Are you a vendor that increasingly relying on your indirect channel for a greater share of revenues? Or maybe the indirect channel is simply an important contributor to your overall revenue mix? Either way, it’s critical to help your VAR partners be effective and successful. Yet every vendor working with VARs faces the same challenge – securing the mindshare of a partner that is representing tens or even hundreds of vendors.
In order to be successful, you must take steps to set your company apart. In today’s world, that means going beyond supporting a channel sales and marketing program backed by funding. It means addressing the following:
- Helping generate leads for partners
- Making it as easy as possible for a VAR to sell your solution
- Enabling VARs to engage in the social media conversation
In the end, the key is to deliver the information, content and campaigns that empower VARs to sell your solution – without requiring much from the partner and still maintaining control of your brand. After all, most indirect channel partners are small organizations with limited resources. In fact, they may not have a dedicated marketing expert who is focused on generating leads and updating the website with vendors’ latest messaging and content.
The right answer is a channel content and social media syndication solution that is simple and automated. Channel content syndication replicates and customizes digital content across external web properties. As a result, enrolled partners always have up-to-date information, tools and rich content to improve their branding, communications, lead generation and sales conversion.
Automate and Simplify Lead Generation for Channel Partners
The first challenge for vendors is helping partners generate leads. In fact, 60% of B2B marketers in the US surveyed by BtoB Magazine cited lead generation as their top challenge.
Because VARs with limited resources find it difficult to keep their websites up to date with vendors’ latest messaging and content, they often include a link to the vendor’s site on their site. Unfortunately, this sends prospects to the vendor’s site and they might never return to the channel partner’s website.
Automatically Publish to Your Partners’ Sites
Content syndication from is a powerful tool for directly and automatically publishing your microsites, collateral and topical campaigns on a partner web page with next to zero work required of the partner. Automating content distribution through partners is an effective way to increase the quality and amount of leads for partners.
Content syndication automatically distributes new content and handles details such as co-branding PDFs when applicable, eliminating the need for the partner to access a portal and modify individual PDFs. Because the VAR’s site then features up-to-date, comprehensive information about your products and solutions, the prospect doesn’t need to leave the website. A smart syndication provider also strategically places call- to-action buttons and lead capture forms where appropriate, helping to qualify and push traffic toward a conversion.
Generate Better Results for You and Your Partners
Partners with automated content distribution are able to remain focused on selling the product, while you focus on the intricacies of lead generation. Plus, you can analyze which content delivers the most qualified leads and apply these best practices across the entire channel instantaneously. As a result, your will generate better results and leads through your partner websites. Moreover, by simplifying lead generation through automation, you can realize a lower cost per lead, even while generating the same – if not higher – number of quality leads.
Automate and Simplify the Indirect Sales Process
Let’s face it – the best sales reps, whether direct or indirect, always look for the quickest and easiest way to make a sale. When a partner sales rep gets a prospect on the phone, he can choose from a multitude of solutions his company resells to satisfy the prospect’s needs. It’s only logical that he will opt for the solution that is backed by the most information and marketing content.
With syndication, you can strengthen the indirect sales process by distributing content to your partners’ internal business systems. Specifically, you can push entire sales dashboards right into your partner’s intranet to automatically delivery any new and/or relevant pricing, collateral or tools. As a result, you inject your company into the sales process, empower the indirect sales force and keep your company top of mind. This microsite displays specific content for individual partner, with content filtered based on the partner’s profile and automatically co-branded if applicable. When the salesperson clicks on your solution, he can access all relevant content and tools in real time while on the phone with a prospect.
Automate and Simplify Social Media Engagement through Partners’ Social Identities
It goes without saying that social media is playing an increasingly important role in the sales process. Consider findings from a report published by Twitter and Compete that evaluated how more than 6,000 Twitter users engaged with over 400 B2B tech sites at the end of 2012.
59% of site users visited B2B tech sites, compared to 40% of average online consumers. 30% of the Twitter users actively searched for B2B tech brands, while only 12 percent of average Internet users did the same. This why it’s critical to empower your partners to get themselves seen in Twitter feeds. Yet the social media sphere is still underutilized by most vendors with channel partners.
Some vendors that are trying to help their partners tap into the power of this channel have used social media syndication solutions that allow their partners to automatically Tweet out a message provided by the vendors. However, these solutions can’t close the loop and send prospects back to the partner’s site. Some even put a cap on the number of messages and partners you can manage through the solution.
Maximize the Value of Your Partner Relationships
So there you have it – your partner needs your help to generate leads to sell your products or services, whether that be through content on their website and or as a part of the social media conversation. As you seek ways to maximize the value of your partner relationships, it’s critical that you become an extended marketing department for your resource-constrained partners and help generate leads – without requiring much of your VARs.