Given the on-going challenges faced by the Channel to implement longer-term marketing initiatives, partners need to continually develop their online presence, and social media provides an efficient and effective way to reach their clients and prospects.

While the “live touch” is still critical to moving a prospect through the sales pipeline, organizations are integrating outbound and inbound marketing tactics to drive leads from online and offline channels. Social media facilitates this integration, and helps partners employ more cost-effective strategies to reach top-of-the-funnel prospects.

We’ve heard for some time now that content is king. For vendors and manufacturers, it’s an ongoing effort to develop relevant content that contributes to the overall marketing strategy. But once that’s done, can they be sure that channel and business partners are making the most of those assets?
 

"Empowered tech buyers are 2/3 into the buying cycle before engaging sales."

—Forrester Research

Channel-centric vendors need to get their messages out to customers by leveraging the reach of their partners, while partners struggle to identify, re-package and co-brand their suppliers’ content, due to limited time and resources.

Leading analysts have indicated that:

• Organizations with a coordinated social media strategy drive 30% more enquiries – Sirius Decisions
• Social media drives a 5% increase in sales lead to closed business conversion – Sirius Decisions
• 73% of IT executives are influenced by social networks in decision making and 60% of business decision makers say branded content helps them make better product decisions– Socialcast

There are many vendors providing content management solutions, and many others offering marketing automation solutions, but these are only two facets of an effective multi-channel approach. Content distribution, syndication, and tracking are also critical elements.  All of these pieces need to be combined with the live touch to truly recognize the full value of campaigns.

It has been demonstrated that using social media as part of an integrated marketing approach can:

• Increase inquiry flow and overall demand generation for all sales channels.
• Increase lead generation and web traffic for partners. More content = more interactions between partners and prospects = 30% to 67% increase in opportunities and leads.
• Increase sales channel engagement and differentiation. Increased engagement and the ability to identify the most productive sales channels.

A major IT vendor recently stated that “By giving [channel partners] a regular stream of targeted content, which they can post as their own, we will help them build their social presence and positively influence the end-user decision making process.”