From the PartnerOn Team

Our goal with PartnerOn is always to stay engaged with our users so we can provide the most relevant streams of content. We know that the architecture of our streaming service has to start with understanding our audience. Every week, we help fill the digital footprint of partners with stories that help them increase awareness and drive new sales opportunities. 

The content we stream must not only fill the needs and wants of partners; it must also help the consumer understand how partners will address their business challenges. In order to ensure that PartnerOn is providing the most valuable structured service we can to our users, we dove deeper into answering two questions: who are the partners on our platform, and to whom are they selling? Here is what we found…

Who are our users?

Over 50% of our users describe themselves as IT Solutions Providers, Cloud Service Providers, Managed Service Providers, and Consulting Firms.

What verticals do our users sell to?

Our users serve a variety of industries; their most-served industries are Manufacturing, Healthcare, Retail/Hospitality, and Banking/Finance.

What solutions do our users provide?

The top solutions provided by our users include Managed Cloud/IT Services, Security, and Training/Support.

We also looked at anecdotal evidence to help us better understand who our users are and how we benefit their content marketing efforts. This evidence informs how we will continue to evolve and grow our program. Here are some quotes from PartnerOn users:

“Our client base is in the 10 to 50 user base in the professional services, construction, and marketing agencies.” 

“It has helped me look 1. Professional 2. Ready to work at all times 3. Accessible “

“I have more conversations now with prospects about posted content than I used to have. Traffic to my site and my LinkedIn content increases with each post.”

“I have noticed substantial traffic increase to our company website and social media accounts.“

We also learned some interesting things about our users’ customers!:

“My customer produces and sells food for animals.”

“A home-grown renowned Fashion Apparel retailer with more than 15 retail stores across Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Working on Cloud Hosting as part of their digital transformation plan.”

“A K-8 charter school in Michigan that has been working to adopt new solutions for their staff and students. Shifting them to Cloud from on-premises servers.”

With a detailed understanding of the sales channel, PartnerOn is accepting requests from new vendors/OEMs who believe their content will enhance the experience of over 18,000 partners who are already using the PartnerOn platform. 

If you would like PartnerOn to consider your vendor’s content for the program, please email Jeff@ContentMX.com.

Saying goodbye to 2020 is not sweet sorrow! This year, to state the obvious, was exhausting!!  I do not believe we have seen such a level of activism, since the 1960’s and 1970’s.  For better or worse, more people had more voices that wanted to be heard.  The difference between then and now is how the message was delivered.  If we take a look at how the message was delivered and received, we can apply these lessons to our own business marketing tactics.  

Through all cycles of life there are lessons to be learned, especially lessons around how a populace becomes engaged with a message. During the 1960’s and 1970’s, it was music that became the medium which tapped into a feeling that told a story of needed change.  The music reflected the need of the populace to rebel against the status quo and affect change. It was a battle for peace, civil rights, women’s rights, and anti-corruption of the government.  Remember John Lennon’s Imagine? Here is a link to some of the great music that influenced a behavior of a generation. 

Activism today has evolved, moving beyond music, to more individual expressions. Behaviors range from personal video messages, images set as stories, to short blogs.   A great example of 2020’s evolution of activism is found on TikTok.  Tik Tok can be confusing for many who view it as a platform for silliness and strange dancing. However this year, it crossed over to become a pathway to activate a populace. A clear example of the success of the platform was written about in the June 21, 2020 New York Times article: “TikTok Teens and K-Pop Stans Say They Sank Trump Rally.” The article tell the story of how thousands of teens on TikTok shared videos encouraging people to reserve tickets for Mr. Trump’s rally, but not to attend. These teens were able to protest the administration in a way that could not have been easily done before. Teens all over the country, including my daughter, stepped up and offered their voice. This message worked, because content was delivered in an easy to follow format through an application with an engaged audience.  Amazingly, it influenced a generation of teenagers to act, and see how their actions could affect change. 

I was struck by how these lessons could translate to B2B marketing platforms. The starting point for a sound marketing plan is to identify where the audience you are targeting lives. Is it LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, email, blog sites?  The second step is build trust through consistently engaging with your audience. Additionally, it is important to ensure that the content you share, not only tells a story, but is relatable to the audience that you are targeting.  And lastly, it needs to be clear to your audience how to engage with you, your content, or your company. 

In a Content Marketing Institute article written by Lisa Murton Beets, Robert Rose, CMI Chief Strategy said,

“Earning that trust requires your content to have four essential traits… It must be:

• Risk appropriate (avoid asking for something before proving the value)
• Consistent (deliver reliable content regularly over time)
• Personal (based on reliable information the visitor has willingly given)
• Cumulative (building on what came before)

In short, if you want your brand to be well-regarded by your audience, give it something valuable. Be consistent. Be easy to find. Give your audience members content they want and need – when and where they’re looking for it. And make it about them, not you.”

Another great piece of information is provided here from the CMI/MarketingProfs 2020 Content Marketing Report. 

As you can see content can be broken into goals of influence. From awareness and trust to activation (leads generated), knowing what types of content to use for your desired goals is key.  Click here for full report.

While it may not be as profound as activating an audience to protest a meaningful cause, we can glean lessons from the past and create successful ways to reach our desired audiences. Understanding these successes and applying them to current marketing tools is an important element to securing the future of your organization. 

This past year was like no other- society faced unprecedented challenges.  From the news to business, we found the need for trusted content and information was never more at the forefront of our lives. 

It is in these times of great challenges that opportunities for technology advancements can be actualized, exploding onto the scene like never before.  Technology booms often coincide with pivotal moments in time. For example, the space race brought the advent of the Internet. The race offered a singular focus for technologists and led to the building of an entire new industry and economy. 

During this past year, I would argue that medical technology has been accelerated based on the focus of a single need.  The pandemic provided an opportunity for scientists to leverage medical technology that had been researched for decades and deploy it to support a single focus. Pfizer, Moderna and many other biotech companies built on their research and knowledge to create vaccines. They did not start from ground zero, but rather used known technology they thought could be the solution:

For decades, scientists have dreamed about the seemingly endless possibilities of custom-made messenger RNA, or mRNA.

Researchers understood its role as a recipe book for the body’s trillions of cells, but their efforts to expand the menu have come in fits and starts. The concept: By making precise tweaks to synthetic mRNA and injecting people with it, any cell in the body could be transformed into an on-demand drug factory.” *

But like any new technology or solution building trust becomes the challenge. Advancements without background or insight can often breed distrust.  Windmills, for example, represented a stable advancement of technology, but the lack of true information has caused some to doubt their efficacy.

That is why a well-told origin story is so important. Consumers look for content and information now more than ever. Confidence and acceptance are only built through a strong and consistent content stream of trusted information.

One must take into consideration four pillars of content to gain trust:

• Empathy – Share the initial challenge that the technology was looking to address.
• Reasoning – Explain why the solution is best for solving for the challenges.
• Results – Understand how the solution worked and how it accomplished it’s set goals.
• How – Define how to implement the solution.

Similar to how a confluence of time and technology offer advancements, a confluence of content and technology build awareness and trust. By using our platform, PartnerOn, for content marketing, users are able to share a strong storyline each week. Content is organized into weekly episodes that build upon each other. Content explains to customers how and why products work and provides support for problems they are trying to solve. If users follow the architecture of our content stream, then the consumer will start to trust, and share the need for the solution. This confluence of technology and content can then truly build and accelerate into  new opportunities your for business.

If there is one good thing to come of uncertain times, 2020 has taught us the value of trusted content and how it can lead to expanding your future horizons.

Sitting outside on my back patio, it looks to me the animals know we’ve all been homebound. They’re out in droves, boldly approaching us in our chairs.

It’s not just the behavior of the neighborhood animals that feels different. The air seems cleaner, the trees look greener and the water clearer. Could it be that while humans heal from the health and economic harms of COVID-19 the earth heals from us humans? 

Forced change has a way of pushing us to evolve. We start recognizing the value of working from home and questioning the value of commuting. We learn to leverage technology and services that were always there, in new ways that better realize their full value.

Change Shifts Sales and Marketing Interactions Online

These changed priorities — however forced — have stimulated new interest in technologies such as collaboration software. This is certainly what’s happening at Cisco, according to VP of Americas Partner Organization, John Moses, who tells us the Cisco collaboration suites will be fully recognized for their great value and have lasting effects on multiple industries.    

We also expect the new, forced work paradigms to have lasting impacts on sales and marketing. Where in person meetings and events were once a driving force in sales, restrictions on travel and remote work have moved sales and marketing interactions online — elevating the importance of great content and online experiences.

What B2B Buyers Want from Content 

In a recent study of buying behavior, Forrester offers a glimpse into how B2B customers want to experience content.

This matches nicely with how we define content strategies. 

• Empathy. Discovery of challenges shared across a range of organizations — a quality marketers can convey with content such as case studies and customer success story videos.
• Reasoning. Motivates buyers to consider why the challenge exists and the business costs of not solving the problem. White papers, analyst reports, FAQs and eBooks exploring the challenge or dilemma and approaches to resolution are effective forms of content for moving buyers through the reasoning stage.
• Results. Shows the benefits achieved when the challenge is overcome including savings, revenue earned and competitive position among others. Case studies, customer success story videos, infographics and solution briefs are among the types of content marketers can share to communicate these messages. 
• How. Elicits buyer confidence that a solution can be implemented via demo videos, how-to guides and case studies.

According to the Forrester study, marketers exert the most influence on the buying cycle at the empathy stage with content showing examples of successful programs and proving the vendor cares about its customer’s challenges and goals.

When the future looks unsettled, marketers can also drive results by being consistent. The effectiveness of frequent, consistent publishing on increasing demand is shown in this chart from the Content Marketing Institute.

How Will You Meet Customer Expectations in Our New Normal?

As business reopens and our new normal takes shape, new customer expectations will continue to arise. For technology companies, having the agility to be responsive to changing customer and partner expectations will become a differentiator. What strategies will you implement to meet changing customer expectations in our yet-to-be-settled new normal?