Channel Marketing Leaders Align on Vision, Goals for Industry Success
“I need someone who understands the channel and the needs of the channel ..." said one exec.
December 20, 2022
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On International Women’s Day, GoDaddy is doing a number of things to celebrate women in its workforce and its customers, Van Horn says. “We are celebrating today in multiple ways. Across our locations, our employees have been asked to wear red in support of International Women’s Day. We are also hosting a 100-person UX event celebrating women in our Tempe location,” Van Horn says. “Throughout the month, our GoDaddy Women in Technology employee resource group (GDWIT) will be celebrating Women’s History Month. We will be highlighting some of employees who have shared their stories of overcoming obstacles in our very own ‘Women Who Have Made Their Own History’ series. We will be celebrating and recognizing some of our amazing female small business owner customers around the globe. We will also continue to grow our GDWIT community with a variety of different activities at each of our office locations.” At Appirio, the company is also celebrating International Women's Day in its own way, according to Elizabeth Friedland, director of communications. "Appirio is celebrating this year’s International Women’s Day with all our amazing women across the globe. The theme this year is #BeBoldForChange and calls for us to help forge a better working world — a more gender inclusive world. All of us can be leaders within our own spheres of influence by taking bold actions to accelerate gender equality," Friedland said in an email. "Appirio is asking employees to submit stories of women who inspire, as well as to share actions employees plan to commit to, via our internal chat system using #BeBoldForChange. All entries will be placed into a drawing for an opportunity for an employee to win prizes at the end of the week."Thinkstock
The marketing landscape is rapidly changing. Michelle Accardi, CEO at Logically, said her organization was in the search process for some time for a CMO, looking for someone with enough of a diverse background to meet the needs of a transitioning marketing environment.
“I need someone who understands the channel and the needs of the channel and has delivered to that channel,” she said. “They need demand generation, and they need content. And then they need to understand the private equity world and KPIs and analytics and all the pieces that go along with that as well. The environment is changing and it’s requiring more from CMOs.”
Despite this push to have CMOs be many things to many people, some channel marketers distance themselves from the CMO. MeiLee Langley, senior director/head, channel and field marketing at LiveVox, said in previous positions she pulled her team out of marketing divisions because not doing so meant she often received conflicting messages.
“There are wonderful CMOs, but it becomes like I have two bosses,” she said. “I have to align with my CRO, and my channel chief usually takes direction from that leadership.”
In general, Accardi said it’s important for the CMO and the CRO to be on the same page.
“I personally like organizations where the CRO owns the CMO role so that they’re aligned,” she said. “But you can’t do that in every organization. You have to have a strong enough CRO that can be a chief commercial officer to really handle that.”
She added: “It’s finding that unicorn talent at the top that can manage. For me, I hate titles. It’s about who does the work. And ultimately, it’s finding people who can have good debate about what strategy should be but then can line up and go drive together.”
However, having the same goals for marketing and the channel is easier said than done for some organizations.
“I’ve been in those scenarios where my channel team and marketing didn’t have the same priorities, and that’s when you have a direct sales organization and a channel sales organization within the same company,” said Jolynn Antonacci, vice president of marketing at PPT Solutions. “That can happen. Naturally they’re going to have different priorities. And traditionally, I would say it’s gotten better over the years, but the priorities of direct sales corporate have always trumped that of channel.”
Antonacci said that there’s an even bigger point to be made. Does leadership truly want to adapt to a channel model? Or are they going to continuously question?
“Channel will offend people’s sensibilities; it’s just the way it is. And that’s not going to change,” she said.
For Karla Roarty, vice president of channel sales at Logically, marketing officials need to listen to channel because “channel managers feet are in the streets and in the trenches,” she said.
Yet, Accardi remarked that how leadership views the channel and channel marketers is dependent on how marketers advocate for themselves. For marketers, this may come down to having a keen understanding of budgets and ROI.
“The channel is not a direct ROI contributor sometimes, right? You can measure the success of events, you can measure the success of a partners and their growth, but it’s longer term,” Accardi said. “It’s not the direct one-to-one where I go run an ad campaign and I can see what the direct results are.”
Langley agreed.
“As the marketer at my last few companies, what I’ve had to do is build a three-to-five-year projection. We are probably not profitable these first two years,” she said of channel initiatives. “However, we’ll get the hockey stick that does happen once the snowball starts rolling. And so that’s where marketers do need to be prepared to have some sort of financial modeling ready. Or lean on people that can help you do that. Because a lot of times your channel chief will not be the person advocating for that. You’ll just be the person in the background complaining that you don’t have budget. You have to show that growth.”
Leveraging vendor relationships in the channel and the MDF funds is also important, the panelists said. “Essentially, we doubled our budget by having a good, smart usage of MDF, and then did smart hiring,” Accardi added.
Once that MDF is in hand, how does one most seamlessly use those funds? The panelists said it’s about understanding and capitalizing on different demographics.
“You have to have the same marketing message, but it has to have minor tweaks so you’re hitting regional areas,” Roarty said. “Anybody knows that if you take a New Yorker and somebody from Dallas, you have different strategies.”
Michelle Ragusa-McBain, global partner sales leader at Cisco, argued that the content, the campaigns, the webinars, the podcasts, the education enablement and training all have to be different.
“The MDF dollars that Cisco funds cannot be the same. There’s no CIO with a 50-person marketing team to emulate,” Ragusa-McBain said. “So, looking at the bottom part of the pyramid is very unique for a company like Cisco and understanding that space. The different demographics and personas that you’re targeting are shifting dramatically.”
Understanding demographics led the panelists to a discussion of one’s market competition.
“Lately I’ve been talking to people about how do you stand apart from your competition. And what I tell them is your competition is what you did yesterday,” said Allison Bergamo, principal at Bergamo Marketing Group.
“Take a look at what you did yesterday and see how well that works and if you’re serving your customers. What can you do better? What can you do differently?” Bergamo asked.
The answer to that may be as simple as “taking care of your people,” said Caroline Goles, corporate vice president of sales strategy at Pax8.
“If you take care of your people, and they’re energetic, and they’re in a place where they can thrive, our partners will be and that’s what we believe,” Goles said.
“We want our people to wake up every morning passionate about helping partners be successful,” she said. “That’s our mantra as far as how we’re looking to evolve with growth. In these interesting macroeconomic times, we are doing a few things. We are lining up a go to market and trying to build an integrated journey for MSPs. We’re shortening the distance between opportunity and revenue capture. We’re reinventing our sales methodology. We’ve become this new mesh network for how we go to market.”
Just as Goles outlined what Pax8 is doing differently to stay ahead of the competition, Langley said it was important to examine how companies were imitating each other — and avoid that.
Marketers should be aware that “if everybody has white-glove service, nobody has white-glove service. If everybody has a single pane of glass, nobody has a single pane of glass,” she said. “Find the places where you are truly different and win against competitors.”
Finally, channel marketers are shaped by the continuing macroeconomic forces that have bombarded the market during the last two years.
“The channel means so many things. It can mean MSP, it can mean agent, it can mean reseller,” Antonacci said. “And I think that understanding how the economic downturn will impact those types of businesses individually is critically important. At my previous company when the pandemic hit, for example, my resale VAR businesses and partners were infinitely more impacted than my agents were to a degree. Certain agents actually thrived because they were able to sell services and solutions very quickly to help their customers combat the impacts of the pandemic. Whereas my resellers and VARs who are traditionally selling products that aren’t as quick to market, they struggled. And so being able to first understand the needs of each one of those segments I think is critically important. Once you can do that, then you can identify what are the opportunities from a marketing perspective that are going to be most impactful for that type of partner, or that type of a customer.”
Finally, channel marketers are shaped by the continuing macroeconomic forces that have bombarded the market during the last two years.
“The channel means so many things. It can mean MSP, it can mean agent, it can mean reseller,” Antonacci said. “And I think that understanding how the economic downturn will impact those types of businesses individually is critically important. At my previous company when the pandemic hit, for example, my resale VAR businesses and partners were infinitely more impacted than my agents were to a degree. Certain agents actually thrived because they were able to sell services and solutions very quickly to help their customers combat the impacts of the pandemic. Whereas my resellers and VARs who are traditionally selling products that aren’t as quick to market, they struggled. And so being able to first understand the needs of each one of those segments I think is critically important. Once you can do that, then you can identify what are the opportunities from a marketing perspective that are going to be most impactful for that type of partner, or that type of a customer.”
Techaisle recently identified the top digital marketing priorities in 2023 for channel partners. Managing uncertainty and keeping pace with the competition were among the leading 10 business issues the firm identified.
Prioritizing uncertainty and understanding the competition were themes echoed by a panel of top channel marketing leaders during a closed-door roundtable discussion at the MSP Summit in Orlando, Florida, earlier this fall. Allison Bergamo, principal at Bergamo Marketing Group, moderated the conversation.
The topics (see slideshow above) ranged from how to target specific demographics for marketing campaigns to how to set an organization apart from others in the channel. The participants also placed emphasis on marketers understanding the ins and outs of budgets and ROI to be more proactive in arguing for additional resources. Finally, the leaders touched on the macroeconomic concerns affecting the channel, and society at large, and what marketers can do to address those.
It was all part of the Channel Futures Marketing Roundtable. Participants included:
Michelle Accardi, CEO at Logically
Jolynn Antonacci, vice president marketing at PPT Solutions
Allison Bergamo, principal at Bergamo Marketing Group
Caroline Goles, corporate vice president, sales strategy at Pax8
MeiLee Langley, senior director/head, channel and field marketing at LiveVox
Michelle Ragusa-McBain, global partner sales leader at Cisco
Karla Roarty, vice president channel sales at Logically
Logically’s Michelle Accardi
Bergamo Marketing Group’s Allison Bergamo
LiveVox’s MeiLee Langley
Cisco’s Michelle Ragusa-McBain
Logically’s Karla Roarty
PPT Solutions’ Jolynn Antonacci
Pax8’s Caroline Goles
Want to contact the author directly about this story? Have ideas for a follow-up article? Email Claudia Adrien or connect with her on LinkedIn. |
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