From the PartnerOn Team

Over the past year, we have explored how partners have been increasing sales through the PartnerOn application. Did you know that Digital Marketing Content OnDemand, SYNNEX DEMANDSolv and Curated Content in addition to PartnerOn for Tech Data are all under the PartnerOn platform umbrella? We proudly serve these major distributors with a platform that drives the success of its users.

After reading about the success of other partners, our readers have asked us for specific pointers on the formula for that success. So, I put together a simple list of things you can do to drive your level of customer engagement, and increase growth opportunities.

Five things our successful partners do, and so should you…

1. Consistency of content:  Having the content out there on social media, and your blog helps to build trust between you and a customer. But it’s not enough to post something every once in a while, you need to create a storyline that has customers wanting more and who are looking for your posts because they know you can help them solve their problems. Being consistent gives your customers a sense of relief knowing you are there for them with an answer.
2. Send emails: Consistently using the email solution helps create an expectation with your audience, and also serves as an individual touchpoint to your customers. The personal connection gives them more opportunities to connect with you, it also drives them to the destination where content is hosted, and further demonstrates your knowledge of their needs. If you need a refresher on how to use our email function, head here.
3. Respond: Speaking of personal connections, think about your response to how people engage with your content.  If they like it, or if they comment on it, what is your response to them? Social media is about connections, when your customers engage with your content, how are you engaging back? Think about the powerful message a simple response gives: there is a human behind this response who not only took notice of my comment, but who can further help me.
4. Create a response by asking for an interaction: Need help jump-starting the conversation? Customize your messaging to include a “Let’s celebrate this accomplishment, click the celebrate icon” Or, “Tell us what we can do to make your job easier” or “Vote on your thoughts by clicking the Like button for yes and the celebrate button for No.” But, don’t forget to continue the conversation! Again, it’s not enough to just post, take it to the next level and learn more about how to get noticed on LinkedIn.
5. Use @ signs: When publishing to social networks using an @mention is always a great way to trigger more views and interest in your messaging. Cast a wider net by including people in the conversation, giving credit where credit is due, and bringing your services to their attention. 

So there you have it, the top five actions our most successful users are doing to increase sales opportunities through our platform and on their own. We make it easy to use the PartnerOn platform for tips 1 and 2, the rest is up to you. Take charge of your social media presence by remembering to start conversations, include as many people, and engage with your audience once the conversation has started. It may take a bit of effort on your part, but we know the results will outweigh the effort.

“Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.” -Plato

When we formed ContentMX we wanted to provide users with one place they could go to get marketing content for all of the different products they sell from multiple vendors. From this idea the PartnerOn technology was born. We created the single largest content marketplace that offers partners the opportunity to easily discover content they need to form storylines that drive sales.  

I often write about how important content is during the sales process. How do we reach customers who have a problem they want to solve? How do we provide them with information that they need? How do we scale that effort so we can reach as many people as possible, and in so doing become a trusted source of solutions? And how do we do it without breaking the bank? Our answer is digital content marketing through the PartnerOn platform. If you are successfully marketing to your customers and prospects, you will influence their buying behavior. You are reaching your audience who has the desire to buy and who wants and needs a solution to their problem and giving them the knowledge to do so. 

A blog article from TrustRadius, shares…. 

“You can help buyers through this early phase of their journey by providing the right type of content and guidance. Educational content around common business problems and how your product’s use cases map to some of those problems is a great place to start.“

Let’s look at how this plays out in the real world: the farming industry. The agricultural industry has gone digital- from soil to ecommerce and everything in between. What the industry has come to realize is that building out an environment that mixes public and private cloud services and edge computing serves their needs. Resellers who focus on the farming industry need to provide a complete picture of how they can help enable their customers to go digital. With the right content, they can accomplish this. The content they share needs to address a customer’s desire to improve the process for farming, it needs to provide the knowledge of how to do so,  and it needs to establish a trust that the reseller knows what the best solution is for their needs. 

The LinkedIn page for Advantage Technology is a great example of how one company can share content from multiple vendors from Azure to Intel and Lenovo. They have successfully leveraged the PartnerOn platform technology to provide their customers with solutions that address all of their various needs- from protecting your data from natural disasters to creating a smarter farm through AI. Advantage Technology is consistently reaching their network with information and solutions that they desire.

Partners not on one or all of the PartnerOn offerings, would need to jump from vendor marketing portal to vendor marketing portal just to see what content is out there. Then they would have to gather content, sift through it to see what is worth sharing, organize it each week, write messaging to go with the content, and manually send it out. This could take a full marketing staff to accomplish, and most companies don’t have the time or resources to get it done correctly. And we haven’t even touched on following up with leads to bring a customer to the point of purchase.

The PartnerOn platform provides partners with a content marketplace that offers 52 weeks of streaming content from over 18 vendors- Microsoft, HPE, HPi, Lenovo, Intel, IBM, Red Hat, Palo Alto Networks, Citrix, Aruba, and many others.  We have created a solution for partners and vendors alike. Being the largest content marketplace enables vendors to reach partners with fresh, relevant marketing materials and enables partners the unique opportunity to help drive the behavior of the consumers to their services.  

With over 20,000 users of our application generating over 300 million impressions a month we have the unique opportunity to discover what interests both the partners and the consumers. On average each partner we work with shares 34 items every month. And over 50% of our partners engaged with the platform weekly. By looking at user activity, we are able to capture both analytical and anecdotal data such as which vendors and what content are the most interesting to the consumers and which content has generated the most interest on social media or through emails or blogs.

For example, we now understand that even today, remote work is still top of mind for most. We know this because we can see that engagement levels with this type of content or with vendors that provide remote workplace solutions is still going strong over the last three months. 

Here’s a look at what customers are engaging with…

Surface for business and education content has received the highest consumer engagement.  The content covers how Surface integrates well with hybrid cloud environments, and how it supports the needs of education and IT organizations. The piece of content with the highest engagement levels covers remote work, and how Surface makes it easy to achieve a high-level remote work environment.  

Content from the CISCO SMB content stream also garners a high engagement level. This content covers how Cisco’s multi-cloud solutions can help small and medium-sized businesses with networking, security, and collaboration. Also important to note is the focus on SMBs. As remote work grows, SMBs are forced to implement more sophisticated processes, and are looking for help doing so.

Security is a hot topic amongst SMBs. Businesses need to find the easiest path for working from home securely and effectively. The top piece of content from the CISCO SMB stream, Secure Remote Workforces, verifies that. 

Here’s what we know about what types of content people want…

In what form do people want content? What’s the most helpful to them in the selling process? What we see is that more people are clicking and downloading documents at a higher clip than other content types. This comes in the form of solutions briefs, eBooks, brochures, and infographics. Users are searching for relevant content to help their customers, and once they have captured their attention with a post, providing customers with in-depth information is how they are closing deals.

Through the anecdotal reporting of sales successes we are also able to see that solutions sold range from security, to Office. One of our users reported $10,000/month in new Dynamics deals! And told us that getting the attention of customers on LinkedIn helped the sales process for these deals.

Additionally, the benefit of using our platform was clearly articulated by one of our partners when she told us how easy it was to access so many different solutions in one content marketplace.  Many of our users have told us that they no longer need to go to several different portals for marketing content, our platform serves as a one stop shop for all the vendor content they need.

We are excited about how the PartnerOn Content Marketplace has grown over the past year, and we are even more excited to continue to add new services and to improve how we collect data, both analytical and anecdotal. We know how important return on investment is for our vendors and how return on invested time is for our users. Bringing both to the table is what makes this a win-win solution for the industry. 

Have you ever cried during a Super Bowl commercial? Come on, I know there’s been at least one over the years that has tugged at your heartstrings. You might be “getting another serving of Doritos” but I know you’re going in the other room to secretly hide your weeping. 

Okay, so maybe you haven’t outrightly wept during a commercial, but advertisements are literally designed to pull at your heartstrings. If the storyline surrounding a product makes you feel something, you’re a lot more likely to buy into the narrative and make a purchase. 

The best narratives are not easily forgotten. The commercial that’s most cemented in my mind  is the “Imported from Detroit” Chrysler ad from way back in 2011. Yes, the one featuring a gritty voiceover and Mr. Detroit himself: Eminem. You can almost feel the bitter cold of a Michigan winter as you’re given a tour of the city’s most famous landmarks and most familiar faces.

If you forgot about this commercial (maybe you were grabbing another beer when it aired), take a look.

Every story- whether the story happens to be a persuasive essay, a car commercial, or a political speech- has three very important rhetorical elements that contribute to its impact. 

The building blocks of any good story are ethos, pathos, and logos. These are also the official components of the rhetorical triangle (I am sorry if the mention of “rhetoric” brings back negative English class memories!). 

Ethos is establishing yourself and your brand as a credible source. You see ethos in action every day when someone presents you with their resume to prove their candidacy for a job. You also see it when a business claims that it’s been serving up quality bagels “since 1911.” Ethos is all about your reputation. 

When Eminem declares that “this is the Motor City, and this is what we do,” he’s claiming Detroit’s longtime reputation as a hub for car manufacturing. Inadvertently, he’s also leveraging the belief that American cars are of superior craftsmanship and quality than international competitors. 

Pathos is the part that might have made you cry. Pathos is when you create an emotional connection with your audience, or try to rouse emotion within them. I hate to do this to you, but the best example for pathos is those ASPCA commercials with musician Sarah MacLachlan holding abandoned puppies and asking you to please donate to their care. Pathos needs no further explanation. Pathos wants to make you cry and pay for puppy food. 

This Chrysler ad wants you to feel two things: sympathy and pride. Most people watching this commercial during the Superbowl knew that Detroit has experienced economic misfortune for decades after being a historical industrial powerhouse. America (and sports fans) love an underdog story, so Detroit was the perfect centerpiece for making viewers feel sympathetic towards both Chrysler and its resident city. 

Americans also like to be part of the underdog story. We love rags to riches tales, from Annie to Rocky Balboa and Arnold Schwarzenegger. By supporting Chrysler and its employees based in Detroit, we can feel like we’re part of the inevitable renaissance of both a city and American manufacturing. We feel pride towards these things, and it drives us to take action to become part of the story ourselves. 

Logos is the logical corner of the rhetorical triangle. Logos is the one that isn’t super fun at parties, but it’s super important nonetheless (like your very nerdy, but loveable, friend). Every scientific paper ever written is mostly logos. But logos isn’t always cold, hard facts- it can be the illusion of factual information, or anything that speaks to the viewer’s ability to reason. 

The logos in this emotional ad blends with the pathos: “You see, it’s the hottest fires that make the hottest steel. Add hard work, and conviction, and the know-how that runs generations deep in every last one of us. That’s who we are.”

Based on this statement, it’s reasonable to believe that Chrysler would be a good choice of vehicle because it’s made by hard-working people who know their stuff. It’s reasonable to believe that Chrysler has a high level of experience making cars, and the company, like others in Detroit, has overcome plenty of obstacles. Isn’t that the kind of company you want to buy from? 

How can you use the same kind of rhetoric to sway potential clients in your social media audience? The short video case studies that appear often in your content channels are a wonderful starting point. Your leads have done their research about your product, and now they need to be able to imagine your solutions fitting into their work environment. The best way to show this is through examples – how do others feel about your solution? How has your product helped make their jobs easier? 

Share these videos to social media and your blog to establish your ethos as a reputable reseller. Use real-life stories about clients like yours to make your audience emotionally invest, and want to start writing their own success story with you. 

They may not shed a tear when viewing your content, but I’d be willing to bet that finding a solution to their problem will bring a smile to their face and a sense of relief that someone can help them.

“Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief.” –  Sigmund Freud

I think in another life I was a psychologist, or maybe a philosopher.  I enjoy researching the behaviors of people and trying to understand their process for making decisions.  Starting with what I have learned about my own psyche: my general deciding algorithm leans towards the big picture, using goals and outcomes as my key variables. I tend to believe that multiple solutions can achieve similar outcomes, so I then tend to go with the organization with which I am most connected.  However, with business decisions, I have learned the importance of having clear checks and balances and relying on someone who is more detail-oriented, and who can provide an analysis that I may not have considered. 

As a marketer and a seller it is important to understand the influence of the two behaviors on any given outcome, and equally important to determine which person is the true decider at the end of the day. For example, if you are marketing to a person like me, it is important to provide me content that will help connect me to your organization, typically using empathy, and understanding of my challenge. I want a clear picture of how a solution achieves key objectives, but then once you have my attention, it is important to provide me with content that I can share with my team that dives into greater detail about how the solution is deployed, the commitments around the purchase, and any other small important details about the solution. Once you have the attention of a person like myself, assuming the follow up content passes muster, I will battle for you. 

However, if the decision maker is a person who likes to dive deep into the minutia, and analyze all the particulars, the salesperson will need to sit tight and prepare for a longer process. That is where content that is available to them, what they go searching for, or what is provided to them, is very important.    

The Demand Gen Report explores this in their B2B Buyer Behavior Study.

 “When it comes to their (The buyers) web browsing experience in visiting specific vendors, buyers expect relevance and an intuitive, user- friendly navigation experience. In particular, 70% of buyers ranked “relevant content that speaks directly to our company” as “very important” in the survey, and 96% of B2B professionals considered messaging that “spoke directly to our industry needs” to be important.”

Overall, as seen in the quote and numbers above, content is what helps the buyer initiate their belief in a solution. The report also states that the connection with a sales rep is what brings the sale home. The most successful combination that leads to sales is that of content and personal connection between the buyer and seller. Today, it is as easy to research the salesperson as it is the company. Using LinkedIn, any buyer can easily determine if the seller they are working with has the experience needed to help them make a good decision. 

“Of those that agreed the vendor was educated and offered valuable information, 81% said that their experience with their sales rep positively influenced their decision to select that vendor. Additionally, 91% of buyers said they felt the sales rep they engaged with was educated about their company and communicated relevant information that was customized to their needs.” –DemandGen Report

Take a look at the DemandGen Report graph on why vendors are chosen. Solutions, content, and customer service are important factors in making a sale.

Now that we understand the behaviors of the buyers, how do we ensure that we are prepared to provide the resources that will help move through the buying process? Consider these steps:

Step 1. Ensure you have content to tell the full story.

Step 2. Content needs to be recent and frequent

Step 3. Ensure the sales teams are publishing content that is similar to their personal pages to demonstrate knowledge. 

Step 4. The sellers need to be educated on the solutions they are selling

Step 5. And never forget, follow up!

Following the steps above, and connecting with a solution that offers both marketing and sales enablement will allow the buyer to reach a belief that you offer them the best solution. Like Freud said, “Just as no one can be forced into belief, so no one can be forced into unbelief.”

So you’ve found quality content, you have your target audience in mind…now what? 

Getting started with content marketing can feel overwhelming, but it’s well worth doing. PartnerOn users who regularly share content report an average of 20% more sales, improved brand awareness, and stronger lead relationships. 

Luckily, developing a successful posting cadence doesn’t have to be stressful. Here are our best tips when you’re just getting started. 

Be consistent

A big part of building trust and brand awareness is showing up consistently in your lead’s social media feed and in their inbox! Start by choosing the days and times that you think your lead is checking their phone and their email. 

Most people aren’t thinking about business on the weekend, so focus on sharing content during the weekdays at mealtimes and breaks during the day. As a rule of thumb, share 2-3 pieces of content per weekday, at times that are spread out across the morning, afternoon, and evening. You can easily develop a healthy cadence and set your schedule using PartnerOn’s automated posting feature. 

Balance social media posts with email 

While you want to get the word out about your products and services, you don’t want to annoy your audience by posting too much. You certainly don’t want to end up getting dinged for having too many spam complaints on your emails. Avoid the consequences of oversharing by tempering your social sharing and email sending, making them complement one another rather than overwhelming possible buyers. 

You really don’t want to be sending out marketing emails to the same list more than just once per week. Make sure that you’re cleaning your lists of bounced and undeliverable contacts after each email campaign and following email deliverability best practices. 

Follow up!

No content marketing plan is complete without a strategy to follow up with the leads you worked so hard to collect! When your audience starts interacting with your posts, make sure to regularly share out Build Your List items from PartnerOn. These gated assets are specifically designed to engage your leads through high-quality, exclusive content like vendor ebooks and whitepapers. Viewing these items requires the lead to provide their name and email address. 

When a lead fills out their information, you will be immediately notified by email, and their information will be stored for you in PartnerOn. We recommend adding leads to your PartnerOn email list, and/or using our Dynamics 365 or Salesforce integrations to instantly pass leads into your existing campaigns on either platform. You can also brush up on your Digital Selling Mastery and relationship-building skills for best results.