The Partner Channel Magazine Winter 2016

MARKETING
SEVEN QUESTIONS TO ASK BEFORE YOU COMMIT TO
New Marketing Activities
story by ADRIANNE MACHINA
illustration by DAVE SWANG
Marketing is always a trade-off. No one has unlimited time and budget, not even the
biggest of companies. Several years ago Pepsi pulled out of doing Super Bowl ads
to instead invest those millions in its Pepsi Refresh Project social media campaign.
That switch was a bold move, and I suspect the marketing team had quite a few
impassioned meetings to make that shift from the status quo. As a smaller company,
you face even tougher decisions because you don’t have millions of dollars and an
army of resources with which to work.
How do you decide? Where should you be spending your limited marketing resources? When should you say
YES, and when should you say NO? Here are seven questions to ask when evaluating marketing opportunities.
» Have we done this before? If not, can we create a test campaign? Testing is a very important part of
marketing, and it’s equally important that you have a test-sized budget. Before you invest big money on a
campaign, test out headlines and offers using pay-per-click ads. Small improvements can make a huge
difference in results. For example, let’s say you want to run an ad in The Partner Channel Magazine. You could
create a series of pay-per-click ads that tests your headline, image, and offer, and then see what pulls the best
results. Not only will you get better results from your magazine ad, you might even pull in leads from your
online campaign.
» Does this marketing opportunity provide us with a target-rich environment? Meaning, is your
list or event targeted specifically at the ideal client you most want to attract? The more you can focus your
marketing dollars on the right people, the less you’ll spend and the greater return you’ll see. This is one of
the main challenges many Partners have when it comes to investing in Convergence. Most of the Microsoft
Dynamics customer attendees are already “married” to another Partner. There are other reasons to participate
in Convergence, of course – like the opportunity to connect with other Partners, Microsoft, and ISVs, get faceto-face
time with existing customers, and maybe pick up an orphan or two – but most VAR Partners are not
going to pick up much net-new business. That fact needs to be considered when deciding how much to spend
on Convergence activities. Things might change with Convergence now being aimed at Microsoft customers
beyond just Microsoft Dynamics, but we’ll have to test it out and see how that goes.
» Is there a way to get new business from this activity? Small businesses can’t afford to spend a lot of time
and money on awareness campaigns. If an awareness campaign isn’t costing you much and it gets you in front
of your target market, it might be worth it. Or if your awareness campaign is really a charitable campaign, go
for it! But in general, I’m not a fan of gaining awareness. Ask yourself, is there a way you could get leads from
this same activity? Typically that means you need to have some sort of low-risk, high-perceived value offer
available that someone could request – an e-book, a checklist, or an instructional video are all great freebies.
If you make a major goal to get people onto your list, you can continue to market to them from there. Look
for ways to create re-useable marketing assets so you can stretch your budget even further. If you can create
an e-book for a campaign sponsored by one of your Partners, ask if you can then reuse that e-book in multiple
ways down the road.
38 WINTER 2016 | THEPARTNERCHANNEL.COM