DIYL: How SMBs Combat Big Guys in Channel Marketin

By Brian Tervo, President & CEO, TIE Kinetix North America

Email newsletters, social media, whitepapers – just a few of the ways that marketing departments can interact with their channel communities these days. But what if you own a small business and lack the resources and budget needed to fund these types of marketing efforts?

The marketing industry, particularly among SMBs, is seeing a DIY revolution. What does this mean? DIY – or do it yourself – allows businesses to automate the execution of their marketing programs using a variety of Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions readily available today. While this method may require a bit of extra work at the outset, it can actually lead to cost savings and greater control over your messaging, especially as it relates to your partners, who often have even less money to spend on marketing efforts. Growing availability of these SaaS platforms bring technologies within reach of SMB marketers.

Of course, there are challenges to managing your entire channel marketing efforts on your own. I’ve outlined a few of the most common questions below and offered my two cents on how to solve them.

How Can I Reach my Channel Partners Quickly?

  The channel community can be tricky to manage if you don’t have a large marketing department, which many smaller brands do not. One way to leverage existing marketing materials and distribute them easily to your partners is by using a content syndication solution. Offered by a variety of vendors, these types of solutions allow marketing content to automatically publish across partner sites, social channels and mobile devices with customizations that can even include personalized co-branding for the reseller. This alleviates the struggle of manually putting content into a portal and motivating your channel community to repurpose via emails and phone calls. When competing for mindshare with much larger brands, the easier you can make it on your partners to generate new business and leads using your brand, the greater chance you will have in bringing your own business to the next level.

Continued here on SMBNow.com