If your partners are not online, neither are you.
The customer journey has changed forever. B2B customers are all online, no matter the industry, region, size of business, or stage of the buying journey. There are no exceptions.
The path to purchase is digital, and it’s through your partners.
The World Trade Organization tells us that 75% of world trade goes through the indirect channel. Buyers are scanning social media, websites, peer groups, virtual events, blogs, reviews, podcasts, videos, and much more – all online.
Most manufacturers and vendors have deep marketing organizations with sophisticated marketing strategies. They have visions and value propositions, and they promote their brands widely. The challenge is getting those messages through a complex channel ecosystem (distributors, managed service providers, independent software vendors, resellers, and retailers) that often sell competing brands, presenting correctly to buyers.
Even more challenging is the fact that 90% of partners are small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with less than 10 employees. Unsurprisingly, 84% of these channel partners have dedicated marketing resources to execute manufacturer/vendor marketing campaigns. In fact, studies have reported that less than 15% of all partners use the marketing content that their vendors provide.
The solution? Do it for them with Through-Partner Marketing
Through-partner marketing is the intersection of digital marketing and channel marketing, powered by automation. It delivers sophisticated, integrated marketing initiatives to, through, and with channel partners – at scale. It enables vendors to fully control the marketing content while enabling their partners to participate in the online path to purchase and to be found by customers during their buying journey.
Automation is key because it removes the marketing burden from small and medium-sized partners altogether. Once the partners onboard, the through-partner marketing automation takes over, and work is done for them. Email marketing is automatically sent each month to the partners’ own client lists. Social media marketing is syndicated through the partners’ own social channels on a regular basis. Vendor brand-compliant marketing sends massive amounts of traffic to each partner site, and to the specific vendor content. Once leads are generated, the marketing automation notifies the partner.
By taking a modern, digital approach that is automated and fully integrated with partners, vendors can start to solve the challenge and elevate both their position and their partners’ presence across the entire digital customer journey.
AscendX Digital is the first Through-Partner Marketing service provider and the only company with a revenue-generating model for distributors. Instead of spinning up a new product in your MarTech stack and putting more pressure on your marketing teams, consider looking at the outcomes of Through-Partner Marketing and engaging as-a-Service. When you do, you can deliver a solution to market months faster, pay only for what you use, drive better partner and customer experiences, and reduce your risk.
Our team has many decades of technology marketing expertise, and we work with vendors and SMB partners every day. Whether you have a TCMA investment that needs some strategic and/or operational support, or if you are looking for a fully managed partner marketing service solution, AscendX Digital can help.
