In Episode #10 of the IT Channel Inbound Marketing Podcast, 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, why “dandelion marketing” is so powerful, and much more.
Wondering which IT channel trade publications small business VARs and MSPs should be reading? Here are 17 worthy contenders, organized alphabetically:
It doesn’t come as a surprise to Channel Professionals that things are changing faster than ever across the partner ecosystem. A perfect storm of new technologies, transforming business models, rapidly evolving competition, consumerization and economic forces have fundamentally changed the traditional supplier/partner relationship. While every situation is different, the following 14 Channel Marketing Mistakes are common throughout our industry. How many of these apply to your organization?
If you’ve been a channel marketing manager for a long time, it’s tempting to want to defend the past by clinging to your favorite tools. Trade magazines. Conferences. Direct mail. Outbound phone calls. Field sales visits. They’ve all done a tremendous job of attracting new partners throughout the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s. But the game changed tremendously in the past 5 years. So with that in mind, how can channel marketing managers cut through the clutter and stand out from the crowd to attract the multitasking partner seeking solutions to their problems? It’s very simple at heart: you need a mobile-friendly content plan. Here are 10 steps to get you started.
IT distributors may have even more work to do if the results of a recent reseller survey are representative of the wider dealer community. The survey organized by The Channel Partnership, a UK channel consultancy, asked 250 VARs what they thought about their vendors.
Most channel marketing managers have a bear of a time creating engaging website content that their channel partners actually want to read. But it doesn’t have to be so frustrating when you know what your partners actually care about. How do you know? That’s an excellent question!
Channel marketing managers are usually tasked with two different lead generation challenges: (1) Identify potential MSPs or VARs that are interested in becoming channel partners, and (2) Attract end user leads that can be passed along to channel partners. Regardless of whether you focus on one or both of these demand generation needs, SlideShare can be a great social media channel for generating leads.. Even for relatively time-starved channel marketing managers, there are two kinds of low-hanging fruit for lead generation waiting for you on SlideShare.
Blogging can be a really effective way for channel marketing managers to drive targeted traffic to their companies’ websites. But you wouldn’t know it from the way most are blogging. In this post, you’ll learn about some of the most important blogging best practices that can create positive ROI for channel marketers.
What’s the real value of channel partner relationships as they relate to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and channel partner management?
Segmentation is a very powerful tool in any kind of market research, as it allows you to really understand just how different various parts of your target market are. When it comes to the various segments of the North American IT channel, there are very few organizations that understand this fragmentation quite as well as CRN (US edition) In both a recent CRN subscriber survey, as well as on the CRN Free Subscription Form, you’ll see a relatively similar, although not identical, list of ways to classify the various business models of the IT channel:
Most getting started with blogging struggle initially to build traction. This is normal. There are definitely some natural tipping points that kick in once you start blogging more regularly. That said, what are the key blog metrics that IT channel marketers need to regularly monitor?
A report from a survey made jointly by Deloitte & Touche LLP and the AGMA (Alliance for Gray Market and Counterfeit Abatement) links channel incentive abuse with the high-tech gray market.
On small teams, channel marketers often need to wear many different hats. And while many very small tech companies will begin aggressively marketing their services without really thinking through their product roadmap, there are many lessons that can be learned from professional product managers – which even the smallest marketing teams ought to listen to.
Recently, at the COMDEXvirtual online conference, UBM Channel CEO Robert Faletra presented the opening keynote speech on “Redefining the Channel Ecosystem.”
Much as you would expect from any CEO, especially one with such a long and well-respected tenure running CRN and now leading the parent company that owns CRN, Faletra has a strong, well-thought-out vision of the future for the IT reseller channel. Here are our notes from this session that largely predicts the demise of traditional VARs.
Do you need more new partners? With Inbound marketing, your IT channel firm can attract the right visitors to its website, convert visitors to leads, close sales with new partners, and delight partners for long-term retention.
Find out why many potential partners aren’t even considering your company.. and what you can do about it...before it’s too late (page 1)
Identify the 6 key pieces for planning an effective Inbound marketing strategy (page 2)
Narrow down your “must do” list to these 11 ways to attract targeted visitors (page 3)
Convert a lot more of your website visitors to qualified leads with these tools (page 4)
Close sales faster with new partners that are eager to do business with your company (page 5)
Achieve the Inbound marketing holy grail by delighting and retaining partners for life (page 6)
