Why Content Marketing? Stand Out From Your Competition

In today’s digital age, software companies face fierce competition in the market. To stand out and drive growth, it is crucial for these companies to adopt effective marketing strategies. One such strategy that has proven to be highly successful is content marketing. By creating and distributing valuable and relevant content, software companies can establish thought leadership, attract new customers, and nurture existing ones. In this blog post, we will explore the power of content marketing and provide actionable tips on how software companies can leverage it to drive growth.

Establishing Thought Leadership

To drive growth, software companies need to position themselves as industry leaders. Content marketing offers a unique opportunity to showcase expertise and establish thought leadership. By creating informative and insightful blog posts, software companies can demonstrate their knowledge and provide value to their target audience. Additionally, publishing guest posts on reputable industry websites and participating in industry events can further enhance thought leadership.

Learn more in our in-depth Thought Leadership Guide.

Creating Engaging Content

In the crowded software market, it is essential to create content that stands out and engages the target audience. Software companies can leverage content marketing to create blog posts, videos, infographics, and other forms of content that are not only informative but also visually appealing and shareable. By understanding the pain points and challenges of their target audience, software companies can create content that addresses these issues and provides valuable solutions.

Developing Compelling Case Studies and Whitepapers

Case studies and whitepapers are powerful tools for software companies to showcase their success stories and demonstrate the value of their products or services. By sharing real-life examples of how their software has helped clients achieve their goals, software companies can build trust and credibility. Additionally, whitepapers that provide in-depth analysis and insights on industry trends can position software companies as thought leaders and attract potential customers.

Learn more in 8 Steps to Creating Powerful Marketing Case Studies.

Optimizing Content for Search Engines

Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a crucial role in content marketing. By optimizing content for relevant keywords and ensuring proper on-page optimization, software companies can improve their visibility in search engine results. This, in turn, can drive organic traffic to their website and increase their chances of attracting potential customers. It is important for software companies to conduct thorough keyword research and incorporate relevant keywords naturally into their content.

Leveraging Social Media

Social media platforms provide software companies with a vast audience to promote their content and engage with their target market. By sharing blog posts, videos, and other content on platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, software companies can increase their reach and attract potential customers. It is important to develop a social media strategy that aligns with the target audience and consistently share valuable content to build a loyal following.

Grow With Strategic Content From Modern Marketing Partners

In conclusion, content marketing plays a crucial role in driving growth for software companies. By implementing the strategies and tactics discussed in this blog post, you can establish thought leadership, attract new customers, and nurture existing ones. However, navigating the world of content marketing can be complex, and it’s always beneficial to seek the expertise of professionals.

If you’re looking to take your content marketing efforts to the next level, we encourage you to reach out to the software marketing experts at Modern Marketing Partners. With our extensive experience and in-depth knowledge of the industry, we can help you develop and execute a tailored content marketing strategy that aligns with your business goals. Contact Modern Marketing Partners today and unlock the full potential of content marketing for your software company.

Additional Resources

Software Marketing Guide: Tips and Trade Secrets for Success

Battlecards – Key Tool for Improved Win Rates

The Power of Content Marketing in Lead Generation

The post How to Leverage Content Marketing to Drive Growth for Software Companies appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Like in other sectors today, the marketing field experience constant technological developments. The common marketing technologies are voice search, social media platforms, and email marketing tools.

Another technology is artificial intelligence–powered chatbot. It mimics human conversation with customers. However, chatbots can be a target for cyber threats, so ensure chatbot security. This includes partnering with an information technology or IT consultant in New Jersey to enable two-factor authentication (2FA) and end-to-end encryption.

Marketers also use data analytics programs and tools to study consumer behavior, helping them make campaign decisions.

These are some modern marketing technologies (MarTech) that help companies establish relationships with prospects and customers. This is because these technologies widen their reach and allow them to improve brand recall.

Now how can these technologies boost your marketing campaigns? By following these five tech strategies:

1. Deliver Email Campaigns For Web Traffic

If you have a company website, you want your brand to be on top of search engine ranking pages (SERPs) so that online users can see your content first. However, if your site isn’t meeting quality and technical benchmarks set by search engines, you can’t expect it to rank high on search results.

This is why many marketers are using email marketing to drive web traffic. They do this by growing a subscription-based email list that only includes leads who are interested in your products. Then they send emails with links to new product releases to their subscribers. This translates to more sales and conversions while reaching top ranks on SERPs.

Should you decide to run an email marketing campaign, make sure to secure all your email campaigns because there are phishing scams that could compromise your consumers’ data. Set email authentication protocols with the help of managed IT services, like Fusioncomputing.ca. They can help protect sensitive data from cyberattacks by providing endpoint security and real-time threat visibility.

2. Leverage Data Analytics For Market Research

As you already know, market research is essential as it helps you understand your target customers. The problem with the traditional way of in-person data collection is that it’s time-consuming and requires too much effort. Most importantly, it involves costly travel expenses.

But with the rise of data analytics tools, market research is now more cost-effective. This is because you can review your web or social media insights in real time, showing you which campaigns are effective. You’ll also gain information about customer behavior and demographics, making it easy to tweak your campaigns. This can result in better conversion funnel analysis and higher conversion sales.

3. Educate Readers Using Long-Form Content

With digitalization, creating and publishing long-form content has never been easier. Long-form content marketing is a way to educate your readers with industry facts, trends, and perspectives on the subject matter. Long-form content refers to in-depth tutorials, case studies, white papers, brochures, and e-books. This form of content allows you to share your expertise and knowledge, helping you become an industry leader. 

4. Engage Viewers With Short-Form Videos

Short-form videos are intended for online users scrolling across social media to kill time. This content can be product teasers, ads, user-generated content (UGC), behind-the-scenes (BTS) videos, and influencer campaigns. They are often created and published on social media platforms and video-sharing apps.

When creating short clips, ensure they deliver value to the audience. You can do this by using your market research insights to pinpoint the pain points of your readers. Then use this information to connect with them by tapping into their emotions. Doing so encourages engagement and social media sharing.

5. Improve Customer Support Using Chatbots

A chatbot can improve the overall customer experience while helping you save time and money. You can use chatbots to deliver personalized messages based on customers’ preferences and needs. They can answer frequently asked questions (FAQs) regarding your products and services. This reduces the number of emails and calls from clients with concerns. In addition, this improves the user experience and customer satisfaction.

Other Considerable Tech Strategies For Marketing

Aside from the common MarTech strategies, these are other tech strategies that marketers use:

• Answering client questions using voice search so customers won’t have to type in their questions. This means they don’t have to go through a lengthy process of clicking links and waiting for pages to load.
• Using blockchain for lead generation by identifying which leads are most likely to convert. This saves you time reaching out to online users who aren’t interested in your offers.
• Using virtual reality for better customer engagement to put the fun in advertising. This involves showcasing your latest product offers to drive more social media buzz.

These modern tech strategies are the future of marketing, so investing in them early on gives you a competitive edge.

Summing It Up

Technology has been changing the marketing landscape over the past decade. So, for an entrepreneur, it’s high time to embrace these technologies to improve your marketing campaigns. The most commonly used MarTech include email, social media, long-form content and short-form video creation, and chatbots. Some companies already use voice search, blockchain, and VR for advanced user engagement. These technologies can help your company create a better customer experience.

The post How To Boost Your Marketing With These 7 Tech Strategies appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

While marketing a new software product involves all the basic principles used in promoting any new product, there are some unique considerations to think about when planning your campaign. Here’s how to effectively market a new software product.

Understand Your Positioning and Competition

The first step in successfully marketing a software product is to know the market as well as you possibly can. How many people are likely to be interested in your product? What’s your competition?

You should conduct focus groups and surveys during this phase of product marketing. You should also get access to as much data as you can about the market so you can better understand it before you start developing content.

Consider the Product’s Differentiators

Once you understand your software product’s position in the market, you need to think about the features that will help it stand out from the competition. What are your differentiators? What makes your product unique?

For example, there are lots of nursing apps out there, but they don’t have all the same features and benefits. Some of these apps are designed to help employers manage nurses and their schedules, for example, while others are designed for nurses to use directly.

If your software product has the same overall purpose and intended use as a competitor’s product, then you need to determine what sets yours apart. What do you do differently from your competitors? If you don’t do anything differently, what do you do better?

Find the Audience

The age-old advice of “if you’re marketing to everyone, you’re marketing to no one” definitely applies in the software market. People have different priorities and needs, and your mission is to find the people who prioritize the features your product offers.

You need to know your audience better than you know yourself. Take the time to understand what their values are and what they care about. This will help you create content for your campaigns later on.

Choose Your Core Marketing Channels & Content Types

After you’ve identified your main audience and ideal customers, you need to think about where and how you’ll market your product. Where does your audience spend time online? Are they on social media, and if so, what platforms?

Depending on the type of software you’re selling, you might need different mediums to attract potential customers. Video content, for example, can be extremely powerful for software products, as it allows you to explain some of the features and get people interested in what your product has to offer.

Don’t forget the element of storytelling, which is critical for any marketing campaign. Software can seem like a practical product, but people buy with their emotions. If you want to make more sales, you should harness the power of a good narrative!

Plan Your Campaign and Develop KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

Now that you have enough information about your product’s positioning, you can start setting goals and planning your campaign. Plan out your content in advance and make sure you’re promoting the product consistently.

Setting goals is important for any product marketing campaign. However, it’s important to be realistic about what you can expect from your campaign — especially if your software product is brand new and just hitting the market.

When you plan your campaign, make sure you’re deciding on what KPIs you should pay attention to. Different goals require different KPIs!

Track and Adjust

As your campaigns run, it’s important to collect as much data as possible. Once enough time has passed, you’ll be able to see if what you’ve been doing is working, or if you need to make some adjustments. Don’t get too discouraged if the initial results aren’t what you hoped for—you now have more information for promoting your product and adjusting your marketing strategy.

Stand Out from the Crowd

Becoming a programmer is a great career choice, but the world of online marketing is incredibly saturated. To stand out from the crowd in the software marketplace these days, you not only need to have an excellent product, but you have to differentiate it and get it in front of the right people.

Chances are good that someone else has made a similar product already. That doesn’t mean success isn’t possible—after all, there are many variations of project management software (Asana, Monday, Trello, etc.) on the market, and each has their own devoted following. However, it does mean that you can’t rely on simply filling an unmet need in the market—you have to get creative.

If you’ve got a good product, that’s a great start. From there, you need to approach the process in a way that’s informed by data and in line with today’s best marketing practices.

The post How to Effectively Market a New Software Product appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Software development and use are on a completely different tangent than what you’ve known as familiar a decade ago. Traditionally, software companies would develop software for every company depending on their needs. Even when a new client needed software similar to a previous one, you had to design a new one. And this was attributed to the transfer of ownership rights.   

However, with the current software-as-a-service (SaaS) technology, software companies sometimes have to create a new product for every customer. On the contrary, if you’re a SaaS company owner, consider developing a single high-end product that can be used by several customers simultaneously. You only need to host your product on the cloud and grant access and usage capabilities for every new client. It’s simply by creating paid accounts for all your customers.   

With that said, to level up your SaaS company’s growth, consider implementing the following strategies:  

1. Deploy A Data Analytics Mechanism

Data is critical in all kinds of businesses. It’s a primary indicator of whether your business is growing or declining. As such, you must have a robust data collection, storage, and visualization strategy for your SaaS business. With a professional tool, you can monitor the number of clients visiting your online shop. Plus, you can identify how many of your visitors converted into clients. 

In addition, you can harness product usage data by conducting a short survey on the effectiveness of your SaaS product. During such a survey, your clients can rate your product using the star rating or scale system. Besides, you can design an online form for data collection, including your clients’ challenges while using your product. You can implement measures that improve customer experience with your SaaS product from the feedback you get.    

Moreover, in the pursuit of data analytics, you can determine the effectiveness of your marketing strategies. Which marketing efforts are generating converting leads? Such a strategy should become your stronghold for your online marketing campaigns.  

In summary, data analytics is a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) mechanism that can help you comprehensively introspect your processes. Afterward, you can determine which processes should be improved or abandoned.  

2. Diversify Your Products

Product diversification is a business model many business owners use to attract customers through different business streams. And SaaS companies can take advantage of this strategy. As a SaaS business owner, you can start brainstorming about other challenges you can solve using software development.  

For instance, if you began your business by selling a customer relationship management (CRM) system, think of another software, such as a warehouse management system. And just like your previous product, ensure that your new product is also SaaS compliant.  

In some cases, your new products in the market perform better than your first product. This can help your sales revenues to skyrocket quickly.   

3. Stage Marketing Campaigns

The message concerning your SaaS product can only be known through robust online marketing campaigns. First, you must plan for your marketing before the actual takeoff meticulously. For instance, will you use your staff or the services of a managed marketing company? If you need experts in online marketing, your best option should be partnering with an agency close to you. Online marketing can consume a reasonable budget. Thus, you need experts to ensure visible returns on investment (ROI).  

There are many options for you regarding digital marketing. For instance, you can leverage search engine ads as a primary option. In such a case, you need to optimize your ads using search engine optimization (SEO) skills. This can help your ads appear on the search engine results pages (SERPs) once someone uses your keywords to search for your product.  

On top of ads, consider blogging on your website. Just like for ads, you need to optimize your blogs with relevant keywords on the topics, subtopics, content, and metadata to enhance your blog’s online visibility. In light of blogging, you can opt for guest blogging. However, to reap maximum benefits with guest blogging, be a guest blogger on sites with high authority from search engine’s measuring metrics.  

Besides you can also market your SaaS product on social media platforms and YouTube. You can create short videos concerning your products and their benefits for your YouTube Vlogging. On the other hand, you can post your videos on your social media pages. Plus, you can craft captivating content that you can post on social media.  

Final Thoughts

Making your SaaS company grow to your expected extent can be challenging, especially when you need to learn how to hack the industry. However, this article has you covered with proven and actionable strategies that you can implement and take your SaaS company to the next level.   

The post 3 Biggest Growth Levers For SaaS Companies appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Having marketing dashboard software can save your company time and money. 

Through automated data visualization and real-time insights, a digital marketing dashboard serves as a single source of truth for efficient, agile decision-making, and problem-solving for brands and marketers. 

What is a Digital Marketing Reporting Dashboard?

A marketing reporting dashboard is a business intelligence (BI) tool that collects, analyzes, and populates data from different sources on a user interface.

If you have multiple marketing campaigns running across different platforms like Facebook and Google, a reporting tool can pull all the data through data connectors, and turn them into actionable business insights. 

Data connectors are pre-built or custom APIs that integrate various marketing channels in one centralized location without having to write backend codes yourself. However, some marketing dashboards may ask users to configure settings before pulling in data. This can be confusing if you don’t know what you’re looking for. 

A good marketing dashboard should act as a command center. You should be able to see all media, messaging, and performance, so you can make real-time decisions based on how the market is responding to your creatives and whether your target audiences are moving towards purchase. 

Here are five things to consider before selecting a digital marketing platform for your advertising campaigns: 

Consideration #1: It should visualize real-time data.  

For marketers who must repeatedly ask loaded questions, such as from which acquisition funnels lead to conversion, during which time of the day are prospects most active, and the like, real-time visualization cuts through the pile of raw data standing in the way of getting those questions answered. 

Marketing dashboards let you analyze real-time data across all marketing channels in detail. When you have real-time data, you can quickly take advantage of opportunities and fix issues. 

Consideration #2: It should track the most important marketing KPIs.

A marketing dashboard visualizes key performance indicators (KPIs) for your social media campaigns, content marketing campaigns, and influencer marketing campaigns. Some examples of typical KPIs found on marketing dashboards include:

• Cost-per-click (CPC): how much marketers pay for ads running across websites or social media based on the number of clicks an ad receives. 
• Click-through rate (CTR): the total percentage of people who visit your website by clicking on an ad or a search result. 
• Bounce rate: an SEO metric showing the percentage of site visitors who leave without taking any action. 
• Conversion rates: the number of visitors to a site that complete a desired goal (a conversion) out of the total number of visitors. 

Consideration #3: It should be easy to use and connect to all your data sources.  

Have you ever had to manually select all the different marketing metrics you want to import and get frustrated because of how complex it was? 

Marketing reporting dashboards are designed to be truly plug and play – no code or dev needed so you can easily get your workspace to set up in minutes, even if you are switching from another dashboard software.

A marketing dashboard covers integrations with the whole marketing spectrum–from ad platforms to CRM tools. Some dashboard companies also offer custom integration via Google spreadsheets if they don’t support a specific data integration natively. 

Consideration #4: It should automate the process of client report creation. 

Marketing dashboards are designed to automate tasks and leverage a single source of truth to streamline creative development, strategic planning, and campaign execution. 

Whether you’re trying to juggle 10 or 100 accounts, an automated marketing dashboard is not only more cost-effective than hiring multiple account managers, but also lets you automate your reporting so you can grow and scale your marketing agency with ease. 

Consideration #5: It should generate white-labeled reports and visualized data displays.

The job of a marketing dashboard doesn’t end at visualization. You should be able to create white-labeled reports instantly customized to each client’s specific needs, interests, and priorities with brand visuals. 

Using a marketing dashboard allows agencies to both create in-depth dashboards for internal management (agency overview, client, or team overview), and client-facing dashboards. 

Wrapping Up

With a digital marketing dashboard, you can spend less time worrying about gathering data from multiple sources to create reports, and more time focusing on campaigns and implementing key advertising strategies for your brand. 

Want a full analysis on marketing dashboard software reviews? Check out this post. 

The post 5 Things to Consider Before Choosing Marketing Dashboard Software appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

An LMS is a software solution that manages the monitoring, reporting, and administration of an organization’s virtual courses and training programs. It functions like an online classroom and allows educators to interact with their online learners and perform interactive learning activities. This solution was critical during this period of social distance and lockdown protocols.

But now that the effect of COVID-19 on our lives has begun to decrease, does that mean the importance of e-learning decreases? Let’s find out.

Since the concept “learning management systems” was conceived, its popularity has grown. LMS is becoming increasingly important in a post-pandemic world. 

Even before, the global pandemic learning evoked an idea of a confined space with a teacher giving instructions. eLearning is now the standard method of instruction, where businesses, hiring managers, and employees can interact and benefit from online training courses.

Here are six reasons why LMS will be indispensable in the coming years. 

Consistency in training

The pandemic had forced the corporate world to close down on physical meetings and interactions. This was to protect the health of their management, admin staff, and other employees. However, this did not halt their functioning like onboarding and training. With advanced software and their willingness to learn LMS, recruiters could complete their recruitment online.

LMSs function as virtual training sessions. Online learners can still study and understand concepts at their homes despite the distance. Similarly, trainers can continue to educate them about the job and the organization. It gives them the adaptability and availability they require to prepare themselves for the organization.

An LMS ensures that staff receives consistent education and training quality by offering a single source for substance and teaching materials.

An LMS allows for a great deal of creativity and innovation in learning material. Creating blended learning programs, story-telling components, integrating games into eLearning courses, and a variety of other methods assist in making the same old sections fun and new. This provides energy and enthusiasm for both trainers and the new recruits.

You can track a learner’s progress and performance using an LMS. Companies can easily produce training reports as well as total or user/student reports using an LMS. With an LMS for online training, instructors can easily monitor progress, ROI, knowledge comprehension, and other metrics.

New employee orientation

You can automate and simplify the crucial functions of hiring and training a new hire by using a business LMS. You should welcome them and demonstrate them around the office as a recruitment officer, but they can analyze the remaining online training content at their own pace (and refer to the learning material provided anytime they require).

New staff frequently struggle to recall precise details about your organization’s history or regulatory issues. You can, however, guarantee that they have constant access to relevant information by using an online orientation and training course. You can inform new hires about your business’s conduct code, employee privacy rules, and race/sexual harassment regulations using LMS software.

Employee Education

Your staff will be able to research the online training material at their own pace with a corporate LMS, and you will be able to eradicate the interruptions associated with conventional learning. You can reduce employee training costs by using an LMS. This is because you will spend far less time and money than if you brought in highly trained online instructors to give conventional seminars. You will also have a better definition of employee progress with integrated measurement and review tools.

Cost- Savings

Using an LMS for training and teaching reduces training costs, employee travel, and the amount spent on amenities and instructors. In terms of cost reduction, an LMS is the best option.

Keep Employee Data and Insights

The primary concern is to train your employees, but you must also learn from them. Knowledge management guarantees that important skills, industry cost structure, methods, and details remain within your corporation when staff leave or retire. You don’t want this interesting information sitting in some information management system that nobody ever checks, so an LMS platform is an excellent choice for implementing learning in new or existing employees.

Maintains health and safety

Safety and health are the top priorities of every organization and institution in this period after covid This trend is not far behind the educational institution. As a result, more organizations and educational institutions are looking for the best virtual classroom to keep operating while also ensuring everybody’s health & wellbeing.

Clients and partners should be trained.

The advantages of LMS are not limited to internal use. You could also give third-party clients and partners access. An LMS, for example, can be used to recruit and train new customers about the products. Alternatively, if you work with businesses to help them evolve their workers’ soft skills, you can create a program in your LMS and communicate it with your clients.

Tracking of data

The human brain can only keep track of so much information. We’re not exactly computers.

Instructors can gain access to an unlimited amount of data via LMS, such as completed work reports, user grade statistics, time taken to complete tasks or the number of documents downloaded. Individual evaluation becomes much easier and can be grasped in a brief look.

With a better analysis of employees’ performance, it is easier to identify areas that require special attention. This also assists teachers in understanding their flaws and improving their teaching methods to maximize teaching effectiveness.

Conclusion

Remember that the only way to truly benefit from a Learning Management System is to find the best LMS for your requirements. So, take advantage of the free trials offered by the LMS, investigate the pricing plans, and read customer reviews of the tool. This allows you to get the most out of your LMS and create effective courses.

The post Here’s Why LMS Has Become Irreplaceable After The Pandemic appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Small businesses are the target of 43 percent of all cyberattacks, and 60 percent of these are out of business within six months of the attack. It’s vital to spot the dangers and know how to avoid them.

Let’s look at the main cybersecurity threats for emerging businesses and how to deal with them.

Phishing

Phishing is tricking people into revealing private information such as passwords or codes. This is most often done by email. The illegally acquired data can then be used to steal money, customer details, or technical secrets from the company.

How to prevent this from happening to your company?

Train all your employees to treat every email from an unknown source as dangerous. They should never click on a link in a message of dubious origin. 

They should be extra careful with mail purporting to come from financial institutions or IT specialists in particular. Ensure they check the address of all these types of communication against the contact information on the company website.

Be particularly careful with passwords and security codes of all kinds. These should be carefully guarded and difficult to guess. Ensure they are periodically changed.

Using public Wi-Fi

With many startup entrepreneurs working outside normal office space and office hours, they will inevitably resort to the use of public Wi-Fi from time to time. Wi-Fi in cafés, airports or other public places is sensitive to “man in the middle” attacks. This is where the hacker places himself between you and the Wi-Fi access point.

While using public Wi-Fi is best avoided unless absolutely necessary, your data is safe from just about any kind of cyberattack if you use a reliable VPN. You may wonder, what does VPN mean? In simple words, it encrypts your data and makes it unreadable and worthless to any unauthorized party who gets access to it. Even your own internet service provider can’t have any knowledge of your online activity.

Working without a VPN, even when using HTTPS, is putting your whole enterprise at risk and exposing yourself to legal problems if your customers’ data is stolen.

Cryptojacking

Cryprojacking is when a cybercriminal uses a victim’s computer to mine cryptocurrency. This is done without a victim’s knowledge. If your device has been cryptojacked, this will slow down everything else you’re doing on your computer, reduce its lifespan, and increase your electricity bill. 

There is a strong link between digital currency and illegal activity, such as purchasing illicit goods or money laundering. 

How to protect your devices? Here’s what you can do:

• Have secure and complex passwords for all points of access to your system;
• Train your staff to protect this data;
• Monitor your CPU/GPU usage with Windows Task Manager or Apple Activity Monitor;
• Investigate any suspicious activity. 

Hacking

Hackers can exploit a security weakness in your system to get access to your devices to steal your money, customer records, or company secrets. 

To comply with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), businesses must be extra careful not to allow cyber criminals access to their systems. If they let this happen, they can be fined up to four percent of their annual revenue.

Probably the first line of defense against hacking and data theft is a VPN. It is a necessary cybersecurity tool for every startup. 

Using a reliable VPN and antivirus software can save you from potential data breaches and leaks.

Malware

Malware (malicious software) is any software intentionally designed to disrupt a device, server, or network. Its purpose may be to steal information or simply vandalize the system it attacks. 

Signs that your computer has been infected include:

• performance drops;
• crashing or freezing;
• increased pop-up ads;
• your browser redirecting you to sites you aren’t trying to access. 

It can also send messages in your name to your contacts.

Keep all your operating system, browser and plugins updated. Also, get rid of any programs you don’t use, especially obsolete ones such as Windows 7 or 8 or old versions of Adobe Reader. 

The manufacturers of outdated programs eventually stop installing security updates, leaving your device vulnerable to attacks.

Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS)

DDoS is where your site is overwhelmed by an organized flood of requests from thousands of sources, making it crash.

It’s orchestrated through many channels, often private computers whose owners are unaware their devices are being used for this purpose. It’s the equivalent of crowding the entrance to business premises with hundreds of people, keeping genuine customers out.

To guard against DDoS, ensure you have far more bandwidth than your normal activities require. This way, even if the attack happens, your system will still function on a basic level. Then you’ll be able to get the problem fixed. To reduce DDoS risk, make sure you have a good quality hosting provider, even if it costs extra. 

Ransomware

Ransomware is malware that is placed on devices or networks to extort money from the victim. It can block all access to your data or encrypt it until you’ve paid for the decryption key. The ransom is usually paid in untraceable currencies such as Bitcoin, so tracking down the perpetrators is unlikely.

A sound antivirus system is one way of preventing ransomware attacks. If you use Windows, it’s best to disable user access to the tool VSSadmin.exe. By doing this, you will have a backup copy of your files if they are hidden or encrypted.

The post Don’t Let Cybercriminals Nip Your Business in the Bud: Cybersecurity for Startups appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

As reported by Crayon in Guide to Competitive Battlecards.

What are Battlecards?

A battlecard is a piece of enablement collateral aimed at helping salespeople overcome competitive threats at any point in the sales process. They are typically created by the team responsible for gathering and analyzing Competitive Intelligence, or by a sales enablement team in conjunction with CI or product marketing team. Here is an example of a battlecard from HubSpot.

What Battlecards Are Not

Most product marketing, competitive intelligence, and sales enablement teams are familiar with competitor profiles, industry/competitive matrices, and other competitive materials. It is important to understand that anything other than a battlecard is typically too in-depth for consumption by sales team.

Why Create Battlecards?

Battlecards can boost competitive win rates by 50-60% (and sometimes more). If that number seems exaggerate, that is because most companies do not take the right approach when they create battlecards. Most sales teams fail to properly adopt battlecards because they are stale, difficult to consume, don’t contain the right intel, or are unhelpful. The best battlecards are not easy to create and maintain, but the results they produce are much more significant.

Steps to Get Started

Identify with competitors to focus on for your first few battlecards

It is important to understand who you are creating battlecards for before beginning creation. You can extend your battlecards to the other teams after you have created a foundation. Then, break down your competitive landscape into tiers of competitors. Start by focusing on one to three of your direct competitors.

Ensure you have the proper mechanisms in place to allow you to measure the impact of your new battlecards once they are in place

Before creating battlecards, make sure you have the proper mechanisms in place to measure their impact. The first step is adding opportunity fields in your CRM that allow sales reps to identify which competitor is present in a deal. Then, add a “loss reason” field as well to ensure you can zero in on deals that were lost to a competitor. Once you have established a competitive win rate benchmark, you will be ready to roll out your battlecards and what your win rate (hopefully) increase.

Begin the process of aggregating any existing intel you already have before embarking on the onerous process of digging up new intel

If your organization has already produced competitor analyses/comparisons/matrices, you are in good shape. If you are not so fortunate, then sales opportunities in your CRM is a good place to start accumulating some competitive intel. Check notes for qualitative information and any checkbox/dropdown fields with present win/loss codes or any similar data. Interviewing a handful of salespeople is also a good way to build a foundation of competitor information.

Creating Battlecards

Battlecards do not need to look flashy as they are an internally-facing piece of collateral.

Sourcing New Intel

There are endless sources from which you can pull valuable competitive insights.

Your competitors’ websites are a great source of information and are valuable sources to track over time. Make sure to read through the content on their website, especially any case studies.

Review sites are another excellent source of information. Positive and negative reviews offer insight into competitors’’ strengths and weaknesses.

Online forms can offer communities focused on topics related to your industry. Search for any mentions of your competition on these sites, as customers tend to be more candid here than other sources of information.

Topics to Include

1. General competitor information (location, employees, etc.)
2. Kill points: list of short statements that will help disqualify competitors early on in deals
3. Landmines: Questions that customers might ask that put your company at a competitive disadvantage
4. Success stories

Now that your battlecard is created, it is time to put it in use. Throughout the process, maintenance, extension across the funnel, and measurement of battlecards ensure continued success. Remember, to keep your battlecard up to date.

The post Battlecards – Key Tool for Improved Win Rates appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Continue reading or consider checking out our lead generation or sales enablement services to grow your pipeline and get a marketing assessment to analyze your current workflows.

1. Page View

What are some of the key pages on your website and what do they tell you about your visitors? You can brainstorm “topic areas” you have on your website and send visitors unique, triggered emails based on their specific interests. Some topic area examples include:

• Industry (ex: manufacturing, distribution, etc.)
• Product content (ex: a specific software you offer, or a certain functionality)
• Prospect validation (ex: viewing your case studies, testimonials, etc.)

After you define some of your key topic areas, you can create a series of emails targeted to those visitors and establish a workflow to send them those emails. Targeted/segmented emails such as below have, on average, a 14.32% higher open rate and a 100.95% higher click rate than non-segment campaigns (WordStream).

In the example below, we are enrolling visitors to our ‘Distribution industry’ page in a workflow that contains a series of 4 emails:

• Email 1 – Do you have any questions? A simple, text-based email asking the visitor if they have any questions on our distribution offering and offering some additional resources.
• Email 2 – A link to a read a distribution blog on our site.
• Email 3 – A link to download a distribution whitepaper on our site.
• Email 4 – A link to a distribution case study on the website with a invitation to request a demo or consultation.

Bonus: you can update contact properties (ex: industry) based on page views too!

2. Downloads or Form Submissions

This workflow uses similar logic to the ‘Page View’ one above. If a visitor downloads something on your website like a guide or whitepaper, demo, attends a webcast, etc., you can establish a series of highly-targeted emails that continues to nurture them with additional content or promotion for future events.

In the example below, the visitor has downloaded our “Guide to Financial Management for CFOs”. From this download, we can make two assumptions about the prospect: 1) they are a CFO or in a finance position, and 2) they are interested in financial management topics/improving their existing finance processes.

• Email 1 – Thank you email. A simple, text-based email asking the visitor if they have any questions on the download, a link to access the download at any time, and offering some additional resources
• Email 2 – An email with a link to an article: 10 Tips For Automating Your Financial Management Processes
• Email 3 – A link to another whitepaper on the site: 2020 Trends all CFOs Need to Know
• Email 4 – A link to a financial management case study on the website with a brief product overview and invitation to request a demo or consultation.

We send the thank you email on a very slight delay, and then delay emails 2-4 for at least 7 days each.

You can take the example above and apply it to nearly any industry, application, or topic. The key is to make the content extremely relevant to the original download!

Now, HubSpot does allow you to setup or schedule follow-up emails directly within the form editor. Within the forms tool, you can schedule up to three follow-up emails (with delays) for a specific form. However, these will all be simple, text-based emails without the full functionality available within the HubSpot drag and drop editor. A couple of other downsides to establishing follow-ups via the form is you won’t have the option to set goals, and therefore, conversions, and add any final automated steps to the end of the email series like updating contact properties.

3. Form Abandonment

Don’t let a form stop your prospects from downloading or consuming your content. After all, you already have their contact information!

If one of your contacts views a page with a form, but does not submit it – you can setup a workflow to email them the content “un-gated”. Be sure to monitor the prospects activity to see if they DO consume the content after being sent the un-gated version.

In the example below, the prospect has viewed our on-demand demo video page but did not fill out the form. We would love for them to watch the demo to move them further down the funnel and don’t want the “intimidating” form to discourage them. Therefore, we sent them an email that contains a link to watch it directly. Even better, you can use an ‘If/Then’ branch to send a followup email based on the action they take (ex: watching/engaging with the content vs. not).

• Email 1 – A simple, text-based email with content similar to: I saw you had interest in a demo.. You can watch it directly at this link: ___.
• Email 2 – A thank you message/followup email sent to those that watch the demo: “Thanks for watching the demo.. if you have any questions, or would like to setup a custom demo..” with a link to some additional resources.

Bonus: enroll a contact in one of your nurture workflows, or update their lifecycle stage based on an action taken in this workflow!

4. Assigning Leads to Your Sales Team for New Contacts

This workflow will vary depending on the size of your sales staff, your qualification process, sales team segmentation, and other factors. The good news is that this workflow is very flexible and can accommodate nearly any sales process. Check out some of the different use cases below to update the contact’s owner automatically.

If you have a 1-person sale team, you can simply assign the lead to that person. Alternatively, we have come across clients where 1 person on the team does the qualification and assignment of new leads. In that scenario, you can also simply assign the lead to that contact, who can then reassign it after they go through their qualification process:

If you have a larger sales team, you may want to rotate the leads between your team members. This workflow will allow you to evenly distribute assignments amongst a team or specific owners. In the example below, we are rotating the leads evenly between our US-based team:

Please note, this functionality will require you to have a Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise or Service Hub Professional or Enterprise account.

And finally, you may want to use some of the information about the prospect to assign to your proper sales team member. For example, if the prospect is located in Illinois, you would want to assign to your sales rep that covers that geographic area. Or, if they are interested in a specific product, you would want to assign it to the sales rep for that product. And so on. Be sure to add a small delay after enrollment to make sure that HubSpot has updated the appropriate field before the if/then branches start working.

5. Setting Lead Status

When someone fills out a form on your website, their lead status is left blank by default. However, the lead status can be such a useful field for segmentation down the line that we would recommend leveraging it. If used correctly, you can ensure your team is contacting new leads or following up on leads that are in progress.

Here is how to set the lead status to “New”:

Now, you can update that lead status to “In Progress” after your sales team has engaged with the lead. This workflow will update the lead status after any activity (email, call, meeting, or note) has occurred on the contact record.

6. Changing Lifecycle Stage

We work with many clients who handle moving contacts through lifecycle stages in HubSpot manually based on their unique sales process. For example, they will move a prospect from ‘Qualify’ to ‘Develop’ after a phone or email conversation takes place. 

However, sometimes larger clients with a larger volume of leads need to handle this automatically in order to ensure their sales team is focusing on the most important leads. In order to achieve this you can use Lead Scoring. In short, lead scoring is when you automatically assign values (scores) to leads based on the actions they take on your website like the amount of times they’ve visited your website, form submissions, number of page views, engagement with emails, and so much more. Stay tuned for our blog post on more tips for setting up lead scoring in HubSpot. 

You can see how some of the actions described previously can indicate how “interested” or “warm” a lead is. Therefore, it is a great metric for moving prospects to a new lifecycle stage or even assigning to a different team.

In the example below, we have switched the lifecycle stage from a marketing qualified lead (MQL) to a sales qualified lead (SQL) after they reach a lead score of 20. Also, we switched the contact owner from a member of the ‘Marketing’ team to the ‘Sales’ team.

7. Nurturing Prospects

In between “lead generation” and closing the sale lies the critical middle ground – where lead nurturing is required to move prospects through the funnel:

• 66% of buyers indicate that “consistent and relevant communication provided by both sales and marketing organizations” is a key influence in choosing a solution provider (Genuis.com)
• 80% of new leads never translate into sales and companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at a 33% lower cost (Invesp)

And depending on your category (ex: enterprise software, government, etc.) the sales cycle may be longer and require even more touches, making nurturing your leads even more critical. HubSpot can help your team automate this in many ways – check out just two ideas below.

Lifecycle Stage

As part of your nurture strategy, it is important to tailor your content and communications to where prospects are at in your funnel (or their lifecycle stage in HubSpot). Your mission should be to use your content to guide your prospects toward eventual conversion. Intuitively, you can infer what some of those content buckets might look life:

• Top of the funnel (subscriber, lead, marketing qualified lead): educational content like blogs, webinars, guides, videos, etc.
• Middle of the funnel (sales qualified lead): educational content + validation content like case studies, demo videos, product descriptions or data sheets
• Bottom of the funnel (opportunity): educational content + validation content + value proposition content like product-specific information, testimonials, reviews, etc.

In the example below, we are leveraging a HubSpot workflow to automatically enroll contacts in an email series when they move from a MQL to a SQL. There are 10 emails in total, that deliver every 3 weeks. This will ensure they receive a consistent stream of content relevant to their position in the funnel with the aim of moving them to the next stage.

Be sure to update your Unenrollment and suppression settings if you use this type of workflow. In the example above, I would want to remove them from my previous stage workflow (MQL) to ensure they don’t receive emails in that workflow any longer.

Vertical Workflows

Using the same idea or logic as above, you can offer even MORE tailored content to your prospects to move them through your funnel. One great example of this is industry. If you sell a product/software that has multiple industry applications – send them content relevant to their industry!

Like above, we are leveraging a HubSpot workflow to automatically enroll contacts in an email series when they move from a MQL to a SQL. However, we are adding another enrollment criteria – their industry. Again, we created here 10 emails in total, that deliver every 3 weeks. Now, the emails we are sending are not only specific to their position in the funnel but their industry as well. So when we email them about a blog – the topic of the blog is specific to the distribution industry, the case study we send them is specific to the distribution industry, etc.

Make sure to set a goal for these (and all) workflows! In this specific example, my goal would be for the contact property ‘Lifecycle Stage’ to move from SQL to the next stage.

Some other ideas for further segmenting prospects beyond lifecycle stage or industry include:

• Company size
• Job title
• Product line they are interested in

8. Engage Neglected Prospects

Don’t let prospects fall through the cracks! You can create a workflow to remind your sales team to reach out to a contact if it has been a certain amount of time since they’ve last been contacted.

In the example below, we have created a task for a sales team member for them to check in with a prospect if it has been more than 12 weeks since they’ve last been contacted. To ensure the sales team is focusing on “higher priority” leads, we’ve also added additional criteria to ensure the prospects meet our qualification minimums.

Similarly, you could attempt to re-engage inactive contacts with an email about an exclusive offer or discount you are offering. For this, you could use a variety of enrollment criteria such as:

• The length of time since their last website visit (ex: more than 6 months)
• The length of time since their last email click/open
• Etc.

9. Important Internal Notifications/Tasks

Is your sales team using the HubSpot activity feed? If so, they may be already getting a wealth of information like when their prospects perform specific activities like opening/clicking an email, visiting your website, filling out a form, etc. With this (potential) overload of information, it may be possible to miss something.

You can use workflows to setup a notification or create a task when a prospect visits a key page or takes a key action. This can ensure your sales team follows up immediately and doesn’t miss anything.

• Create a task for a HubSpot user
• Send an internal SMS to a HubSpot user
• Send notification (in-app alert or mobile push) to teams or users
• Send internal email

In the example below, we have set up an email notification when a prospect views the demo page:

Be sure that the internal notification email template contains as much important information about the lead as possible to make it even easier for the sales team to follow up – at minimum their first name, last name, company name, phone number, last conversion, and a link to the full contact record.

10. New Customer

When someone moves from a lead to an official customer there are a ton of processes that will now need to start. You can use workflows to handle some of that busy work. Here are some common ones we use:

Add them to your customer list – We like doing this for a couple of reasons. First, data hygiene is critical and it is important to have an updated list of your customers. We use this specific customer list to send important company updates like closures, product updates, and more. Second, we suppress the customer list on a lot of our marketing communications. This is a quick and simple way to ensure customers don’t receive the wrong message.

Update Lead Status – Once a contact becomes a customer you can update their lead status to ‘Closed’ to ensure no other sales people try to follow up.

Update Contact Owner – Now that the sales process is complete you may want to move the owner of the account from the sales person to a member of your customer service team. You can do that using a workflow like below:

Send emails – When a contact becomes a customer a number of processes now need to take place. Depending on your product/service, you may want to send a contract, onboarding email, a series of training emails, or even try to upsell a customer at a later point. All of these scenarios are a possibility with HubSpot workflows – you can send an email (or a series of emails) when a contact becomes a customer.

In the example below, a customer success teams sends an email 6 months after the contact becomes a customer soliciting a testimonial and to provide a satisfaction survey. Then, at the 1 year mark, they send an “anniversary” email thanking them for being a customer, etc.

There you have it! These are just 10 workflows that can set your sales team up for success, while saving time. To measure the success of your workflows, make sure you set a goal for every single one! A workflow goal is the ultimate objective of your contact-based workflow. When an enrolled contact meets the workflow goal criteria, they are automatically unenrolled from the workflow.

Looking for More Leads?

If you need help developing content to support these robust workflows, or optimizing your HubSpot for lead generation or sales, contact us. Or register for a free marketing assessment. Your custom consultation includes a complete marketing assessment, in-depth Website/SEO analysis, and marketing plan recommendations that will help you dramatically increase website traffic quality and quantity, leverage a systematic process for identifying marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and converting to sales qualified leads (SQLs), and more.

The post 10 HubSpot Workflows Every Sales Team Needs appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.

Fast forward to 2020, more than 100,000 software publishers exist with 1 million projected by 2027 (source:  Forrester). With channel partners often competing with the publishers they represent. To say business software is a competitive market is an understatement. 

With that set-up, sit back and take in some perspective on such thought-provoking questions as:  Why VARs are relevant? How can VARs be more successful? This last question answers the title: Secrets to VAR Sales Success with the Top 10 Marketing Tactics to Improve Lead Generation, followed by several, relevant resources. You can thank us after you take it all in. 

Why VARs are Relevant? 

Our perspective from working in multiple software ecosystems is that while business software is more competitive than ever, VARs are not only relevant, but critical to the success of most business software publishers. No question, publishers can go market directly, through channel partners, or via a hybrid direct/partner sales model. Publishers choose to use channel partners to scale rapidly and gain market share while focusing on technology, development, finance, and corporate marketing. Publishers rely on channel partners for sales, implementation and local marketing. VARS might offer proprietary expertise in a vertical market, or complimentary (software) point solutions that can be integrated with open APIs. Yes, VARs are relevant.

How can VARs be more Successful?

Software ecosystems with channel partners have top resellers and implementation consultants that are killing it. Subscription software is the gift that keeps giving, ala annual renewal profits, which makes for a lot of successful channel partners. Which is also why the number of channel partners continues to grow. But due to increased competition, VAR success is not automatic. In 2020, the ultra-competitive business software market requires more effort. Or more effective efforts. Many previously successful legacy VARs that never did (effective) marketing are no longer successful. And many VAR startups struggle without (effective) marketing.

Telemarketing doesn’t work (decision makers screen with voicemail). Advertising doesn’t work (decision makers consume media electronically). Networking doesn’t work like it used to (more competitors doing the same networking). Sales doesn’t work like it used to (decision makers are deluged with sales calls and communications, no time for entertainment). Safe to say, only a small percentage of VARs are wildly successful.

Modern Marketing Partners (MMP) has the unique perspective of working in multiple software ecosystems. Working with software publishers on corporate marketing, developing channel marketing programs, launching VAR startups that become leading VARs, and providing marketing to large, established VARs and IT service providers of all types. MMP also supports several small, established VARS.

Back to the title of this advisory, Secrets to VAR Sales Success. As you may suspect from a marketing consultant, the secret to VAR sales success is effective marketing. That said, the bridge from marketing to sales success is Lead Generation. So how can VARS improve Lead Generation? No simple answers. Effective Lead Generation requires a combination of marketing tactics, all working together. As mentioned, many traditional marketing and sales tactics no longer work like they used to. So how can VARs do effective marketing to improve lead generation, and ultimately sales?

MMP has all kinds of advice on effective marketing that drives lead generation including content marketing, SEO, event marketing, Micro-Vertical marketing, Paid Search, Account-Based marketing, In-Bound marketing, Digital Marketing Transformation, Thought Leadership Marketing, and more. Get some coffee and see recommended reading below. 

To get to the point, following are the Top 10 Marketing Tactics to Improve Lead Generation that apply to VARs, or any information technology or professional services provider.

Top 10 Marketing Tactics to Improve Lead Generation

1. Website Optimization
2. Content
3. Micro-vertical marketing
4. Prospect R&D
5. Email
6. Awareness Building
7. Paid Search 
8. Social Media
9. Event Marketing
10. Sales Tools

Website Optimization is the foundation to all success! To be competitive in 2020, every website must be mobile, secure (SSL/HTTPS), with both on-page and off-page search engine optimization (SEO). Local SEO is now critical including GMB, citations, and local markup code. SEO is getting more complex, so likely you will require expert assistance. Of course your website should be aesthetically pleasing, with a good user experience (UX), and have great content, the next subject. 

To be successful in 2020, you must publish or perish. That is, Content Marketing is critical. In software, technology and professional services, content should be educational, and have good frequency. Content types include website landing pages, blogs, case studies, white papers, video, infographics, and more. Don’t forget to use Calls-to-Action (CTAs), and put registration forms in-front of really great content (this to elicit a sales lead).

Micro-Vertical Marketing is all the rage in software circles, and works best when the channel partner has developed proprietary processes or Intellectual Property (IP) for a market niche to become the subject matter expert (SME). Check out MMP’s Micro-Vertical Marketing Guide to learn how to execute Micro-Vertical Marketing.

To get leads in 2020, every marketer and salesperson should be constantly researching and identifying prospective customers. Prospect R&D for short. Today there are many sources for doing just that including LinkedIn Sales Navigator, online databases, associations, and trade magazines.

Prospect identification supports our next tactic, email. As websites are foundational to marketing, email lists are critical to effective email. Lists must be accurate and verified to ensure high deliverability. Tools like Hunter and Email Verifier are recommended. Ideally lists are segmented with relevant codes, and support personalization. As email open and click-thru rates (CTRs) decline over time (due to end user fatigue and spam blocking), lists must be larger to achieve results. Email service providers (ESPs), CRM and marketing automation software have good features and reporting that help marketers nurture prospects or marketing qualified leads (MQLs) through the sales cycle, and identify sales qualified leads (SQLs) based on actions. Email Tip: post-campaign click-thru reports are Lead-Gen Gold! 

In 2020, the aforementioned digital marketing can achieve lead generation, but software is an expensive purchase, so prospects will be risk-averse with channel partners that they have never heard of. Building brand awareness is important. Most large firms enjoy brand awareness. Other firms have to work on it using publicity, advertising, sponsorships, and speaking engagements, and more. Supporting and participating with a local, regional or national cause can bring awareness to your firm.

Achieving organic (free or natural) search authority is complex and takes time. New and small websites are at a disadvantage compared to mature (domain age is a search ranking factor), and large websites. Paid search is a way to rank in top positions of a search engine results page (SERP), before you can rank organically. Such positions are typically pay-per-click (PPC), but other paid search options include remarketing and display advertising. That said, software and IT services are very competitive, often competing with the publisher for both paid and organic rankings. Cost-per-Click (CPC) will likely be expensive, so often paid search is used only until organic (ranking for keywords) can be achieved. On the positive, PPC provides robust reporting, so campaigns can be optimized, and sales conversions measured.

Social Media is a critical element of both marketing and sales initiatives. Lets start with social media marketing. Your brand will require LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. LinkedIn includes company page, optimized personal page, possibly LinkedIn Groups, and SlideShare which integrates with personal profiles. YouTube is owned by Google and has been called the second biggest search engine. YouTube video descriptions is meta code that ranks high in search results. Tip: Have a YouTube video(s) for every, important keyword. Use YouTube videos on website landing pages, emails and more via embed codes. Facebook Business pages are a must have, and Twitter can reach audiences the other social networks cannot. Heard of Social Selling? Sales and all customer-facing staff can augment and piggyback off corporate social media, and use LinkedIn to target individual decision makers for the aforementioned Prospect R&D, along with direct outreach.

Event Marketing can be effective in driving lead generation if done effectively. Whether live events or webcasts, events can be successful if the topic is interesting, and real customers or peers are used (not just the vendor). Event marketing can include sponsoring an association or trade show event with speaking or networking opportunities. Live events can include entertainment aspects, but should still include a presentation. Regardless of event type, each require time to execute multi-channel promotion and recruitment. For more details, check out the MMP Event Marketing Checklist.

All this high-powered marketing will generate sales leads that will result in sales presentations, proposals, and ideally contracts. Sales Tools are required to manage this process including CRM software, Marketing Automation, lead management, presentation decks, and more. Channel partners must manage contact and registration form submissions quickly, ideally being the first to talk to a prospect that has a software requirement. Other sources of leads include email click-thru reports, IP tracking, LiveChat, and more.

Beyond the Top 10 Lead Generation Tactics, please consider other “advanced marketing wizardry” that includes more strategic marketing that can differentiate channel partners from competitors.  Thought Leadership Marketing is another approach that can involve copious amounts of content, ideally branded as a educational entity that is sponsored by the brand. SAP sponsors the Digitalist Magazine, while New York VAR MIBAR.net sponsors the Business Software Education Center. (See Thought Leadership Marketing Guide in Recommended Reading below). Finally, Account-Based Marketing (ABM) is a hot topic for marketing and selling to large enterprises. (See ABM Marketing in Recommended Reading below)

More Secrets and Some Nuances to VAR Sales Success

Extreme competition has changed the landscape for Value-Added Resellers (VARs) and channel partners. Prospect identification is critical, and often a race to “register the lead” with software publishers before a competitor registers.

A discussion about software sales would be incomplete without considering  Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs), Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs), and conversion rates that can be predicted within each software ecosystem based on average sales price, competitive and economic environment, and other factors. Check out Lead Conversion Rates for Software for more information. Finally, average sales cycle (length) should be considered. Generally, the higher the price tag, the longer the sales cycle with 100+ days common.

The future is bright for VARs and channel partners to achieve extraordinary sales success, but only if marketing becomes a top priority, and effective, ongoing marketing implementation is accomplished. A shake-out awaits channel partners that do not invest adequately in marketing excellence.

Learn more about our software marketing services, or request a free marketing assessment at the link below.

Recommended Reading:

25 Lead Generation Tips and Types (MMP)

Software Marketing Guide (MMP)

Thought Leadership Marketing Guide (MMP)

Top Account-Based Marketing Marketing Tools and Tactics (MMP)

The post Secrets to VAR Sales Success appeared first on Modern Marketing Partners.