White paper: The secrets of succeeding with partner campaign marketing management technology
This white paper introduces the common challenges in channel marketing campaign design, and provides proven ways of avoiding marketing inefficiencies and unnecessary costs.
Partner campaign tracking and performance measurement solutions are currently offered by very few marketing companies. Because this market trend is still very new, you must carefully study each solution — and each marketing partner — to determine the best fit for your needs.
The problem
Many small businesses in both public and private sectors have the misconception that CRM software and other business process automation solutions are only suitable for established market players with significant revenue (in the $10 million to $100 million range). This would be true if there is no strategy behind the marketing automation software and no resources to maintain the system. But, with proper planning — and a smart choice of marketing partners — smaller companies can easily make excellent use of the emerging technology.
The need
You need marketing processes automation, no matter how small your business may be for now, to maximize the efficiency of your marketing efforts and to lay the groundwork for rapid growth. By knowing more about your customers you can sell more effectively to them, directly. By knowing more about your reselling and referral partners you can sell more effectively through them — because you can measure and correct their performance according to your financial projections, the market acceptance of your product and service, and your market penetration strategy.
The marketing automation function of CRM software is therefore more than just a technological solution. With fully automated partner campaign tracking and marketing management technologies you can simply manage your whole business better.
The solution
Find yourself a credible direct response marketing company that will help you to refine your marketing strategy, define the processes, prepare a spec for process automation, customize your marketing CRM tools, run the first few campaigns for you, and educate you on the various possibilities that the system provides. These companies exist and they will not only save you time, they will grow your business for far less cost than you can do on your own.
If you carefully plan your marketing activities and hire a credible marketing company to establish and automate your internal processes for your future resellers’ convenience, then the question of whether or not to use a CRM solution loses its validity — it is an obvious “yes.” This is especially true if your marketing vendor will also market the programs to both your channel partners and customers to make sure that all processes are running seemingly effortlessly. Then, your marketing campaigns pay off by generating enough quality leads to guarantee an extraordinary return on your investment.
How do you budget this expenditure? A knowledgeable marketing company will have done it many times for other clients and therefore will have developed targeted solutions that are the most cost-efficient for their clients. But, if your marketing vendor charges you fat consulting fees — in addition to their technology solutions — drop them and find a more reasonably priced marketing partner; just make sure you don’t sacrifice quality.
What should I ask for my money?
Your best choice is a marketing partner that can offer you a one-stop-shop solution for under $10,000 — a company with an established framework that doesn’t have too many unknowns and gaps in their processes. Make sure that you are getting at least three CRM seats and consulting on how to run your campaign. Make sure that the campaigns are designed specifically for you, that your marketing collateral is fully tested, and that broadcast media is included in the price with wide coverage to acquire both a wide net of potential resellers and customers.
Conducting tests using partner campaigns marketing management technology
You must make sure that each and every marketing item, passed to your customers or partners, will work for you in the most efficient way. For that, you and your marketing partner must conduct ABC (also known as A/B split) testing and accumulate the metrics to measure each message, each design layout, each telemarketing script, and each partnership presentation.
Without a feature-rich system and well designed process, your results will most likely suffer from a high degree of approximation, and your budget — including the time and marketing dollars that you have spent on testing — will not justify itself.
Think long-term
While considering partner campaign marketing management technology, you are wise to validate what CRM manufacturers promise — because marketing platforms that are suitable for channel marketing are very rare. Many CRM companies promise marketing modules that can do everything, but after you spend weeks on learning the solution you will realize that practically none of them can manage partner relationships. Some CRM suites offer Google Analytics and AdWords integration in a sales force automation package. Others offer affiliate marketing scripts. But none of them will help you run channel marketing campaigns with a diversity of referral partners who have unique business models and multifaceted frameworks.
While considering a marketing company to design, test, and market partner programs for you, consider your future exist strategy. If you are a public company, or a private company that is looking to get listed in the near future, make sure that your marketing vendor fully understands that both the campaigns and the software must be customized so that the entire bundle will become a powerhouse for turning your investors into committed referral partners. This of course will bring in more leads, more deals, and more future investors.
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