Benefits of adding a Channel Partner Program to your Organization’s Sales Structure

Benefits of adding a Channel Partner Program to your Organization’s Sales Structure

by | Sep 18, 2017 | Marketing

A channel partner can be defined as a company that partners with a manufacturer or vendor to market and sell the manufacturer’s/vendor’s products, services, or technologies. This is usually done through a co-branding relationship. Channel partners may be distributors, vendors, retailers, consultants, systems integrators (SI), technology deployment consultancies, and value-added resellers (VARs) and other such organizations.

The channel partner is part of the vendor’s indirect sales force, meaning that they sell the products and services on behalf of the vendor but they are an independent company. They may also sell products and services produced by other vendors as well as items they develop themselves.

Benefits of a Channel Partner Program

Increase Revenue

Without question, partner programs create significant growth in sales and distribution of a product or service. The best part about partnership programs is that both sides benefit from the increased revenue. For the vendor each new partnership not only generates revenue for your company, but it also grows your sales footprint. At the same time, the vendors’ partners can also grow revenue for their businesses.

Drive International Growth Through Localized Channel Partners

As well as driving sales, international Channel Partners can help decrease time to market and provide access to new competitive markets. Partners local to the region can help with language barriers, local customs and international business law and taxation

Reduce Cost of Sales

For all manufactures, reducing the cost of sales is important but it is especially important for start-ups and small businesses. Establishing an indirect sales channel rather than employing an in-house sales team can save on employee salaries and benefits as well as travel costs to visit prospects and the time wasted on unqualified leads which never convert to sales.

Take Advantage of Additional Expertise and Resources

Channel partners can give smaller vendors the resources they need to succeed. Vendors can use their partner’s team of IT professionals to deliver technical support and training to customers as well as their marketing team and budget to develop campaigns.

Provide Information

Companies utilizing partners for selling their products depend on distributors to provide information that can help improve the product. High-level intermediaries may offer their suppliers real-time access to sales data including information showing how products are selling by such characteristics as geographic location, type of customer, and product location (e.g., where located within a store, where found on a website).

 

For help on implementing a Channel Partner Program to your organizations sales structure please contact RML Marketing & Business Development Solutions today.

What does Social Media bring to the B2B Marketers Table?

What does Social Media bring to the B2B Marketers Table?

by | Sep 14, 2017 | Business Development, Marketing

With 93% of B2B Marketers stating that Social Media is their number 1 tool for content creation and distribution, we take a look at what it offers the astute B2B Marketer. Here is a list of some of the benefits that we believe Social Media platforms bring to B2B Marketing:

Content Distribution

Platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, etc., are wonderful tools to highlight and promote your organizations products and services through case studies, customer success stories, webinars, white papers, upcoming shows and events.

Engage with Customers and Prospects

You can use tools such as Twitter to engage with customers and prospects and even offer customer support. Setting up User Groups on LinkedIn is another great way to grow an active, loyal following for your brand. It is essential that these accounts are constantly monitored and responded to in a timely manner.

Social Media can Improve your Website’s SEO

According to Kissimetrics social media profiles will influence the content of your search results and, in fact, social media profiles are often amongst the top results in search listings for brand names.

Use Video as a Lead Generation Tool

Developing product overview and customer testimonial videos can help drive leads and enquiries to your organization.

Keep an eye on the Marketplace and your Competitors

Hootsuite suggests that you can use Social Media very effectively to keep an eye on your competitors. Known as social listening, your organization can see what your competitors are offering, what is being said about them and any big industry news that may just have been announced.

Drive Traffic to your Website

Make sure to list your homepage URL on all your social sites, this can drive traffic back to your full site from the social media platform that your organization has been found on.

Tradeshows and Events

Using the recognized Tradeshow and Event hashtag (#show2017) can help highlight your organizations participation and drive traffic to your booth or speaking engagement.

If you would like help with planning a Social Media Campaign to help your organizations B2B Marketing activities please contact us today.

5 DIY Tips to Help Improve your Website’s SEO

5 DIY Tips to Help Improve your Website’s SEO

by | Sep 11, 2017 | Business Development, Marketing

As you are probably aware, the minefield that is known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization), can bamboozle even the most tech astute digital marketer. According to Searchengineland.com SEO stands for “search engine optimization.” It is the process of getting traffic from the “free,” “organic,” “editorial” or “natural” search results on search engines.  All major search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo have primary search results, where web pages and other content such as videos or local listings are shown and ranked based on what the search engine considers most relevant to users. Payment isn’t involved, as it is with paid search ads. (What Is SEO / Search Engine Optimization?, n.d.)

To get your website listed highly for relevant search words or terms on a search engine is a very daunting task, with many, many permutations and combinations. It is a task that I would seriously recommend outsourcing to an expert, however, here are five quick website SEO improvement tips that you can implement on your own today:

5 DIY SEO Improvement Tips

  1. Submit Your Website to Search Engines: You can improve your business visibility by submitting your website pages to search engines such as Yahoo, Bing and Google. Get your free business listing on Google by clicking on www.google.com/business and filling in the form.
  2. Create Social Media Sites to Help Boost SEO: Create your organization’s own social media pages on sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Google+, etc. to get more organic search traffic.
  3. Optimize Images and Use Alt Text for Keyword Optimization: Use image optimizer sites such as www.imageoptimizer.net to improve the quality of your images. Also, add Alt Text where possible. Alt Text (alternative text) is a word or phrase that can be inserted to tell website viewers the content.
  4. Hyphenate: When setting URL page titles and tags use hyphens (-) between words to improve readability. Do not use underscore (_).
  5. Update Website Content Frequently: Updating your website’s content on a frequent basis attracts search engine spiders to index your website pages more frequently.

For help with improving your website’s SEO, layout and user experience please visit www.rml-marketing.com or contact us today.

10 Short Tips for Running a Successful Webinar

10 Short Tips for Running a Successful Webinar

by | Sep 8, 2017 | Business Development, Communications, Marketing

Webinar-Attendee

The webinar is taking the digital marketing world by storm. Also known as web conferencing, webinars are services that allow real-time, multicast video conferencing events to be broadcast live. Participants can join live from any location in the globe, provided they have an internet connection and login details.

Marketers are realising that webinars drive high quality leads and provide organizations with great opportunities to offer value and knowledge to prospective clients and associates. 

In order to run a successful webinar, we at RML Marketing & Business Development Solutions, have come up with the following:

 

Top 10 Tips for a Successful Webinar

  1. Topic: Choose your topic and title carefully. Consult with members of your organization and concentrate on topics that will be of interest to your target audience. Make sure the subject matter can be explained in a short presentation.
  2. When to Run: Tuesdays and Wednesdays have been recognised as the best days to host a webinar. Always remember to think about time-zones and where you expect your audience to be based. A 12pm EST start in New York will be 9am PST in Los Angeles and 5pm GMT in London.
  3. Promotion: A three week lead-in promotional campaign (email, social media, blogs, paid ads, news articles, etc.) with a final day before reminder is best practice according to ReadyTalk
  4. Content & Presentation: Keep words to a minimum on your presentation deck. Use images, graphs and infographics to highlight talking points. If possible use 2 presenters to alleviate the monotony of a single voice. A guest presenter of a happy client or partner can also be a great addition.
  5. No Hard Selling: Do not turn your presentation into a hard sell of your product or service, you will lose the interest of your audience. Instead come across as a knowledge leader, addressing a solution to a problem. The fact that your organization sells that solution should be kept to a minimum.
  6. Dry Run: Dry run and practice, practice, practice……. Always do a dry run a couple of days before the webinar is scheduled. Ask work colleagues to sit in and give feedback. Test all equipment, links, audience chat boxes, audio links and phone lines that will be used.
  7. Make it Light: Try to introduce some humour or tell a customer success story.
  8. Duration: 30-45 minutes of presentation with an additional 15 minutes at the end for Q&A is a good rule of thumb, but this will greatly depend on your content and target audience.
  9. Audience Participation: It is wise to mute your audience during the main presentation, but actively encourage them to participate and ask questions at the end. Tell them at the start of the presentation that you will be opening up the on-screen chat boxes or phone lines at the end. It makes sense for the presenter to have help from a colleague who will read/field the questions as they come in.
  10. Follow Up: Always make sure to follow up with your audience the day immediately after the webinar was presented. Send them a thank you email and if possible a recording of the presentation or a copy of the slide deck. You can also ask questions to open up future conversations.

 

Roger Leyden is CEO of RML Marketing & Business Development Solutions and has been creating and presenting webinars for many years. If you would like to know more on how RML can help you create and present cost effective webinars please contact us for further information.

 

The Simple Hashtag (#) – The 21st Century’s Most Important Communications and PR Tool?

The Simple Hashtag (#) – The 21st Century’s Most Important Communications and PR Tool?

by | Aug 31, 2017 | Business Development, Communications, Marketing

As the hashtag (#) celebrates it’s 10th year anniversary as a modern communication tool, we examine its popularity and use, particularly in social media. The hashtag, sometimes called the pound sign in North America, was often used in information technology to highlight a special meaning. In 1970 the pound sign was used to denote immediate address mode in the assembly language of the PDP-11 when placed next to a symbol or a number.

The pound sign or hashtag then appeared and was used within IRC networks (internet relay chat) to label groups and topics. The use of the pound sign in IRC inspired Chris Messina to propose a similar system to be used on Twitter to tag topics of interest on the then microblogging network. He posted the first hashtag on Twitter ten years ago in August 23rd 2007:

It was after a series of forest fires in San Diego in 2007 that the use of the hashtag in Twitter first, and then other social media platforms, became popular. According to Messina the intention behind the hashtag was to make it easy for users to search for content and find specific updates that are relevant without the technological knowledge to navigate the site. Therefore, the hashtag was created organically by Twitter users as a way to categorize messages

Ten years later the hashtag is no longer just the prevail of Twitter users, but has also become highly popular on other social media sites such as Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, giving a new lease of life to audience engagement on popular TV shows #GameOfThrones, live events #SuperBowlLI, politics #POTUS and a whole host of news and worldwide happenings.

Simply by pacing the hashtag # symbol in front of a word or key phrase, the author can highlight the key points of his or her communication. Likewise, the reader can use the hashtag # symbol for research and up to date feeds on any particular topic that may be of interest.

The quantity of hashtags used in a post or tweet is just as important as the types of hashtags used. It is currently considered acceptable to tag a post once when contributing to a specific conversation. Two hashtags are considered acceptable when adding a location to the conversation. Three hashtags are seen by some as the ‘absolute maximum’, and any contribution exceeding this risks raising the ire of other users.

So, besides search-ability and speed of information, what additional benefits does the hashtag offer the 21st century marketer and PR guru? Here is a list of some of the more popular advantages of using hashtags in modern communications:

·               Improve brand awareness by using hashtags related to service or product to enlist and grow a                                  large following and sense of community.

·               Use trending hashtags where relevant to drive additional traffic to your site.

·               Encourage interaction with customers, prospects and partners.

·               Create a brand hashtag that is unique to your business and use as a signature tag.

·               Unique hashtags are ideal for new campaign or product launches.

·               Hashtags are search engine friendly

If you would like to know how to improve your social media communications and improve your brand awareness with modern tools, email RML Marketing and Business Development Solutions today at info@rml-marketing.com

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