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A VAR colleague of mine forwarded me an article that started with the following:

Channel company founders are typically technologists, so marketing isn’t normally one of their strengths. Resellers may have the best technology and the best services on the planet, but if VARs don’t know how to market them properly, VARs might as well pack it in.

The typical solution providers’ lack of marketing skills is a challenge rivaled in gravity only by direct-sales competition from vendors.

We thought this was a pretty good summary of the situation we see across the industry. Our clients are in every sense excellent at advising and implementing technology solutions, and while some even have some successes here and there with marketing efforts, we (enter:marketing) look to capitalize on the huge untapped potential they all share in common.

To be sure, there is no shortage of marketing agencies chomping at the bit to spend VARs MDF funds on a number of different online and offline demand gen projects. And of course any out-of-work sales rep with a phone has their own “IT Telemarketing” company, but what tends to be missing at a very fundamental level with all of these services is a strategic long term plan and a closed loop process that is managed and supported at every level of the client’s organization. Meaning, just generating “demand” isn’t nearly enough for effectively building a company’s client base and income. VARs would benefit from being managed through the entire marketing and demand gen process. What is the sales team’s role and responsibility? What about the engineers? And even the president? Business development happens at a team level. Programs can only be effective when there is buy-in from every member of that team, and when there is leadership and management by a professional marketing force.

This force I speak of is what we at enter:marketing provide. We don’t focus on demand gen projects for our clients; we focus on building a closed loop new business structure in their organization with marketing strategy and sales follow-up support and management at its heart. And we accomplish this by providing services of an entire marketing department – a virtual marketing department if you will. By doing so, our clients build a trusted relationship with their enter:marketing provided Marketing Director, who has a team of talent behind him or her focused on planning, developing and executing a long term marketing and business development strategy incorporating multiple marketing channels that tracks to real ROI. And the super special bonus for VARs in this service is that versus attempting to hire one’s own marketing department (the recruitment and human resource nightmare that is aside), our fees are offset, sometimes 100%, by our client’s MDF funds.

To further expand on the original article’s point, I completely agree that VAR founders, sales reps and engineers shouldn’t be responsible for execution and management of marketing as much as they shouldn’t be responsible human resource administration, janitorial tasks, or the myriad of other professional roles that keep companies afloat – roles outside of their area of expertise. Yet, Vendors and marketing solution providers continue to push projects that require either complete or partial VAR execution and management. And ultimately, as inefficiently as the other business operation positions they are not equipped to manage were they required to, would “sink” so to do the marketing initiatives.

We at enter:marketing truly believe that the key to enabling VARs to be successful in their marketing initiatives is not to execute single projects on their behalf or provide canned programs they themselves can execute, but rather to provide them with marketing services that lead, strategize, develop, execute and manage marketing efforts – understanding and supporting the roles of everyone in the company in the business development process all the way to the closed deals, new clients and ultimately mucho mucho dollar signs – A Managed Marketing Service.

Read the full article quoted above.

In the current market, it is as important as ever to know your customer.  It is just as important to know your prospect.  It is very easy to overlook the importance of approaching a marketing effort without really determining who the buyer is.  The who, what, where and how must be determined to be successful.  Failure to do so often leads to lost return on marketing spend—but much worse, creates wasted cycles by the sales staff trying to go through non-prospects to get to the real buyers.

At enter:marketing we take a very focused approach to determining who the decision maker is for your solution.  We then use our OnTarget Team to build custom lists of those buyers.  We are able to achieve industry leading returns on our programs by targeting the right buyer with a compelling message.  Most importantly, this connects your sales staff with the decision maker and speeds leads to opportunities to closed sales.

The success of channel marketing rests on the ability for the IT manufacturer and the solution provider to align their efforts to really drive ROI from their demand generation.  The payoff is huge when successful, qualified leads right on target with the most important solutions for the customer.

The IT manufacturer often puts a great amount of resources in providing collateral, templates and kits that can be of great impact in driving demand.  The solution provider is closest to the prospective customers and can leverage their trusted advisor status to bring in new solutions to those prospects.

Many factors limit the ability of the channel to align and execute on this promise, such as the lack of understanding of what is available from the manufacturer, lack of ability to organize proactively around resources available, limited materials available from the manufacturer.

At enter:marketing, we give you the edge in overcoming these challenges to align your marketing efforts with your solution providers.

As an example, at the most recent Citrix Summit, Citrix announced marketing go-to-markets called “Plays”.  These plays provide resources for Citrix and their Solution Advisors to work together from demand generation through sales.  Enter:marketing is working with Citrix and their Solution Advisors to leverage these resources to drive demand on many of the key strategies, such as XenApp better with XenServer.

Think of us as the team that can help you execute your channel strategies at the solution provider level. Go team!