As planning for 2024 accelerates, B2B IT Partner Marketing leaders are under more pressure than ever to drive pipeline and demonstrate ROI despite smaller teams, tight budgets, and shifting priorities.
The partner landscape is becoming increasingly complex as the number and types of partnerships and go-to-market solutions grow at an accelerating pace. At the same partners marketing budget time, partner ecosystems are playing an increasingly strategic role in the local physician database growth of many B2B technology companies, attracting interest from executives and investors alike. Combined with the current economic uncertainty, it is imperative that Partner Marketing leaders focus on making investments that deliver tangible results.
If you recognize yourself in this description
take these three essential steps now to prepare the ground and have a great 2024!
Step 1: Validate and refine your common message.
Before investing in content or demand partners marketing financial security for freelancers budget generation, revisit your shared messaging in light of the latest industry trends and current buyer priorities. Don’t forget to ask yourself the right questions:
Is your common message clear, concise and compelling?
Does it take into account emerging trends such as generative AI (GenAI)?
Are you highlighting your key competitive differentiators?
Does your message effectively frame your andorra business directory discourse around “better together”?
Are you meeting the priorities of each buyer: technical partners marketing budget decision-makers and business decision-makers?
Sync up with your product marketing peers to understand
changes in the competitive landscape or pivots in positioning. Consult relevant market research, such as TechTarget’s Buying Priorities Study . If your company has a relationship with a consulting firm, test your messaging with a third-party expert who knows your market and buyer persona inside and out.
Before you roll out your new shared message on a large scale, consider these tips from Laurie Mitchell, senior vice president of global marketing at Wasabi Technologies:
“…identify a few partners to test your common message together, and then expand it from there. That way you learn quickly, and you can make adjustments. And once you know where it works, you can…expand to other partners in your distribution network.”
Step 2: Carefully fill gaps in your content library
Now that you have your message in place, identify your joint solution’s buying team and take stock of your content library to ensure you can effectively tell the “better together” message throughout the buyer’s journey. Some things to consider:
What are the supports that will support the awareness, reflection and decision-making stages?
What leadership elements will fuel acquisition campaigns?
Do you have content to independently verify the technical capabilities of your joint solution?
How to quantify the economic impact of your collaboration?
Are there any new elements from product marketing that you can reuse?
Here is a suggested action plan:
Check out TechTarget’s 2022-2023 Media Consumption and Vendor Engagement Study to learn how B2B IT buyers are researching the industry, gathering vendor insights, and engaging with content.
Conduct a content inventory to understand what you have today and map your existing content by persona and stage.
Evaluate current assets against your refined
message and update as needed. Identify gaps and prioritize creating assets that can improve conversion rates.
To optimize your budget, identify assets to reuse in derivative content and explore GenAI tools to help you increase content production and reuse.
Invest in having a third-party industry expert create the independent content buyers need, such as research-based e-books and webinars, self-assessments and ROI/TCO simulators, and technical/economic validations.
Step 3: Focus on lead quality and conversion into the partner pipeline.
Your partner’s marketing budget is useless if your leads are of questionable quality or are not properly engaged and followed up after showing initial interest in your joint solution.
When budgets are tight
it can be tempting to select a vendor based solely on cost per lead (CPL). But as we all know, not all prospects are created equal. Geographic and demographic targeting only go so far—what matters today is reaching active buyers who have a real, recent interest in solutions like yours. Use intent data to build your target account list. Be prepared to pay a premium to reach the right contacts within those accounts. Interview potential vendors to find the best fit:
What is your reach in our market
in the relevant geographies?
How does your audience match the profile of our ideal customer?
How to acquire the right audience? Are your leads GDPR and CCPA compliant?
What techniques do you use to understand purchasing intentions?
What is your strategy for reaching active buyers in my target audience?
, agree with your partner(s) on a conversion strategy and ensure you get the necessary buy-in and support from other teams.