XChange Panel: Partners Need To Get With The Digital Marketing Program

When 10th Magnitude, a born-in-the-cloud Microsoft Azure partner, wanted to drive sales leads in the DevOps community around the Chef platform, it created a YouTube video titled "The Chef Prince of Azure."

The YouTube video -– whose title is a play on 1990s TV sitcom "The Fresh Prince Of Bel Air" -- created a mini-frenzy in the Chef community that helped drive sales for Chicago-based 10th Magnitude.

"We converted that to leads and deals," said Jason Rook, vice president of market development for 10th Magnitude. "People know about us from that video. That three-minute clip has revolutionized the way we go to business in that market."

[CRNtv: The New Era Of Digital Marketing]

Rook was one of four digital marketing superstars who offered tips and advice on how to succeed in a "New Era of Digital Marketing" panel at XChange Solution Provider 2017 on Tuesday, hosted by Robert Faletra, CEO of CRN's parent, The Channel Company.

Faletra, for his part, said the new era of digital marketing is moving marketing from what was years ago somewhat of a black art ("I know 50 percent of my marketing budget is working, I just don't know which 50 percent.") to a dark science that is now measurable.

"Digital marketing is something everyone in this room needs to be thinking about," Faletra told several hundred partners at the packed main-stage session. "We at The Channel Company have been telling partners for a long time that they need to get better at marketing." The number one objective for partners as they build out their new-era media strategies? Qualified leads, said Faletra.

10th Magnitude's Rook said his marketing team, which includes four employees with an average age of 26, is focused firmly on "captivating" the millennial audience. "We're finding millennials that not only have the ability to influence buying decisions, but have the authority to write a $250,000 purchase order," he said.

The digital marketing efforts are paying off in better brand recognition, leads and attracting talent, said Rook. "We put more emphasis on the brand," he said.

Michael Knight, president and CTO of Encore Technology Group, a Greenville, S.C.-based solution provider -- No. 376 on the CRN's Solution Provider 500 -- said his company relies on three outside digital marketing experts to be successful. "We knew what our need was: more sales, customers, and better brand recognition," he said. "The key for us is they know how to do it."

Knight says many companies focus far too much on the pure lead and miss out on the value of building their own brand through their digital marketing efforts. "You have to be careful not to pigeonhole yourself as working with just one technology provider," he said.

Mark Boudreau, a Washington, D.C., digital media marketing expert, said it's a mistake to think digital marketing is just branding or sales-lead generation. "It is your forward-facing assets," he said. "Marketing is no longer linear. It is whatever you find on a search."

Boudreau said one of the biggest mistakes he sees being made is poor follow-up in the wake of sophisticated digital marketing campaigns. "Phone calls and emails aren't answered or followed up on," he said. "People are rude. They don’t have technical knowledge."

Bob Skelley, general manager of PartnerDemand Services for The Channel Company, which works with vendors and partners to create digital marketing plans backed by market development funds (MDF), said he also sees the ball being dropped at the last mile. He said partners often are not putting the appropriate top sales and technical talent on sales meetings pulled together from sophisticated digital market campaigns.

"That is where I see a lot of solution providers missing the mark," Skelley said. "A lead comes in and they treat it as a generic lead with an inside salesperson. If you are setting up a meeting with an IT decision maker, you better have technical talent on that phone call. They are going to very quickly want to vet your capabilities and understand how deep you can go and whether you can speak to the business value and pain points. If you can't pass that litmus test, the meeting is not going to go anywhere. Think of everything that went into getting a partner and IT decision maker together and invest appropriately."

Michael Hadley, president and CEO of iCorps, a Boston-based solution provider, said his company is creating a significant amount of its own original digital marketing content that's driving two to three leads per week.

"It's amazing. Our traffic is up and it is quality traffic that is being converted," he said of the iCorps digital marketing offensive. "We now have three full-time marketers and one part time intern. We are doing campaigns targeted by industry and region. We are all about analytics. We are moving into Dynamics and CRM. It is really paying off for us."

Hadley said he sees his digital marketing efforts about to break through to the next level of demand generation. "We are in the process of scaling our digital marketing and we are aggressively hiring salespeople," he said.

Michael Goldstein, CEO of LAN Infotech, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., solution provider, said his digital marketing budget is up 50 percent in the last year. "We are doing YouTube and third-party videos that talk about some of our services," he said. "People like to look at those videos on focused topics, including ransomware."