Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Channel Marketing Strategy: Communities, Dandelions, and $300M Revenue

SP Home Run Inc.

IT Channel Inbound Marketing Podcast...

Channel Marketing Strategy: Communities, Dandelions, and $300M Revenue

Jay McBain, Co-Founder and Chief Social Officer at ChannelEyes in Albany, New YorkEpisode #10 of the IT Channel Inbound Marketing Podcast is all about Channel Marketing Strategy: Communities, Dandelions, and $300M Revenue. Host Joshua Feinberg is joined by Jay McBain, Co-Founder and Chief Social Officer at ChannelEyes in Albany, New York.
During this podcast, you’ll learn:
  • How the long tail of the IT channel was born to broaden distribution
  • How 5-6 marketing vehicles exploded to close to 30 marketing vehicles, including social media, podcasts, vidcasts, webinars, and more traditional vehicles like trade shows
  • Why “dandelion marketing” is so powerful, where 30 channel marketing vehicles combine with 30 North American channel communities





Download: Channel Marketing Strategy: Communities, Dandelions, and $300M Revenue - Episode# 10

  • How to identify key communities where channel partners hang out, including communities differentiated by specialty, business model, vendor affiliation, distributor affiliation, thought leader, or peer group
  • Why conventional marketing training and business school training may set you up for failure by overly concentrated efforts and “swinging for the fences” (baseball reference)
  • Why quantity is generally more important than quality in IT channel marketing campaigns
  • How channel partners often have vastly different preferences for receiving updates
  • The comparative value of webinars, email, and Twitter for reaching channel partners
  • Why 30 marketing vehicles are needed to cover 100% of channel partners
  • How theme-based marketing can be much more effective than “spray”
  • How a strategically-themed blog post turns into a news release, media placements, Tweets, Facebook posts, LinkedIn posts, webinars, podcasts, trade show messaging, and newsletters
  • The required number of touchpoints before prospects “get” your message and which marketing vehicles to use
  • How Lenovo went from total obscurity to a market share leader within a few short years
  • Why the numbers “7” and “900” matter so much to channel marketing success
  • How to leverage influencers and connectors to help you get from “A” to “B”...especially the 100 “super-connectors”
  • The different kinds of endorsements
  • How $10,000,000 in additional revenue came from a single channel connector endorsement ….and $300,000,000 in additional revenue came through communities as a whole
  • Why an average of $5,000 per community, and $150,000 in total, made such a big impact within communities
  • How labor and resources are more the limiting factor than budget
  • How connectors and community involvement allow you access to whole new sets of channel marketing vehicles
  • Why you can broaden your reach with Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, SlideShare, and YouTube
  • How the unconditional love of a single social media tool makes your channel marketing invisible to most
  • How even small solution providers and MSPs can apply the theme, communities, and connectors strategies on a local level to build credibility, trust, and visibility
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