Recently we discussed how the new buyer’s journey is affecting bottom lines across industries and why it matters to vendors. We also discussed how vendors can empower their channel partners in this new buyer’s journey by aligning content to match the buyer’s position sales cycle and can make their partner marketing programs more effective based on partner profiling. This week, we conclude with one of the key elements impacting partner marketing in this new buyer’s journey–partner personas.
Each vendor deals with multiple partner personas and each of these partner personas have a different requirement in terms of partner marketing and sales support. Vendors need to understand these varied requirements and support partners accordingly. When dealing with partners of different types, the partner ecosystem can become quite complex with each partner type requiring a different kind of support to be able to sell. Vendors must understand the needs of each partner type and offer them the right tools and support.
Broadly speaking, the partner personas can be classified into 4 categories.
Marketing:
– This partner persona needs content, strategies and tools directed at prospects who are in the top of the funnel, more focused around lead-gen
– Example include landing pages, email campaigns, social media content, lead scoring and nurturing tools, 360-degree lead view
Sales:
– This partner persona needs content, strategies and tools that target middle and end of funnel prospects
– Example include case studies, competitive product comparisons, product/services guides, sales success stories
Owner:
– This partner persona needs a complete sales and marketing tool kit, including training and certification
SME:
– This partner persona is comfortable with the technical aspects of the solution, but needs complete sales and marketing support
It is time to look at partner marketing objectively and find out what REALLY works and stick with it. The whole idea behind investing in partner marketing is to help your partners sell more and generate more business for you. To be able to do that, you need to understand your partner personas well and provide them with the kind of marketing and sales support they need. It’s time to ditch the one-size-fits-all approach to partner marketing programs and adopt a persona-centric approach.
