Like any new technology people either choose to jump straight in and see what happens or they wait, and watch and see how other are using and benefiting from using this technology. I think the former is fine when you are using the social element of the media to keep in touch with family and friends but I would err on the side of caution when thinking about using the tools for business. Just like a website this is another shop window to your business and anyone in the world can take a peek inside.

Creating a social media strategy should be classed as a Business Transformation function and I would urge any business owner that has say to their staff we must be on Twitter, Linked In and Facebook ASAP, just do it, to stop and read your sites and then you will see why you need to create a plan. Social media is instant and with the ease of a click an innocent message, picture or post can be shared with the world without the consent of the original author. When developing a Social Media Strategy take a look at your competitors, read what they are saying and see what they are posting and decide if this really is an area where you want your business to participate?

Once you decide that you want to get your business involved please remember the plan. Another very important point about developing a presence for your business via these sites is that content is king and even more importantly fresh content is king, so within the job roles of the business you will need to create a plan of content and publication and stick to it, otherwise your presence will diminish and potential customers will stop following and consider other options, maybe your competitor. Make the decision and treat it just like an investment, are you in or are you out and there is no harm in being out at this stage of the Social Media evolution.

I would like to share my social media story: It was late August 2010 and even though I had been in business since February I had not been using twitter for very long. I think I had about 9 followers and one of those was Tom Perry, EMEA Marketing Director, ShoreTel . Tom had been on my target list for a little while and I thought I really need to find a creative way to get a meeting. I was getting to know Twitter and its functionality and I thought I would try out a ‘direct message’. Given you have just 140 characters to get your message across it is a great tool for teaching you to be succinct. It worked and we had a brief exchange of direct messages resulting in a date in the diary. So there it was I had secured my first new business meeting via social media. I met with Tom we had a great conversation and understood how we could help each other and before we knew it, we had agreed two projects together. I am sure meetings of every kind are being set up all over the world via twitter but I just thought I would share my experience as it quite liberating and profitable. 

As technology vendors have both developed and refined their channel marketing strategies over the past few years the need for a refined yet bespoke marketing approach has emerged as top priority. The vendor who manages to encourage, educate and inspire their partners to create and execute joint marketing activities will be the big winner with increased brand awareness plus channel based return in the marketing funnel. Accelerate is a 100% fully funded, managed program of packaged marketing activities and collateral that focuses upon delivering joint sales opportunities. ShoreTel’s Accelerate Marketing Knowledge Series was developed upon the premise of educating channel marketing professionals with the very latest industry ideas, concepts and practises. ShoreTel’s approach is based on developing marketing skills and learning’s from one event to the next with two driving factors; ensuring partners attend all events to aid personal development, and building a community that is both competitive but also able to differentiate themselves (from a marketing perspective) in order to address more of the market. The events were run in November 2010 and April 2011, the agenda being developed collaboratively with some of the best industry marketers e.g. Chris Wilson, Richard Robinson, Ed Weatherall, Lisa Hutt and Richard Bush.

Objectives:

This program had two specific goals: to increase the marketing skill levels of ShoreTel partners while also increasing awareness, consideration and marketing pipeline for ShoreTel via an increased number of joint marketing campaigns.

Target Audience:

ShoreTel’s Accelerate Marketing Knowledge Series was aimed at those people within ShoreTel’s partner community who influence or perform a marketing function. The agenda topics and speakers were designed to appeal to Managing Directors, Sales Directors, Marketing Directors, Marketing Managers and Executives. The agenda items, timings and presenters were deliberately designed to be both compelling and action orientated.

For channel marketers to gain access to the knowledge and learn from the experience of these industry leaders is unprecedented for a technology vendor to offer at no cost to their partners. This important element helped to create a successful set of events simply with the calibre of presenters who also attended free of charge

Results:

ShoreTel had just launched the Accelerate Partner Program in the UK when development of the ShoreTel Accelerate Marketing Knowledge Series began in September 2010. It was always Tom Perry’s vision to create a partner community under the Accelerate banner and provide bi-annual knowledge and action events to drive increased marketing activity through his channel partners. The initial event objective was to get 35 attendees, 25 partner registrations per event plus 10 other participants (Presenters or ShoreTel employees). We received 19 and 21 partner attendees respectively to the November and April events.

As a result of the calibre of presenters, content and the exclusive offer made at the November event, ShoreTel agreed to fund and develop 7 new joint marketing campaigns. In addition to these activities ShoreTel identified and agreed to fund another 15 joint campaigns after the recent April event. Therefore ShoreTel have over 25 joint marketing campaigns agreed and underway in the UK channel as a direct result of the ShoreTel Accelerate Marketing Knowledge series

The ShoreTel Accelerate Marketing Knowledge series gives the partner the knowledge and the courage combined with a generous 100% funding offer to take a chance and create a ShoreTel joint marketing campaign that demonstrates the true value of partnership.

According to Wikipedia PR is a field concerned with maintaining public image for high-profile people, commercial businesses and organizations, non-profit associations or programs. Furthermore PR can be used to build a rapport with employees, customers, investors, voters, or the general public.Almost any organization that has a stake in how it is portrayed in the public arena employs some level of public relations. There are a number of PR disciplines falling under the banner of Corporate Communications, such as Analyst Relations, Media Relations, Investor Relations, Internal Communications and Labor Relations.

This definition sounds appropriate only for large multinationals with thousands of employees.So what about the smaller companies how can they benefit from using PR and what can they do to get started? I would recommend that business leaders look at all the relevant industry awards that are generally available to enter free of charge, for example the Comms National Awards taking place in October. They have missed their opportunity this year but there is always next year.

It is best to take the time to read the criteria for entry and then ensure that the submission answers all the minimum requirements to at least have the opportunity to become a finalist. This is where business could employ an external resource that specialises in creating award winning entries but this will cost. If the entry is then shortlisted as a finalist in one or a couple of criteria the business will receive the relevant notification plus earn the ability to use a finalist’s logo as awareness of the achievement so far. At this stage the business has still not incurred any costs (if they have written the entry in house) plus they have the ability to create a press release or customer newsletter story featuring the finalist nomination and presenting the finalists logo. This is all very simple PR.

Now just imagine the business chooses to enter say six award events over the course of 12 months and is lucky enough to be named finalists at each event.They now have the basis of six press release ready to send out to their customer and prospects both celebrating the fact they are finalists but also showing both audiences that they can sell and deploy award winning solutions plus that they should be shortlisted for the next available technology solution project.

As a real life case study I was recently commissioned by Steve Rasmussen at siptel to create, write and present at the finals at the National Sales Awards in London, in the Technology Implementation Project of the Year category . Siptel are already winners of six industry awards not bad for a company only in their 6 th year of operation. As part of the follow up plan, when siptel win on November 2 nd we will work with Avaya’s PR team to write a vendor endorsed press release that will be published via Avaya’s worldwide network, and there you have the no cost PR model.

So remember PR does not have to cost anything, just your time, dedication and discipline to complete the simple tasks but reap the big benefits of increased awareness for potential customers. All the very best to this year’s finalists of the Comms National Awards, please ensure you tell the world about your achievements.

Increasingly across many industries marketing departments or individuals are being asked to deliver more by their business leaders but with no increase in headcount or budget. In this type of scenario this FMC solution works best as the vendor or partner can benefit from employing a third party to deliver the required project or projects to a date and within a specified budget. They do not have to waste time and budget with recruitment.  All they have to do is spend the relevant amount of time, ideally face to face but in some cases over the phone briefing the consultant on the project deliverables.

I have delivered on a contract with Brocade as part of their EMEA Marketing team from February 2010 through to July 2011. I started working in the field marketing team focussed upon the Tier 3 countries Belgium, Switzerland, Spain and South Africa. I then managed the EMEA Demand Generation function from June through to November delivering both ‘Brocade is Now’ and ‘Brocade One’ campaigns into UK, German, France and Middle East. My current project is to manage the Field Marketing Function within EBG North region, Benelux & Nordics. 

I am not going to single out one vendor for good or bad examples as most of the channel partners deal with several vendors although there are still some that remain exclusive. As an aside I support that fact that vendors should create as part of their partner program a special award for partners that have remained exclusive for an extended period of time like 5 or 10 years, this is highly commendable given the turbulence in this industry over the past 10 years.

I am still a firm believer in the fact that people do business with people and any vendor that can push back on the global pressure of centralisation and say we really honestly have to make it easier for our partners to do business with us, otherwise they will go and buy some other vendors products. New vendors are entering markets where the traditional vendors are either static or being acquired and we all know what happens to external facing staff during a merger, they all face internally looking for a role and security.

Partners are then left to fend for themselves, the all too familiar corporate message, it’s all on the website and in the email that was sent from the US, oh and in the webcast where you had to dial a US number to access, wow that is just such a global approach, as a partner I can’t quite believe how accommodating you are being of me the small loyal partner based in Bristol.

Partners are then also left to find out essential business transformation information by going to the Partner Portal and logging on using their PRM ID to the secure area. I still can’t quite understand why vendors are forcing their partners to use only one method of communication i.e. the partner portal when they are marketing and actively trying to sell solutions that allow customers to interact with businesses on any number of levels.

At the end of the day this is supposed to be a partnership and both parties rely on each other to exist and grow. Partners want fast and easy access to an account manager and to information that will help them sell, preferably quickly and effectively. In my opinion major vendor channel management and channel marketing still has a long way to go to hit the mark, but those vendors that understand and listen to their partners will receive the greatest rewards in the quickest time. Face to face communication is key as you can’t have a partnership without first having a relationship.

If what I say is true then why do so many marketers in large or small, global or local businesses not create a plan with a clear set of objectives or metrics before they agree to commence a marketing project or even before they start working on a given project? The excuse I hear most often is that …”I don’t have time to plan and I just need to get it out the door and the plan is all in my head”. This may be all and well if no-one asks about the reason you choose this campaign over using your time and resources on other activities. In this day and age I am sure those that hold the purse strings in your business will want to see a business case for investment and a prediction of the results that you would hope to achieve, commonly referred to as  ROMI . I know vendors will certainly want to see a return on investment business case before they will approve a request for BDF or MDF.

Every marketing department should have a set of objectives to help them to grow and also to develop their products or services. By creating a plan and actually writing everything that relates to the product or service down you can quickly understand where best to utilise your time, energy and resources. Setting objectives will help focus the department on a specific aim in a given period of time to achieve a certain and goal and to increase motivation to reach that goal that has been set.

There are many acronyms that you can use within marketing but a simple one that can be used to help set objectives is SMART. And smart objectives are:

* Specific – What is the aim or actual target of the project? 15 leads a week? * Measurable – You should measure everything that relates to this project to see whether you are meeting the objectives or not, e.g. Inbound Calls or Web Hits or Appointments * Achievable – Can you actually reach the target given what you have available? I.e. Budget * Realistic – Do you think realistically you can achieve the objectives that you have set? * Time – What is the timeline to achieve the set objectives? One week or Six months?

There are many helpful websites you might like to research on this subject like  Business Link

This process is not exclusive to marketing it is used for all types of project management and other business disciplines. I just wanted to ensure that people were aware of the term and could start to implement it into their business processes to make their marketing more planned, targeted, objective led and ultimately more successful.