Adding More Value: Successful Marketing Tips For VARs
By Mark Sokol, VP, Product Marketing and Branding, A-LIGN
Marketing matters, and as a growing technology solution provider — you might call yourself a Technology Consultant, System Integrator, Solution Provider, Value Added Reseller, or something else altogether — you know how important it is to get the word out about your business and the value you provide to your customers. Your email, website, and ad messaging are all positioned to reinforce your value with potential customers, so it’s up to you to find ways to create and maintain those messages.
But how do you manage it on a tight budget, or with limited staff resources? It may seem like a major challenge, but the truth is that there are some simple things you can do to increase your marketing reach without blowing through your budget or overtaxing your hard-working team.
Automation Saves The Day
Affordable, consistent marketing starts by taking the pressure off of your team. How? By relying on marketing automation to save time, effort, and resources. With the right tools, you can build email and landing page templates that make new marketing efforts easier. Here are just a few ways that automated marketing tools can help you improve your messaging.
- Tailored Messaging: Current market research carried out by Jupiter Research shows targeted emails bring in 18 times more revenue potential than blanketing your contact list with one broad message. Customize your content to address the specific needs of your market segments so you can address needs by work role, industry, or location as well as improve response rates. For example, if you provide IT support to a medical office, your support would allow the office to see more clients, which means more revenue.
- Lead Scoring: Worried this sounds like a BIG company thing? It doesn’t have to be. Your next step is to take a look at how your customers are interacting with your communications so you can better define who is ready for a sales contact. By categorizing levels of interaction and attaching a sales-readiness rating, your sales team knows who to focus on first, and you’ll more efficiently close new deals. You probably have a mix of new sales activity and existing base selling — if you are splitting someone between the two, lead scoring helps them focus on the best way to generate short term revenue.
Here are a few ideas for your lead categories. Consider adding a point value to each action, and once a lead reaches a pre-identified score, you know they’re ready for sales.
- opened an email
- clicked on something in the email
- completed three or more forms
- watched a demo
- ready for sales
- Automate It All: Making the sales process faster and easier happens even more simply when you automate the entire lead-scoring process. When your lead management is handled through an automated system you not only save time and effort, but you also allow room for enhanced growth rates. In fact, Gartner has found reliance on automated lead management has helped companies grow their revenue by 10 percent or more in less than nine months. Better still, when your marketing solution is integrated into your CRM, opportunities and activities can be automatically created when someone fills out a form. That means sales conversations can be prompted simultaneously, and the sales cycle happens faster.
- Make It Count: You have seconds (at best) to capture a prospective client’s attention. And when you’re up against content gurus, what chance do you have? Plenty, when you create an email calendar that helps you see the bigger picture of how often you’re sending out emails. Try also sending out some tests to see what content your prospects are more likely to interact with. Varied subject lines, headlines, and call-to-action buttons can be great test material, but don’t hesitate to also change up your tone. Try something more fun, or much more serious, and see how it resonates. Test. Test. Test.
- Use Data: You can’t measure your impact without the right metrics. Thanks to marketing automation solutions like ConnectWise® CampaignDirector™, you have the ability to track, document, and measure email performance and hold your team accountable. Metrics give you insight into what’s working in your campaigns — and what’s not — so that you can adjust your tactics to better meet your prospects’ needs. Develop them, measure against them, and keep setting the bar higher once you reach them. As you continue to monitor and measure, you’ll see real growth happening.
Marketing Is Fundamental
It may seem like marketing is optional for companies in the technology space, but the truth is that it’s a necessary part of growing your client base and meeting your larger business goals. Without marketing, prospective customers may never know what you can offer them.
Create compelling emails that encourage engagement, and then count on the right marketing automation solution to support the rest of the process. Before long, you’ll see significant growth thanks to getting the right message out about your value in the marketplace.
Ready for more tips and tricks to enhance your sales? Download your free eBook to Attract, Capture, and Close More Qualified Sales Leads.