The Marketing Goal VARs Should Be Targeting

At KLA Group, we’ve spent the last 20 years working with IT partners and VARs to develop their lead generation and nurturing strategies. When we got started in 1995, marketing automation and content marketing didn’t exist, and the concept of building a VAR’s brand recognition online was years away from being a best practice. To acquire new customers, traditional appointment-setting strategies were generally effective.

Today, the game has changed. With new online marketing technologies and tactics emerging every day, savvy VARs are quickly realizing how critical it is to operate differently. Appointment setting is no longer a sufficient lead generation and nurturing strategy, and digital marketing is an absolute must.

The good news is that most of the partners we speak with are aware of this shift. The bad news is that the majority of those same VARs aren’t sure where to begin or what they should be trying to accomplish. Typically, these VARs assume that using Hubspot and Google Adwords and developing an SEO strategy will take them to the promised land.

But they’re wrong.

Are You Dumping Marketing Dollars Down the Drain?

This past week, I spoke with a VAR who invested $10,000 and three months of effort to migrate his website to a new platform where visitors could be tracked. Website companies label these visitors as “leads” to be followed up by a salesperson.

The problem? After three months, he hasn’t generated a single lead. When I asked him what his strategy was to attract people to his site to capture these leads, his response was, predictably, SEO and social media.

I’m not arguing that those marketing tactics aren’t important—they are. But it’s fool’s gold to expect that those tactics alone will deliver the volume of leads and new customers a VAR business needs. And when you’ve invested tens of thousands of dollars building an infrastructure that doesn’t generate leads, that can cause some serious problems.

The Immense Value of Recognition ROI

What’s typically missing from most VARs’ demand generation strategy is a focus on achieving what I call “Recognition ROI.” What is Recognition ROI? It’s the value you derive from prospective buyers in a particular target market knowing who you are, what you do and why you’re valuable.

Sounds simple enough, right? It can be. The problem is that most VARs have no strategy to build recognition in their target markets. Instead, they assume that writing blog posts, producing videos and tweeting a few times a week will do that for them. Wrong again.

To get noticed and achieve Recognition ROI, VARs must implement attraction strategies that help them:

Modern marketing isn’t about “activities.”

It’s about the end goal: recognition. In the end, your marketing success will be measured by how well prospects know and respond to your brand in the marketplace.

Kendra Lee is a top IT Seller, Prospect Attraction Expert, author of the newly released book “The Sales Magnet” and the award winning book "Selling Against the Goal" and president of KLA Group. Specializing in the IT industry, KLA Group works with companies to break in and exceed revenue objectives in the small and midmarket business (SMB) segment.