Almost Second Half: Time to Revisit Your Marketing Plan?

As you approach the second half of 2018, your marketing programs should already be reaping the rewards of your efforts. Marketing should help elevate your brand, build your pipeline, increase the acquisition of net new customers, and, if you’re selling cloud, ensure that you’re getting renewals.

If that is not the case, now is the time to evaluate your approach. Regardless of your results to date, it’s always important to conduct a wellness check on your marketing plans.

As you do a mid-year review of your marketing results, here are some key aspects to keep in mind:

Marketing Must Showcase Real Value for the Customer

There are three things I often see missing from many partners’ marketing:

When it comes to attracting new customers, you need to demonstrate the value of what you’re offering–a value proposition not only around your organization, but services and IP that you provide. Almost equally important, though, you need to speak the customer’s language.

In other words, what language resonates most with them? And then use this language to clearly articulate how you will help customers achieve their business goals, how easily you will implement solutions for them, and what it means to them–in their line of business, industry and, of course, to their bottom line.

In the context of the customer lifecycle, it’s important to continue marketing to your existing customers, as well as prospects, for the sake of cross-sell and upsell, and the all-important renewal business. Post-sale marketing is vital to maintain a cloud revenue stream; if you forget about it, you’re likely losing not only renewals but revenue growth opportunities.

Strong Vendors Will Help!

Your vendors should provide you with a well-rounded approach to help you become a better, smarter marketer. At SAP we require marketing training, resources and plans from our partners. We also provide enablement on the latest proven digital marketing techniques, along with easy-to use tools, resources and assets, and even access to full-service marketing agencies. We work with our partners to develop, fund and support actionable marketing plans that deliver results.

In addition to providing you with training and assistance, vendors should also be working to build their brand so that when you connect with potential customers they know the value of the company and what you’re selling. SAP’s recently launched campaign, which showcases our purpose to help the world run better and improve people’s lives, is an investment in providing SAP and our customers insight into our values and how we can help them succeed.

When the second half rolls around, will you have an effective marketing plan in place? Now’s the time to make sure.

Ira Simon (follow me on Twitter – @IraASimon) is global vice president, Partner & SME Marketing, at SAP. Learn more about partnership opportunities at: http://go.sap.com/partner.html.

This guest blog is part of a Channel Futures sponsorship.