You, the supplier, can help your partners keep in touch with those leads by automating the marketing process to the greatest extent possible. That means delivering an integrated partner marketing platform in order to coordinate the marketing content you deliver to the lead with what the partner is offering. Make it easy for partners to provide education and support to their leads and customers, and both of you will reap the benefits.

As the supplier, you must also be able and willing to generate excitement about your partners’ marketing campaigns, products, and services. This means — you guessed it — marketing your marketing. Most suppliers simply don’t realize the time, effort, and resources it takes to make partners aware of and get them on board with the marketing campaigns. First of all, you have to develop marketing campaigns that partners can get behind. That means aligning your strategies with those of the partners. Make campaigns simple to deploy.

Campaigns That Partners Jump to Adopt

Develop campaigns that are personalized to reflect your partners’ brands. Create campaigns that are flexible and that showcase your knowledge and understanding of your partners’ niches or territories. Make it clear what value your partners bring to the equation. Be sure to include the pain points of each of your partners’ target audiences in the marketing messages, and display their unique value propositions prominently in the marketing content. Learn to be their advocate. You can customize your campaign messages and materials without watering down your own brand identity or product message. Each partner marketing message should make their use cases clear to the customer, and your partners will be clamoring to get on board with your marketing campaigns.

The key to any effective marketing strategy is to use your messages to foster trust across the channels. When partners know that their brand’s messaging will be a crucial cornerstone of your campaigns and that those campaigns will meet their specifications, your job of marketing your marketing will be much easier.

Best Practices for Partner Marketing

Aside from marketing your campaigns to your partners to increase adoption, there are some other best practices that will benefit both your business and your channel partners:

1. Continual Training: You are probably already training your partners on your various product lines, but do you also train them on the implementation of your joint marketing campaigns? This is just as important.
2. Incentives: Be willing to offer incentives for channel partners to showcase their newly developed skills in marketing.
3. Timing: Carefully consider the timing of your campaigns. How does your timeline fit in their overall schedule in terms of their seasonal fluctuations?
4. Feedback: Finally, don’t forget to encourage feedback from your partners, and to truly listen and respond to that feedback. If they know you’re working hard to improve the partner marketing, they will be willing to, as well.

The post Channel Organizations: Why You Need to Market Your Marketing appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Blending in vs. standing out

Even if you’ve just landed a great contributing author on your blog or co-wrote an article with one of the top thought leaders in your industry, it’s entirely too easy to blend in with your competitors when it comes to social media channels.

Even the best blogs and articles can quickly get buried in your followers’ already busy newsfeeds. Standing out from the crowd is critical when it comes to content marketing. You have to attract and engage followers and prospective customers with your original content.

A recent Forbes article stresses originality and differentiation in regard to content marketing. According to the article, you can achieve them by targeting a sub-market or posting on different platforms:

“Find a way to differentiate yourself from the competition, on a general level. If you try to do what they’re doing, you’re going to come up short—they’ve been doing it far longer, and you aren’t going to stand out if you merely try and replicate it. Instead, look for key ways to differentiate yourself. Can you target a different segment of your shared demographics? Can you utilize a different approach, or leverage the power of different content mediums?”

Switching up the variety of content you post is another way to stand out from the crowd. You can maximize attention of your followers just by posting a mix of visual, written, and interactive content.

The effect of different types of content

What is it about memes, image macros, infographics, and GIFs, anyway? Why have these emerged as the most popular content formats on the Internet?
Well for one, they convey a message using little to no words. They require little more than a quick glance to be fully understood. That’s what people want on social media: ideas condensed into bite-sized content formats.

Businesses have all the incentives in the world to embrace these types of content. Infographics, for example, are optimal for sharing content and getting highly coveted social media shares.

Infographics are “sticky” in the sense that they cater to the methods humans learn best – through text and imagery. A lively and easy to digest infographic does well on Facebook and Twitter, but don’t ignore others such as Instagram and Pinterest if your audience also spends time on those channels.

Memes and GIFs can help you boost “likes” and help your overall brand identity,
Of course, incorporating these types of content into your strategy isn’t as easy as finding a meme generator and recycling every hackneyed idea of the past few years. In fact, you can even alienate some of your followers by misusing a meme and forever making it lame.

How hard the transition will depend on your background and your ability to create original content. Many businesses have embarrassed themselves because they started posting trendy memes and GIFs with no self-awareness. We’ve all seen it happen before – it’s ok to check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Bottom line is that no matter your line of business, consumers and audiences crave creative. And how lucky are you to get to deliver?

The post More Social Media Savvy: The Other Content that Drives Results appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Every industry, product and service has a dominant channel. Placing your marketing efforts on a select few of these dominant channels will allow your brand to invest the necessary time and resources on winning customers over.

In today’s post, we’ll be helping you find your own dominant social media channel.

Uncover Your Dominant Social Media Channel

Not sure where to start? Ask yourself the following questions to maximize your social media channel presence:

Where are my prospective customers hanging out?

Where is your audience spending most of their time? While a group of people who fit your target audience may have profiles on a social channel, if they aren’t actively commenting, sharing, re-posting, liking or show no signs of engagement, then they will not be of much use to you and your social goals. Facebook has recently reported that they have over 1.09 billion monthly active users as of March 2016.

Every industry will have a dominant channel where its audience is most active. Brands in the fashion and accessories niche will have no trouble finding very active audiences on Pinterest or Instagram. And as you can rightfully assume, business topics dominate LinkedIn while Facebook, Reddit and Tumblr are optimal for miscellaneous content-heavy brands.

But don’t be limited by looking at the same major players, there’s tons of unique social channels that tailor to a niche-focused audience. Untapped, for example, is a social site for beer lovers.

Likewise, Ravelry caters to knitters while Gentlemint is basically Pinterest for guys. So go out and find your where your niche’s audience is actively hanging out, you just might come across a few hidden gems.

Where is my audience searching for information?

Social media platforms aren’t strictly used for socializing. People also use them to search for information. Google may have an automatic upper hand when it comes to its social users searching for information, but Twitter and Facebook are constantly updating their search algorithms.

If you’re active on any social channel that has a helpful search function, then your company has a chance to appear in those results. Look for smaller to middle tier channels where people are actively looking for information related to your business. If competition on that channel is low, consider filling that void.

Save Your Social Sanity

Not every channel you establish a presence on will work out in the end. Avoiding wasting your time on the wrong channel is just as crucial as uncovering your dominant ones. Some companies have to find out the hard way that their product or service isn’t driving much interest on Pinterest, a social channel that is overwhelmingly used by women.

Create a plan for defining the opportunity cost for each channel. Assign a number or letter grade to each one based on your own factors. It can be levels of engagement, levels of competition, buyer-readiness, the amount of time it will take to see any results, etc.

Also, set realistic expectations for each social channel. Many companies approach social media with the idea that it’s purely a sales channel. While social media should definitely be used as a sales channel, social channels are also a place to increase brand awareness and create conversations.

Most social users won’t read one of your posts and check out your page because they’re considering making a purchase right now. If the content’s good then they’ll want to see more of it, which if applied consistently, can lead to more conversions and more sales.

By identifying your brand’s social footprint and answering the questions above, you’ll have a clearer understanding of where you should prioritize your social channel efforts – identify which channels will bring you most impact, engagement, and ultimately, the most sales.

The post How to Maximize Your Social Media Channel Efforts appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Thankfully, the global B2B analysts at SiriusDecisions have stepped up to chart a clear path for channel leaders to monitor, measure and manage the success of their programs. And Zift is pleased to provide Channel Chatter readers with access to their recent research brief, Channel Data: Tracking Partner Program Performance.

I encourage you to read the full brief, which identifies the 6 channel programs areas that contain critical data needed to determine program performance. The brief also calls out interrelationships between key metrics across those areas, which can provide a unique and holistic perspective on program capabilities and performance overall.

Click here to grab your free copy of the SiriusDecisions research brief today!

The post Channel Data: Tracking Partner Program Performance appeared first on Zift Solutions.

The post What’s Hot Now in the Channel [Infographic] appeared first on Zift Solutions.

Follow us on tour from Hollywood to Vegas, Boston to Nashville and back again – and be sure to check in with Channel Chatter regularly and follow us on Twitter as we take you backstage at all of these exciting events.

Let us know if you’re planning to attend any of these events. You can visit our events page for more information and click the “Set Up A Meeting” button on any event!

Modern Marketing Experience North America

Dates: April 26-28, 2016
Location: Las Vegas, NV

Marketo’s Marketing Nation Summit

Dates: May 9-12, 2016
Location: Las Vegas, NV

SiriusDecisions 2016 Summit

Dates: May 24-27, 2016
Location: Nashville, TN

Channel Visionaries – 2nd Annual Channel Chief Series 2016

Dates: June 1-3, 2016
Location: Santa Clara, CA

The post Your Backstage Pass for Zift’s Spring Tour appeared first on Zift Solutions.