How resellers can stretch their dollars

Like all organisations, business partners in the channel are always being asked to do more with less. It is a mantra that has become part of
our daily working life, and one, I suspect, that we would like to hear
a little less often.

So, it will come as no surprise to all of you out there when discussing marketing activities that we all have to drive more activity with little and or no marketing budget.

From my experience, marketing is often the first casualty of war when it comes time to cut costs. To those marketing professionals out there, I am sure you have all rolled your eyes at one time or another when this directive has come down from above. I must admit that it does make me a little emotional when I hear, read and see statements such as these. For as we all know, marketing is both a science and art form, not mere fluff, but I digress.

So how can resellers stretch their marketing dollars? Targeted marketing activity is often a good place to start. Instead of driving out mass marketing messaging, we should look at our customer base, and/or our target customer base.

Often, I have found that concise targeted messages to your prospects always helps increase awareness. Also, who we target is a consideration that we must also look at. For example, retention is always cost effective as opposed to winning new customers.

The activity itself does always have to be in the form of direct mail, broadsheet advertising, telemarketing, seminars in exotic locations and/or premium sporting events. Marketing activity can be as simple as picking up the phone and talking to your customer about your current solution offering, or even just calling to thank them for their business. Constant communication is often the greatest asset in the marketing professional’s arsenal.

Another way of making your marketing dollar go further is to leverage vendor and distributor funding. At the end of the day, it is in our (Avnet’s) interests to see our valued business partners drive marketing activity that results in significant pipeline generation. To that end, resellers can work with us and the vendor to ensure they have access to funding which will drive your campaigns.

A good example of this was when I was working with one of our valued business partners on an upgrade campaign three years ago. The business partner in question was a pure sales organisation and had no marketing resources.

Together we sat down, completed a marketing brief and Avnet undertook the creative and delivery aspects of the campaign. We were able to leverage joint funding and we ended up selling 15 servers. This was quite significant as we only targeted 40 end-user organisations.

There have also been some funny stories of marketing activity during my time working with resellers. I remember when I first started with Avnet more than five years ago, I was asked to attend a partner meeting in relation to marketing activity. The business partner in question wanted us to fund 20 business-class airfares to the Monte Carlo grand prix, as well as accommodation. On paper, this may not seem like an extraordinary request, but the reseller had just commenced operation, had no customers, and no staff.

Upon further investigation it was revealed that the reseller thought it would be good idea to take a few mates to Monte Carlo!

Marketing is a business discipline that has many definitions, depending on who you talk to. As discussed, when business owners and executives talk about marketing, they often refer to the mailing of letters or invitations to generate sales leads. In reality, marketing is far more than a tactical campaign or single brochure. Marketing encompasses all the activities, resources and interactions involved in developing an opportunity from first discovery to its final closing.

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