- Marketing TO channel partners, eg for Club Alliances members recruitment and enablement
- Marketing WITH channel partners, eg for lead generation among end users.
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6 ouch!
In 2011, many Vendors and their Channel Partners will continue to:
- Refuse to co-fund syndicated Inbound Marketing tactics [under the false pretext that they are not strictly quantifiable and containable "lead generation", but in reality because most vendors' marketers still don't "get" social media / pull marketing]!
- Put too much money in telemarketing and events, despite ever diminishing returns and skyrocketting "no show"!
- Dismiss Facebook [wrongly seen as B2C and/or for "personal stuff" only] and Twitter [wrongly seen as insignificant in France]!
- Ask partners and prospects to visit lame websites and to fill in police-like forms to get the "privilege" to access promotional material [white papers written by marketing, product brochures, PDF presentations...]
- Export to PDF boring old-fashioned Powerpoint presentations, filled with copyright notices, so that nobody can remix, reuse, share and spread the word [and, of course, forget to make them accessible and downloadable on Slideshare or Scribd, which would be too convenient for partners and prospects and too good for SEO]!
- Think that posting Blog articles, delivering curation and participating to LinkedIn/Viadeo groups/hubs are a waste of their precious time... and thus, continue to struggle with blog content!
In 2011, Innovative SaaS/Cloud Vendors and their Channel Partners will start to:
- Educate and enable marketing staff and channel partners in the area of Social Media and Social CRM.
- Leverage Web 2.0 / Marketing 2.0 instead of continuously explaining that they are in the process of launching a new website [what about starting a blog, join some LinkedIn group, engage on Twitter... around pressing business issues adressed by their company/service?]
- Understand the power of producing/giving away valuable content and of collaborating with customers [widely publish non copyrighted material, encourage customers to contribute and to produce content for you and their peers...]
- Eat their own dog food and use SaaS and Cloud services for PRM, Channel Marketing and Partner to Partner collaboration
- Accept vendor / partner independence and contextual only loyalty and start collaborating with relevant coopetitors to grow the SaaS / Cloud market together [eg help business partners network and collaborate with other partners, even if they are affiliated with competitive vendors!].
- Mix offline and online tactics, eg run both Networking Events [see the IBM SaaS and Cloud Forum] and Virtual Events, develop Community Management without limiting it to online!
Happy New Year, Feet on the Ground, Head above the Cloud!
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Loic SimonBusiness Development - Club Alliances IBM
www.cluballiances.com
loic_simon@fr.ibm.com
+33 6 76 75 40 71
