November 29th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by Tom Johansmeyer
Tradeshow and conference leads are expensive – there’s no way around it. Compared to direct response, social media your own events and even PR, you’re going to drop a hefty portion of your budget for what amounts to a small number of business opportunities. For some IT solution providers, the notion of skipping these conferences entirely is not an option, so if you’re going to attend, you should at least tip the odds in your favor as much as possible. The biggest – and costliest – mistake you can make is completely preventable, and it happens on the convention floor.
Here are five ways you can reduce your tradeshow cost per lead, drive higher quality and increase your marketing ROI:
1. Choose your tradeshows carefully: do you really need to invest in every tradeshow on your list? Take a hard look at the results you gained from each, and think about how you could use your marketing budget more effectively. Be prepared to make some tough choices.
2. Have a game plan: market to key people you want to see in advance of the tradeshow. Make sure you can get them to your booth for a meaningful conversation. This increases the odds of a deeper, more productive appointment later.
Read the rest of this entry »
November 17th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by Tom Johansmeyer
As you’re planning your marketing budget for next year, stop to think about what worked in 2010 – and what really didn’t. This can be a tough process, since you need to take critical look at the decisions you made and how they performed. Needless to say, it took me a couple of years to get used to this, but the end result has been far better for enter:marketing’s clients. You’ll probably find the same to be true for yours.
When you step through your list of marketing initiatives and decide what to keep for 2011, make sure you spend some extra time exploring your tradeshow investment. This is often your most expensive source of leads, and it can result in lots of time spent chasing dead ends. Instead of assuming that you’ll have the same tradeshow obligations in 2011 that you did in 2010, consider your ROI on each, and how you could redeploy your marketing dollars for greater returns.
To maintain the face-to-face interaction of tradeshows but avoid the substantial hard-dollar costs, consider hosting your own marketing events. With this approach, you’ll:
Read the rest of this entry »
September 6th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by Tim Freestone
To say the IT industry is flooded with event-like marketing activities is an understatement. Yet, I can’t remember a single case where a marketing or sales professional from an IT manufacturer or solution provider told me that these events were critical to business growth. They keep doing it anyway, though, and the leads just aren’t following.
So, why does the IT sector still use all these events for marketing? That’s easy: it’s what they’ve always done. For some companies, there’s a shortage of marketing resources and experience, which makes it hard to do anything that hasn’t been done before. For others, it’s a way to spend MDF, which often becomes an end in itself.
The problem isn’t with marketing events: they can be very effective. Rather, IT solution providers need to figure out how to turn them into lead generation activities. Here are three ways you can make your IT marketing events more compelling (and productive):
Read the rest of this entry »
May 18th, 2010 - Posted in Social Media Marketing, Solution Provider Services by Tim Freestone
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
12:30 – 1:15 pm EST
Back by Popular Demand! Attend this webinar if you’re wondering how Social Media Marketing can impact your IT business.
Tim Freestone, enter:marketing Vice President, will walk you through the best practices for getting started in social media IT channel marketing, from planning to building a community and managing your social media platforms for eventual ROI.
You’ll learn:
- Where to invest your energy for optimal results
- Best practices for organizing and creating content
- A step-by-step approach to building and managing a community
- Some hints for pulling leads into your pipeline from your social media community
If you’re not in the social media space, you should be – and this webinar will be your first step. If you are in this space and struggling, help has arrived and it’s in the form of this webinar! Don’t miss out.
To register for this webinar, click here >>
January 27th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by Tim Freestone
In the average IT VAR’s arsenal of marketing tools, events are a perennial favorite. They give you a chance to meet clients and prospects face-to-face, develop relationships and gather the information you need to advance toward a sale. Unfortunately, you’re not the only reseller who knows this. So, calendars fill up quickly, and IT buyers need to make choices. Your goal is to make them see the value in your event above the others and drive swift, decisive action.
To win a spot on an IT buyer’s calendar, your invitation needs to stand out. Tight, high-impact copy and a compelling design are crucial – but these aren’t always enough to differentiate your event. Below, you’ll find three ways to make your event invitation more actionable.
Read the rest of this entry »
January 7th, 2010 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by Tim Freestone
Events, webinars, appointments … it seems like every IT reseller is singularly focused on filling his calendar. Face-to-face meetings show progress, and if you’re getting someone to commit to that sort of intensive time, it must mean that the sales cycle is moving forward, right?
The problem, however, is one familiar to everyone in our business. Meetings are canceled. Or, they don’t result in much. Another meeting – or two or three – is required, and they don’t bring you any closer to a sale. You’re left with a full calendar that isn’t turning into sales. It’s frustrating, especially because, according to the conventional wisdom, you’re doing everything right.
Well, it’s time for a change.
Your goal isn’t to get a meeting set up – or to get a prospect to attend your event. Instead, you want to (a) close a sale and (b) establish a long-term relationship that will be valuable to you for the foreseeable future. Meetings are a stop en route to this goal, along with other forms of interaction, such as direct mail, telemarketing and online engagement. Keep this in perspective; otherwise, you may wind up chasing meetings at the expense of new business development.
Read the rest of this entry »
August 1st, 2009 - Posted in Solution Provider Services by Tim Freestone
The declaration “We need to do an event” is one of the most damaging sentiments uttered in the IT industry – that is, when it is declared outside of a meeting that involves a goal of creating a comprehensive marketing plan. An ad hoc, reactive event planning approach to marketing has one of the highest costs per touch in the marketing arsenal (when you truly factor in all the human resources it requires to throw and event) and generally sets IT resellers up for a degraded ROI.
Read the rest of this entry »
