Social media is the perfect opportunity to engage and empower channel partners to drive more revenue. Our new white paper: 12 Tips for Socializing the Channel, shows how.
Today SocialRep is kicking off a campaign for our social content platform with a focus on channel marketing. We’ve spent a lot of time in the trenches with channel marketing organizations, and we see huge opportunities to help improve the allocation, performance and accountability of MDF funds. Too often we hear channel marketers lament the unaccountability of MDF campaigns, and the lack of alternatives. SocialRep for the Channel is a milestone in our effort to help solve the problem.
The simple story is that channel marketing organizations have to compete aggressively for the promotional efforts of their partners and resellers. Partners typically rep several competing products, which often leads to an arms race in who can offer the most money and leads to attract partner attention. But what we’ve learned from partners is that MDF money and leads isn’t the only thing that entices them. Good partners are always looking to improve their business, grow their marketing capabilities, and drive an increase in revenue. They don’t just want fish thrown on their plate, they want to learn how to be better fishers themselves.
Social media is a significant opportunity for the channel, because it provides a way to attract and empower partners with a new marketing capability, the activity of social marketing can significantly amplify the company’s reach, and the inherent engagement involved in socializing the channel supports better relationships between the company and it’s channel partners. With the right platform, companies can not only support partners with a constant stream of strong content for social sharing, they can empower partners to generate leads through social engagement, and best of all, they can track partner performance and influence through targeted campaigns. We’re now building a series of “off the shelf” campaigns for our customers, including lead engagement and gamification programs to drive partner adoption and performance benchmarking.
We’ve outlined the 12 essential components for effectively socializing the channel in a free white paper available for download. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be diving deeper into each of the 12 tips right here on our blog. Please don’t hesitate to comment with questions, criticisms or anecdotes about your experience with social media in the channel.