Manufacturers, you know that Solution Providers are looking to you to help them market to their end customers. With all of the great resources out there, how do you focus your time and money?

One of our favorite resources to create are Campaigns In-a-Box. They can be leveraged by any partners that don’t have a marketing team and for partners that have their own resources; they can grab some of the copy to add to their materials.

How to Create a Successful Campaign In-a-Box 

When I was in channel marketing for vendors we had more marketing resource then we knew what to do with but they were all direct facing. Corporate marketing would hand us their emails, datasheets, event materials, and presentations and say, “just put a different image in there and you’re good-to-go!.” Not so much. Partners don’t want to just regurgitate your materials, they need it to have it’s own look and feel.

Here are 5 Keys to creating a successful campaign in-a-box:

1. Looks Matter: Partners don’t want to use your branding, they don’t want the colors that you’ve become so well know for and they certainly don’t want your logo screaming at the top while theirs whispers in the footer if at all. Come up with a more unbiased look and feel that provides partners with equal billing for their logo in the header. Choose colors that may be in your approved branding guidelines but aren’t the colors that you use for your direct marketing.
2. You’re Awesome, We Get It: Ever get one of those emails from a company that talks about how great they are? Established in 1906, thousands of service people around the world, best-in-class, blah, blah, blah…what a snooze fest. We hate to break it to you, but people don’t care about you; they want to know how YOU are going to help THEM. Materials should first identify their pain point, second talk about ways the reader may have tried to solve them in the past, and third tell them how you are going to help them finally solve that pain point today. Know your strengths: I’m not a writer, I know this, I just surround myself with great writers who love doing campaigns. I suggest you do the same.
3. Content as an Incentive: While every partner might not use every piece within a campaign in-a-box, be sure you include the staples. Obviously emails but those emails need to point to a piece of content; this is the carrot at the end of the stick. That content can be from corporate if you feel it doesn’t scream “We’re so Awesome!” . Also, event emails are huge. Many of your partners and your Channel Account Managers use these to promote live and virtual events, so help make their life a little easier. Banner Ads help point visitors to the great piece of content or event and of course signage and materials for an event such as presentations and telemarketing scripts are incredibly important as well.
4. Socialize Your Campaign In-a-Box: Partner buys list, partner sends Campaign In-a-Box email, no one opens email, Partner never uses your materials again. What went wrong? If partners aren’t integrating social to build stronger lists and get content out to the people that are looking for it when they are looking they simply won’t be as successful. Partners need you to educate them on how to use social and then as partners are launching your campaign in-a-box email, provide them with posts/tweets/feeds they should be posting out as their social media amplification
5. Launch Pad: You’ve got a great Campaign In-a-Box, looks like something a partner wants to send out, message is on target, you have all the right pieces and even have elements for partners to use on social. Now how are partners supposed to send it out? If you’ve done it right there are places for the partner to put their name and contact information but how do they edit it? Providing partners with a marketing automation tool that can edit their content before it’s sent out or printed is key. You want a platform that allows partners to edit html emails, edit PDF datasheets, and download other content such as presentations and telemarketing scripts. Some of the platforms we’ve checked out are Zift, Marketing Advocate , and StructuredWeb. StructuredWeb also has some slick social media capabilities we’ve been lucky enough to check out working on a client project together.

Overall Campaigns In-a-Box aren’t rocket science, you just need to put the right resources in the right place at the right time. Where have I heard that before?

Good luck and if you have any questions or want to run your Campaigns In-a-Box by our team of writers and creative don’t hesitate!

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