Mike Dubrall

Abe Lincoln's Opinion On Social Media

Everyone has goals and objectives. Some of our goals are big (like successfully combining the channel operations of our latest acquisition) and some are small (like getting 50 people to register for our product release webinar), but they are all important to someone. In those rare situations when all the goals in an organization line up, then you have a successful enterprise.

Judging from conversations with clients and resellers, one big goal everyone has right now is to improve their ROI on marketing investments. Resellers want more leads, channel marketing executives want more product exposure, and corporations want to improve their market share. Increasingly, achievement of these kinds of goals means understanding and using new technologies like marketing content syndication, video,...

The channel is always awash in new products and technologies for communicating with channel partners, and marketing managers sometimes have a hard time keeping up. It helps to understand the trend easy and position yourself to take full advantage. (Like marketing jujitsu!)

Here are three trends that are radically changing the way we develop materials, distribute them to partners, and collect feedback. All were discussed at a recent Brainshark webinar on Channel Communications;

Trend #1 –Social Media Is Increasingly Used For The Distribution Of Marketing Materials.
Sites like Facebook and LinkedIn have changed the way vendors are developing marketing programs for their channels. Most major vendors have some kind of social media initiative going on right now with channel partners, everything from LinkedIn programs to Facebook promotions to YouTube contests. Telephone calls and email is slowly but surely being replaced by Tweets and posts. Lead...

Effective Channel Communications is Difficult and Expensive (Photo from Flickr)

Communicating with channels partners is a difficult and expensive proposition. Manufacturers spend significant time and resources to create and distribute quality marketing materials and, for a lot of reasons, most reseller partners do use the marketing materials they receive. It’s a hit or miss process. And few technology companies manage it well.

There is no silver bullet. Communicating with channel partners is complicated and even though we understand that half of our channel communications efforts are wasted, we don’t have any easy way to determine which half. So we keep doing everything the same way and hope for the best. Unfortunately, markets change and channel communications have to keep up.

Today, effective channel marketing messages are delivered in 140 characters and videos are viewed in five minutes – and usually not...

There are lots of new ways to communicate up and down the value chain. Virtual Conferences are all the rage for Partner Conferences. Vendors and resellers are experimenting with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn as a communication platform. Videos are making the rounds for training, marketing, and even sales promotions. Cisco is even promoting Telepresence to allow people to be in two places at the same time.

With all this activity, one thing is clear. Webcasts are outdated and increasingly ineffective. They cost a lot to conduct (cheaper than face-to-face for sure, but you still have to pay those monthly fees) and marketing them is a real hassle (Can you say “email blasts” without including “spam” in the same sentence?). Most of the people who register do not show up because they expect it will be recorded. Then if you can actually get someone to attend the webinar (which is harder and harder) they sit there with the webcast in the...