Our blog today talks about the one thing affecting bottom lines across industries–the new buyer’s journey. Over time, the traditional buyer’s journey has changed significantly. What was a linear, consultative process involving the key decision-maker and the seller, who was typically the key influencer, has now become chaotic, non-linear and omnichannel. The scales are tipped heavily in favor of the buyer. For example, a study by SiriusDecisions asserts that approximately 70% of the buyer’s journey is done online–that means, sellers are able to actively influence or make an impact only in the remaining 30% of the buyer’s journey. Imagine what happens if your channel partners are not at par with the buyers on 30% of their journey! Lead leakage, longer conversion window, and higher acquisition costs are all results of the inability of partners to make an impact during that 30% of the buyer’s journey. In this blog series, we discuss what you can do, as a vendor to help your channel partners match steps with their leads throughout the buyer’s journey.
Start with your content
The partner marketing content you offer your channel partners must be tailored to match each stage of the buyer’s journey. You can broadly divide your content into 4 major types–each suited for a specific stage of the buyer’s journey.
- Content to help partners build their local brand: This kind of content is to be used in the initial stages of the buyer’s journey. It can include generic, thought leadership content that is non-product or vendor-centric and is more along the lines of knowledge sharing. Examples include best practices, research articles, informative blog posts and whitepapers, etc.–basically content that helps your prospects understand their challenges and possible solutions better.
- Product centric campaigns: This is where overt marketing starts. These are product-centric, clearly discussing how your product can solve the buyer’s problem.
- Sales content: All the cards are on the table at this stage. Get your best sales collateral and use cases out to share with your leads. Provide your partners with personalized sales brochures, client success stories, case studies, competitive analysis and battle cards to help them put the best case forward to their leads.
- Customer adoption and engagement assets: This is after the lead has been converted into a customer. Even after they convert a lead, they need to stay in touch with them and keep your brand fresh in their minds. Keeping your customers engaged with your brand is a great way to customer retention and also to grow your business. For customers in this stage, provide your partners with content such as newsletters, customer feedback surveys, customer testimonial and referral request campaigns, customer training assets etc.so they can reach out and stay in touch with the leads they closed.
Hope that helped! Check out our blog next week for part-2 of this series, where we talk about how you can make your partner marketing content more effective based on partner profiling.
