ZINFI Technologies, Inc.

Content syndication transforms sales enablement by delivering the right materials at every stage of the buying journey. Organizations that map distributed content to specific sales process stages achieve higher engagement, faster conversions, and measurable revenue growth.

Most B2B organizations today have deployed customer relationship management software to manage their sales pipelines. However, CRM systems alone cannot solve the fundamental challenge of equipping sales teams with relevant materials. Ineffective use of automation often stems from poor enablement capabilities rather than technology limitations alone.

This is where strategic content distribution plays a transformative role in laying the foundation for sales effectiveness. When done correctly, syndicated materials bridge the gap between marketing initiatives and frontline selling activities seamlessly. The result is a unified engagement experience that guides buyers from initial awareness through purchase and repurchase.

Whether an organization sells technology, financial products, insurance, or other B2B solutions, the sales process follows predictable stages. Breaking down the lead-to-revenue cycle into properly mapped steps is essential before any distribution strategy can succeed. This article explores how content syndication enables sales teams to achieve consistently higher performance levels across segments.

Key Takeaways

Content syndication aligns marketing materials with specific sales stages to accelerate buyer engagement effectively.

Mapping distribution strategies to buyer segments ensures relevant materials reach the right audience consistently.

Sales enablement platforms reduce time spent searching for collateral, improving frontline productivity significantly.

Transactional and solution-centric sales cycles require different content distribution approaches for optimal results.

Integrating marketing and sales workflows eliminates organizational silos that hinder customer experience quality.

AI-powered distribution tools personalize material delivery based on buyer behavior and engagement patterns.

Measuring content effectiveness across the full lifecycle drives continuous optimization of enablement strategies.

How Does Content Syndication Support Different Sales Cycle Types?

The nature of engagement depends directly on the solution being sold and the target market segment. For transactional products generating a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per transaction, high-touch sales involvement is impractical. In these scenarios, the company website must do most of the selling through strategically distributed materials.

Content syndication plays a critical role here by generating leads and moving buyers through an engagement journey. This journey follows the classic buying cycle of awareness, interest, trial, purchase, and repurchase systematically. Online retailers have invested heavily in distributing materials at various stages to educate buyers and build trust.

For solution-centric products worth thousands of dollars, human-led engagement becomes increasingly important throughout the process. Even during high-touch selling, syndicated materials distributed via social, search, and other channels drive qualified traffic. Once leads arrive, sales teams must immediately engage with relevant collateral mapped to each specific buying stage.

Why Do Sales Teams Struggle to Access the Right Materials?

Most companies rely on CRM systems that make it nearly impossible for salespeople to find appropriate documents quickly. Marketing collateral, product specifications, and competitive battle cards end up scattered across internal portals and shared drives. Sales representatives waste valuable selling time conducting frustrating searches through disorganized file repositories instead of engaging prospects.

This accessibility challenge becomes more acute as organizations grow and produce increasing volumes of sales support materials. Without systematic organization mapped to specific selling stages, even excellent content fails to reach frontline teams. The disconnect between content creation and content delivery represents one of the largest productivity drains in B2B organizations.

Content syndication from corporate functions like marketing, product management, and finance solves this problem directly. Materials become instantly available at the right stages when the organization properly classifies its selling and buying steps. Discovery, qualification, development, negotiation, and close each receive purpose-matched materials through automated distribution workflows.

What Role Do Sales Enablement Platforms Play in Material Distribution?

Sales enablement platforms have emerged rapidly to address the fundamental need for organized, accessible content delivery. These tools extend content syndication from a near-360-degree perspective across multiple business functions and teams. Marketing handles lead generation, inside sales manages qualification, and business development drives closure through unified platforms.

A typical enablement platform for a team of one hundred salespeople costs between thirty and one hundred thousand dollars annually. The significant productivity gains and customer satisfaction improvements easily justify this investment for most organizations. Prominent analysts like Forrester and Gartner have recently started tracking this rapidly growing market segment.

Current platforms focus on three core areas: material availability within the sales cycle, representative training and certification programs, and lead-to-revenue tracking as a function of enablement steps. However, most vendors have not taken a holistic approach toward integrating marketing and sales activities seamlessly. This gap represents a significant opportunity for organizations that prioritize unified content distribution strategies.

How Should Organizations Integrate Marketing and Sales Content Workflows?

Marketing and sales can no longer operate as separate silos within modern B2B organizations effectively. A customer purchasing a specific solution is simultaneously a perfect marketing target for potential add-on products. This cross-functional reality demands integrated material distribution that serves both acquisition and expansion goals simultaneously.

Leading online retailers demonstrate this principle by developing comprehensive customer databases that predict purchasing behavior accurately. They offer products relevant not only for immediate transactions but also based on behavioral patterns suggesting future interest. This diagnostic capability remains completely missing from most enterprise sales enablement tools available today.

Strategic content syndication bridges this gap by ensuring that relevant materials flow across both marketing and sales touchpoints. Buyers receive consistent messaging throughout their journey regardless of which department manages each specific interaction. This unified approach increases engagement quality and accelerates the transition from prospect to loyal, repeat customer.

What Metrics Should Organizations Track for Distributed Content Effectiveness?

Measuring the impact of syndicated materials requires tracking engagement metrics across every stage of the buying journey. View rates, download frequency, and time-on-content provide baseline signals about material relevance and quality consistently. Correlating these engagement metrics with pipeline progression reveals which specific assets accelerate deal velocity most effectively.

Organizations should also measure content utilization rates among their sales teams to identify adoption gaps proactively. High-quality materials that salespeople never access represent wasted investment and missed enablement opportunities across the organization. Usage analytics help content teams prioritize creation efforts toward materials that frontline representatives actually deploy during selling.

Revenue attribution models that connect specific distributed assets to closed deals provide the strongest justification for investment. Tracking which materials buyers consumed before purchasing reveals the content combinations that drive conversion most reliably. These insights enable continuous optimization of distribution strategies based on measurable business outcomes rather than assumptions.

CapabilityTraditional Content ApproachStrategic Syndication Approach

Material AccessibilityScattered across portals, intranets, and shared drivesMapped to specific sales stages within enablement platforms

Buyer Journey AlignmentGeneric materials applied uniformly across all stagesStage-specific assets matched to awareness, trial, and purchase

Cross-Functional IntegrationMarketing and sales operate as disconnected silosUnified workflows delivering consistent messaging across touchpoints

Segment TargetingOne-size-fits-all content for all market segmentsTailored distribution for SMB, mid-market, and enterprise buyers

Sales ProductivityRepresentatives waste time searching for relevant collateralInstant access to purpose-matched materials at each selling step

Performance MeasurementNo connection between content engagement and revenue outcomesFull attribution tracking from material consumption to closed deals

ScalabilityManual distribution limiting reach and consistencyAutomated syndication across social, search, and partner channels

How Does ZINFI Enable Scalable Content Distribution Across Channels?

ZINFI's Content Management platform provides the infrastructure for distributing materials at scale across partner networks. By automating material delivery and tracking engagement, ZINFI helps organizations maximize the impact of their enab

Most organizations selling in a business-to-business (B2B) environment today have implemented customer relationship management (CRM) software. While proper deployment of a CRM system is highly dependent on an organization’s ability to streamline its own internal sales processes, in many cases ineffective use of automation systems can also be attributed to an organization’s poor sales enablement capabilities. This is where content syndication can play an important role and lay the foundation for sales enablement—that is, when it’s done right. In this article we will explore what steps an organization can take to build on their CRM foundation and engage a cross-functional team to properly enable its sales team via content syndication.Whether an organization is selling technology, insurance, financial products or other B2B solutions, in most cases the sales process can be broken down into stages for each of the three primary types of sales cycles: for small and medium business segments, for mid-market and enterprise, and for very large enterprise and government organization. With each of these segments, it is important to break down the lead-to-revenue cycle into proper stages to make sure that the sales process has been properly mapped to the targeted customer’s buying behavior. Before any content syndication strategy can be successfully implemented for sales enablement, it is essential to complete this task. With this principle as a backdrop, let’s briefly explore how content syndication can enable sales teams to achieve higher levels of performance.When you think about a sales process—or perhaps you find it more useful to think about a buying process from the buyer’s perspective—the nature of engagement is directly dependent on the nature of the solution. Whether you are an SMB, a mid-market business or an enterprise, if your what you’re selling is a transactional product that generates somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand dollar for each transaction, then it is not possible to provide a high level of sales touches. In this scenario, a company’s website has to do most of the selling, and this is where content syndication can play a critical role—not only by generating leads, but also by moving the buyer through a journey of content engagement that typically follows the classic buying cycle: awareness, interest, trial, purchase, repurchase. Most online retailers today have invested heavily to syndicate content at various stages of the buying cycle to ensure the buyer is gradually educated and engaged, trust is built and the transaction is completed.On the other hand, if the transaction is essentially for a solution-centric product—for example, a financial product worth thousands of dollars or a complete technology solution or a medical device—then the human touch, by default, becomes increasingly important. Even during this process of human-led sales engagement, it is critical to provide syndicated content via a wide network of social, search and other appropriate engines to drive traffic to the site. However, once a lead comes in, sales needs to jump in immediately and engage, walking the buyer through appropriate steps. At this point, most companies tend to rely on their CRM systems, but the nature of the CRM systems makes it almost impossible for a sales person to access appropriate sales documents, marketing collateral, and other materials to support specific stages of the buying/selling process. Typically, the sales team ends up undertaking a frustrating search, looking through an internal portal or intranet, or perhaps searching for files saved in a folder on a shared drive. This is where content syndication from various corporate functions like marketing, product management, service management, finance and so on can be made instantly available at the right stages of the sales process.

Most organizations selling in a business-to-business (B2B) environment today have implemented customer relationship management (CRM) software. While proper deployment of a CRM system is highly dependent on an organization’s ability to streamline its own internal sales processes, in many cases ineffective use of automation systems can also be attributed to an organization’s poor sales enablement capabilities. This is where content syndication can play an important role and lay the foundation for sales enablement—that is, when it’s done right. In this article we will explore what steps an organization can take to build on their CRM foundation and engage a cross-functional team to properly enable its sales team via content syndication.

Whether an organization is selling technology, insurance, financial products or other B2B solutions, in most cases the sales process can be broken down into stages for each of the three primary types of sales cycles: for small and medium business segments, for mid-market and enterprise, and for very large enterprise and government organization. With each of these segments, it is important to break down the lead-to-revenue cycle into proper stages to make sure that the sales process has been properly mapped to the targeted customer’s buying behavior. Before any content syndication strategy can be successfully implemented for sales enablement, it is essential to complete this task. With this principle as a backdrop, let’s briefly explore how content syndication can enable sales teams to achieve higher levels of performance.

When you think about a sales process—or perhaps you find it more useful to think about a buying process from the buyer’s perspective—the nature of engagement is directly dependent on the nature of the solution. Whether you are an SMB, a mid-market business or an enterprise, if your what you’re selling is a transactional product that generates somewhere between a few hundred and a few thousand dollar for each transaction, then it is not possible to provide a high level of sales touches. In this scenario, a company’s website has to do most of the selling, and this is where content syndication can play a critical role—not only by generating leads, but also by moving the buyer through a journey of content engagement that typically follows the classic buying cycle: awareness, interest, trial, purchase, repurchase. Most online retailers today have invested heavily to syndicate content at various stages of the buying cycle to ensure the buyer is gradually educated and engaged, trust is built and the transaction is completed.

On the other hand, if the transaction is essentially for a solution-centric product—for example, a financial product worth thousands of dollars or a complete technology solution or a medical device—then the human touch, by default, becomes increasingly important. Even during this process of human-led sales engagement, it is critical to provide syndicated content via a wide network of social, search and other appropriate engines to drive traffic to the site. However, once a lead comes in, sales needs to jump in immediately and engage, walking the buyer through appropriate steps. At this point, most companies tend to rely on their CRM systems, but the nature of the CRM systems makes it almost impossible for a sales person to access appropriate sales documents, marketing collateral, and other materials to support specific stages of the buying/selling process. Typically, the sales team ends up undertaking a frustrating search, looking through an internal portal or intranet, or perhaps searching for files saved in a folder on a shared drive. This is where content syndication from various corporate functions like marketing, product management, service management, finance and so on can be made instantly available at the right stages of the sales process. Assuming the organization has properly classified its selling/buying step...

Over the past few decades, companies have invested considerable sums in building out an inside sales infrastructure. During this same period, we have also seen increases in demand for marketing automation. However, in many cases those two organizational investments have not come to fruition, and companies are asking whether they have the right investment mix to move forward as buying journey has changed completely over the past decade or so.

We all know there has been a recent shift in the marketplace, a relatively new phenomenon in which buyers are going online, searching for what they’re interested in, doing research, finding possible vendors and then checking out vendors online to come up with a short list of who to call. That entire process used to be a function of the traditional sales process. An inside sales rep would call up a potential prospect—essentially a cold call—to set up an appointment designed to educate the buyer. Today, that entire buying process today is completely visible. It follows that the selling process also needs to be completely visible, especially when it comes to engaging with a potential buyer upfront during the buying cycle. This monumental shift has been happening quietly and steadily over the past decade and, as a result, telemarketing no longer works the way it used to. These days when a telemarketer calls a potential customer, the prospect hangs up on them 9 times out of 10. The remaining 10% who do accept the call are likely to get highly irritated that someone has called them during the middle of the day. This is where digital prospecting comes in.

Digital prospecting is all about giving the buyer choices. Once the buyer has engaged and demonstrated a specific set of interests in certain products and services, the inside sales person can reach out and schedule appropriate conversations.

How can you make this happen? Here are four specific requirements companies need to fulfill in order to drive the digital prospecting process forward.

Companies need to have a clear content marketing strategy. A significant portion of the content marketing strategy needs to be about digital content. It is not just about your web site anymore. It is about what and how you share across multiple social channels, blogs, media and other content distributors in your industry to cast a much wider net.

There has to be a decent level of investment in automation. Now, I don’t mean automation just for the sake of automation. Instead, I’m suggesting companies take a careful look at their marketing and sales workflows and analyze how those two elements overlap, how they work together and how leads are generated and handed over. That entire process needs to be mapped and automated where it makes sense.

There have to be sales enablement tools that specifically provide content across the complete prospecting lifecycle. When a potential buyer engages with a company looking to buy, say, a specific technical solution, that buyer typically does not jump right into a specification sheet or a product brochure. Most likely the buyer will also go through use cases and try to figure out whether the company addresses certain core pain points before they delve into product features, details, etc. Once that discovery process has happened and the buyer has determined that there is a possible fit, then he/she will start digging deeper. This is where product demos, solution videos and other necessary elements become absolutely critical. Now, during this engagement process, if the salesperson is aware and interested and actively interacting with the buyer, then instead of being another pushy inside salesperson, that individual can evolve into a more consultative role, being present to answer questions a buyer may have but without necessarily trying to close the sale in a hurry.

The sales team needs to be retrained. The first three steps are about adjusting marketing strategy, deploying process automation and making content-based sales enablement tools available across the sales lifecycle. The last and most important step involves retraining the sales force. A lot of companies have a tendency to undertake massive restructuring and lay off sales people more or less randomly. The thinking seems to be that we don’t need to have such high costs for inside sales because the website will do everything. That approach is fundamentally wrong. If you have highly qualified, trained salespeople who know the details of your solutions and can answer prospects’ questions properly and with insight, your first step should be to determine which members of the sales force are “gatherers” and which are “hunters.” Once you know the profile and career objectives of each individual on your inside sales team, sort them out in a logical way. You can deploy the hunters—people who are capable of being solutions consultants—at the front end of the sales cycle. They cannot be pushy though. They will need to be inquisitive and try to determine where and how specific solutions might meet the prospect’s needs. People in this role will have a different type of profile than the gatherers, whose focus is on building and growing a relationship. This redeployment of the insides sales team based on individual profiles and career goals is quite critical in order to succeed in the new digital prospecting lifecycle.

Now, let’s take a step back and look at a possible transition plan. Today, if you have a large inside sales team but not enough content, your first step should be to put together a content marketing strategy. Remember, you cannot change your marketing lead flow overnight by transforming your content marketing. It is a long-term game. It will take you anywhere between 6 and 12 months to build a steady inflow of qualified leads. However, the great news is, as the lead inflow increases, your need to do outbound calling will also decrease. Not only that, but also for digital prospecting, the outbound calling tends to more focused on promotion and generating awareness of your content rather than on trying to push a buyer to a specific sales step such as setting up an appointment. So typically, outbound calling with digital prospecting means reaching out to prospects and asking questions. For example: “Hey, we’re calling from ABC Solutions. We were wondering whether you would be interested in attending a best practices seminar that addresses these two or three pain points.” If the prospects are interested, they will sign up. If they’re not interested, both parties move on. You can also create inbound flow from social media and create content based on optimizing keywords that will engage your potential buyers and drive traffic, both to your website and to your sales hotline.

Once this flow has been happening over a period of 12 months, you’re in a good position to deploy your inside sales team in a more logical fashion—based on what you have learned about who has which skills and where individuals want to go with their careers—and separate the gatherers from the hunters. This transition can create tremendous excitement within the organization. It can also go a long way toward mitigating the pervasive fear that workforces often experience, particularly the fear of change or fear of a reduction in the workforce—a step many companies mistakenly take, only to lose a large portion of their sales competencies that they built over a decade or more.

So, as we look back at digital prospecting, we realize it is not the same old thing. It is truly something new. It requires serious thinking about content marketing and it requires investment in automation, but only when you understand your marketing and sales process from the buyer’s perspective. It also requires realignment and redeployment of sales resources to provide a truly pleasant and highly engaging buying process for your prospects and buyers. When you get it right, however, digital prospecting will not only significantly reduce your overall sales costs but will also bring in significantly more visibility than the old ways of selling like cold calls and telemarketing to set up appointments, which rarely deliver in today’s marketplace.

For more information, please visit our website at https://www.zinfi.com.

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Over the past few decades, companies have invested considerable sums in building out an inside sales infrastructure. During this same period, we have also seen increases in demand for marketing automation. However, in many cases those two organizational investments have not come to fruition, and companies are asking whether they have the right investment mix to move forward as buying journey has changed completely over the past decade or so.We all know there has been a recent shift in the marketplace, a relatively new phenomenon in which buyers are going online, searching for what they’re interested in, doing research, finding possible vendors and then checking out vendors online to come up with a short list of who to call. That entire process used to be a function of the traditional sales process. An inside sales rep would call up a potential prospect—essentially a cold call—to set up an appointment designed to educate the buyer. Today, that entire buying process today is completely visible. It follows that the selling process also needs to be completely visible, especially when it comes to engaging with a potential buyer upfront during the buying cycle. This monumental shift has been happening quietly and steadily over the past decade and, as a result, telemarketing no longer works the way it used to. These days when a telemarketer calls a potential customer, the prospect hangs up on them 9 times out of 10. The remaining 10% who do accept the call are likely to get highly irritated that someone has called them during the middle of the day. This is where digital prospecting comes in.Digital prospecting is all about giving the buyer choices. Once the buyer has engaged and demonstrated a specific set of interests in certain products and services, the inside sales person can reach out and schedule appropriate conversations.How can you make this happen? Here are four specific requirements companies need to fulfill in order to drive the digital prospecting process forward.* Companies need to have a clear content marketing strategy. A significant portion of the content marketing strategy needs to be about digital content. It is not just about your web site anymore. It is about what and how you share across multiple social channels, blogs, media and other content distributors in your industry to cast a much wider net.* There has to be a decent level of investment in automation. Now, I don’t mean automation just for the sake of automation. Instead, I’m suggesting companies take a careful look at their marketing and sales workflows and analyze how those two elements overlap, how they work together and how leads are generated and handed over. That entire process needs to be mapped and automated where it makes sense.* There have to be sales enablement tools that specifically provide content across the complete prospecting lifecycle. When a potential buyer engages with a company looking to buy, say, a specific technical solution, that buyer typically does not jump right into a specification sheet or a product brochure. Most likely the buyer will also go through use cases and try to figure out whether the company addresses certain core pain points before they delve into product features, details, etc. Once that discovery process has happened and the buyer has determined that there is a possible fit, then he/she will start digging deeper. This is where product demos, solution videos and other necessary elements become absolutely critical. Now, during this engagement process, if the salesperson is aware and interested and actively interacting with the buyer, then instead of being another pushy inside salesperson, that individual can evolve into a more consultative role, being present to answer questions a buyer may have but without necessarily trying to close the sale in a hurry.* The sales team needs to be retrained.

Over the past few decades, companies have invested considerable sums in building out an inside sales infrastructure. During this same period, we have also seen increases in demand for marketing automation. However, in many cases those two organizational investments have not come to fruition, and companies are asking whether they have the right investment mix to move forward as buying journey has changed completely over the past decade or so.

We all know there has been a recent shift in the marketplace, a relatively new phenomenon in which buyers are going online, searching for what they’re interested in, doing research, finding possible vendors and then checking out vendors online to come up with a short list of who to call. That entire process used to be a function of the traditional sales process. An inside sales rep would call up a potential prospect—essentially a cold call—to set up an appointment designed to educate the buyer. Today, that entire buying process today is completely visible. It follows that the selling process also needs to be completely visible, especially when it comes to engaging with a potential buyer upfront during the buying cycle. This monumental shift has been happening quietly and steadily over the past decade and, as a result, telemarketing no longer works the way it used to. These days when a telemarketer calls a potential customer, the prospect hangs up on them 9 times out of 10. The remaining 10% who do accept the call are likely to get highly irritated that someone has called them during the middle of the day. This is where digital prospecting comes in.

Digital prospecting is all about giving the buyer choices. Once the buyer has engaged and demonstrated a specific set of interests in certain products and services, the inside sales person can reach out and schedule appropriate conversations.

How can you make this happen? Here are four specific requirements companies need to fulfill in order to drive the digital prospecting process forward.

* Companies need to have a clear content marketing strategy. A significant portion of the content marketing strategy needs to be about digital content. It is not just about your web site anymore. It is about what and how you share across multiple social channels, blogs, media and other content distributors in your industry to cast a much wider net.

* There has to be a decent level of investment in automation. Now, I don’t mean automation just for the sake of automation. Instead, I’m suggesting companies take a careful look at their marketing and sales workflows and analyze how those two elements overlap, how they work together and how leads are generated and handed over. That entire process needs to be mapped and automated where it makes sense.

* There have to be sales enablement tools that specifically provide content across the complete prospecting lifecycle. When a potential buyer engages with a company looking to buy, say, a specific technical solution, that buyer typically does not jump right into a specification sheet or a product brochure. Most likely the buyer will also go through use cases and try to figure out whether the company addresses certain core pain points before they delve into product features, details, etc. Once that discovery process has happened and the buyer has determined that there is a possible fit, then he/she will start digging deeper. This is where product demos, solution videos and other necessary elements become absolutely critical. Now, during this engagement process, if the salesperson is aware and interested and actively interacting with the buyer, then instead of being another pushy inside salesperson, that individual can evolve into a more consultative role, being present to answer questions a buyer may have but without necessarily trying to close the sale in a hurry.

* The sales team needs to be retrained.

Many vendors today are deploying channel marketing software solutions to drive partner marketing activities. The goal for this class of software is to get partners actively engaged in various channel programs and enable them to drive demand generation activities. However, there are multiple options available in the market today from as many as 30 different vendors, which makes it very hard for an organization to determine the core set of features they should look for. This article will explore 10 critical features a channel marketing software platform must have.Requirements* Portal content management. The goal for this capability is to allow an organization to set up a mobile-responsive, dynamic portal through which various assets and information can be communicated to partners that are in the channel program. Without a platform that can be completely localized across multiple countries and used in a mobile-responsive environment, the potential of a channel marketing software platform is rarely realized. It is perhaps the most important feature a organization must look for.* Campaign upload and setup. Once a dynamic portal has been set up, the next key area to focus on is the ability to upload campaign content that can allow the vendor to market to—as well as market through—their channel partners. Vendors considering an investment in a channel marketing software platform must ensure that any platform they evaluate has a dynamic content management system.* Single sign-on. A vendor may already have an existing infrastructure in place to which a current or new portal may need to connect, either temporarily or in the long term. Because of that, it is extremely important to provide unified access and a seamless user experience. The channel marketing software platform must be able to connect to existing infrastructure via a single sign-on mechanism.* CRM integration. Often an organization will have an existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management (CRM) infrastructure in place, which could be based on Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP or some other similar platform. The channel marketing software platform must be able to connect and integrate with any of these systems without a hitch. The data from the CRM system must be able to flow to the marketing software platform, and the activities being carried out by the channel partners must in turn be tracked and reported back to existing CRM infrastructure. Seamless integration at every step is absolutely essential.* Email marketing. When a vendor is trying to enable a group of partners with a set of channel marketing tools, one of the most important capabilities the channel marketing software must have is a multi-touch email marketing and nurturing feature. The email marketing engine should be configurable as a multi-touch tool, so when a prospect comes to a partner website and engages in some way, the system should be able to automatically send a follow-up email based specifically on the prospect’s activities. The email engine should also accommodate complete, dynamic co-branding capabilities so that a partner can easily edit existing content provided by the vendor and send out customized emails to prospects and the customer base in a few clicks.* Event marketing. Most partners today—particularly those selling in the B2B area, but also those selling in the B2C marketplace—put on events to market products and services. They may be small events in a lunch-and-learn format, or they may take the form of much larger consumer events like award shows and ceremonies, where the entire event needs to be dynamically managed.

Many vendors today are deploying channel marketing software solutions to drive partner marketing activities. The goal for this class of software is to get partners actively engaged in various channel programs and enable them to drive demand generation activities. However, there are multiple options available in the market today from as many as 30 different vendors, which makes it very hard for an organization to determine the core set of features they should look for. This article will explore 10 critical features a channel marketing software platform must have.

Requirements

* Portal content management. The goal for this capability is to allow an organization to set up a mobile-responsive, dynamic portal through which various assets and information can be communicated to partners that are in the channel program. Without a platform that can be completely localized across multiple countries and used in a mobile-responsive environment, the potential of a channel marketing software platform is rarely realized. It is perhaps the most important feature a organization must look for.

* Campaign upload and setup. Once a dynamic portal has been set up, the next key area to focus on is the ability to upload campaign content that can allow the vendor to market to—as well as market through—their channel partners. Vendors considering an investment in a channel marketing software platform must ensure that any platform they evaluate has a dynamic content management system.

* Single sign-on. A vendor may already have an existing infrastructure in place to which a current or new portal may need to connect, either temporarily or in the long term. Because of that, it is extremely important to provide unified access and a seamless user experience. The channel marketing software platform must be able to connect to existing infrastructure via a single sign-on mechanism.

* CRM integration. Often an organization will have an existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management (CRM) infrastructure in place, which could be based on Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP or some other similar platform. The channel marketing software platform must be able to connect and integrate with any of these systems without a hitch. The data from the CRM system must be able to flow to the marketing software platform, and the activities being carried out by the channel partners must in turn be tracked and reported back to existing CRM infrastructure. Seamless integration at every step is absolutely essential.

* Email marketing. When a vendor is trying to enable a group of partners with a set of channel marketing tools, one of the most important capabilities the channel marketing software must have is a multi-touch email marketing and nurturing feature. The email marketing engine should be configurable as a multi-touch tool, so when a prospect comes to a partner website and engages in some way, the system should be able to automatically send a follow-up email based specifically on the prospect’s activities. The email engine should also accommodate complete, dynamic co-branding capabilities so that a partner can easily edit existing content provided by the vendor and send out customized emails to prospects and the customer base in a few clicks.

* Event marketing. Most partners today—particularly those selling in the B2B area, but also those selling in the B2C marketplace—put on events to market products and services. They may be small events in a lunch-and-learn format, or they may take the form of much larger consumer events like award shows and ceremonies,

Many vendors today are deploying channel marketing software solutions to drive partner marketing activities. The goal for this class of software is to get partners actively engaged in various channel programs and enable them to drive demand generation activities. However, there are multiple options available in the market today from as many as 30 different vendors, which makes it very hard for an organization to determine the core set of features they should look for. This article will explore 10 critical features a channel marketing software platform must have.

Requirements

Portal content management. The goal for this capability is to allow an organization to set up a mobile-responsive, dynamic portal through which various assets and information can be communicated to partners that are in the channel program. Without a platform that can be completely localized across multiple countries and used in a mobile-responsive environment, the potential of a channel marketing software platform is rarely realized. It is perhaps the most important feature a organization must look for.

Campaign upload and setup. Once a dynamic portal has been set up, the next key area to focus on is the ability to upload campaign content that can allow the vendor to market to—as well as market through—their channel partners. Vendors considering an investment in a channel marketing software platform must ensure that any platform they evaluate has a dynamic content management system.

Single sign-on. A vendor may already have an existing infrastructure in place to which a current or new portal may need to connect, either temporarily or in the long term. Because of that, it is extremely important to provide unified access and a seamless user experience. The channel marketing software platform must be able to connect to existing infrastructure via a single sign-on mechanism.

CRM integration. Often an organization will have an existing enterprise resource planning (ERP) or customer relationship management (CRM) infrastructure in place, which could be based on Salesforce.com, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, SAP or some other similar platform. The channel marketing software platform must be able to connect and integrate with any of these systems without a hitch. The data from the CRM system must be able to flow to the marketing software platform, and the activities being carried out by the channel partners must in turn be tracked and reported back to existing CRM infrastructure. Seamless integration at every step is absolutely essential.

Email marketing. When a vendor is trying to enable a group of partners with a set of channel marketing tools, one of the most important capabilities the channel marketing software must have is a multi-touch email marketing and nurturing feature. The email marketing engine should be configurable as a multi-touch tool, so when a prospect comes to a partner website and engages in some way, the system should be able to automatically send a follow-up email based specifically on the prospect’s activities. The email engine should also accommodate complete, dynamic co-branding capabilities so that a partner can easily edit existing content provided by the vendor and send out customized emails to prospects and the customer base in a few clicks.

Event marketing. Most partners today—particularly those selling in the B2B area, but also those selling in the B2C marketplace—put on events to market products and services. They may be small events in a lunch-and-learn format, or they may take the form of much larger consumer events like award shows and ceremonies, where the entire event needs to be dynamically managed. In the latter case especially, the partner may end up using all the vendor’s campaign assets, but it can be difficult for the partner to co-brand that material and customize the launch and event, as well as manage it successfully in an integrated way. Good channel marketing software can do this, but the platform must be designed to provide a seamless, end-to-end event management capability whereby the partner can take the campaign assets provided by the vendor and easily co-brand them and manage a multi-touch event campaign.

Search and social marketing. With social media now proliferating through every phase of the customer engagement cycle, it is very important for vendors to provide their partners with social marketing capabilities. The channel marketing software platform must have those capabilities. In addition, the platform should also be able to connect to existing Google AdWords or other social media advertising mechanisms in which integrated search marketing campaigns can be carried out.

Content syndication. The next most important feature for a channel marketing software platform is the capability for a vendor to provide content—whether it’s product showcasing, news, events, release announcements or blog content—into a continuous stream that the partner can syndicate content through their own website with a few clicks. The ability to provide meaningful content to partner websites allows the vendor to leverage a large network of partners and reach out to hundreds of thousands of end users, extending their the reach and their branding capabilities.

Deal registration. The platform should also have a CRM capability that allows partners to upload their list, run campaigns using the platform’s campaign tools and tactics, convert a lead into an opportunity and register it as a deal, and then report it back to the vendor. We’ve already talked about how the channel marketing software platform needs to be able to connect to existing infrastructure both through single sign-on and through CRM integration. In that deployment configuration, the data from the partner account in the channel marketing software platform should be able to flow back seamlessly to the vendor’s existing CRM system.

Rewards and rebates. Even though this function is technically in the domain of partner relationship management (an area where unified partner management is also evolving), some basic tools for providing rewards and rebates through the channel marketing platform can be very helpful.

Summary

As partner marketing has evolved over the last decade or so, and more vendors are consider providing channel marketing software to enable partners to effectively engage, increase awareness, and deploy successful campaigns and programs, it’s essential to make sure the channel marketing platform has a core set of features. Before you rush out to deploy, the best option would be to evaluate the top two or three vendors in this space, like ZINFI, and then perform a side-by-side analysis to determine exactly what each vendor can offer in each of these key areas.

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Vendors selling to a channel need to enable their channel partners to generate and drive channel partners. This has been a challenge for almost all vendors, whether they are selling to vendors or consumers. While partners are a great fulfillment arm, few of them generate enough leads to drive demand on their own. To address the problem more companies over the past few years have been deploying channel automation platforms. However, the adoption of these platforms in the channel has been quite poor, and this has led to a lot of speculation and frustration. It has also led a number of companies to switch providers of channel marketing automation platforms, thinking that the move from one platform to another might help them attain higher levels of adoption. However, the issues generally lie elsewhere. Yes, the channel marketing automation platform needs to be robust, scalable, easy to use, etc., but only rarely is the failure to achieve widespread adoption of automation in the channel tied directly to the channel automation platform itself. In this article we will explore the core issues that underlie channel marketing automation adoption and outline steps vendors can take to generate ROI from the investment they are making in channel marketing automation platforms.

Challenges

Lack of partner resources. Most channel partners have neither resident marketing experts nor sufficient resources to create and execute campaigns on their own. As a result of that, most marketing channel automation platforms that are introduced into the channel are simply not used. The problem is not that the platforms are difficult to use, but that partners don’t have the resources—namely, time—to sit down and learn a tool and then go execute a campaign or a program. Also, in the case of large partners that do have sufficient resources, often those resources go into vendor management and relationship management rather than into the proper use of channel management automation software.

Lack of horizontal campaigns. Vendors typically deploy a marketing channel automation platform with new or niche products. Partners, on the other hand, generally do not want to squander whatever limited time and resources they have on programs that are not time-tested. In fact, one of the main challenges in spurring adoption of channel management automation is that deployment is often tested with campaigns that lack excitement on the partner side.

Lack of partner incentives. Vendors will often have several campaigns, assets, etc. uploaded on the marketing automation platform, but without aligning any specific incentives with those campaigns. As a result, partners fail to see the benefits of putting in all the hard work of executing a campaign when the easiest thing they can do is just have the vendors hand over qualified leads. From the partner perspective, that’s a more efficient way to go.

Lack of internal organizational alignment. It’s quite common in many organizations for the internal sales team or channel account management team or partner business management team not to be fully aligned with the channel marketing management automation system. In those cases, even when marketers load up a campaign on the platform, without inside sales or channel sales buy-in the campaign doesn’t go anywhere and the channel marketing platform is rarely discussed in a face-to-face partner meeting or in a phone conversation. As a result, channel marketing automation remains a “sidebar” conversation rather than a mainstream focus.

Lack of public celebration. Most vendors have annual partner conferences where they try to promote the use of the channel marketing automation platform. However, most partners attending such conferences choose to attend such events for other reasons. Very rarely do they attend in order to check out all the cool features and functionality of a channel marketing automation tool, or to investigate the campaigns in such a tool or the services provided around it. Thus, the platform rarely gets promoted properly. Also, organizations do not necessarily celebrate the use of the platform to access such campaigns or assets in a global format—drawing attention to the fact that partners who are using it are actually getting good results.

Solutions

How do we overcome these barriers to the adoption of partner marketing automation?

Deployment of partner marketing concierge services. Because partners typically lack extensive marketing resources, one of the most important things for vendors to budget for and invest in is shared marketing resources that partners can use in bite sizes (read our article - How to Provide Partner Marketing Concierge Help in Bite-Sized Chunks). Many vendors or organizations selling to the channel try to save money in this area, asking the internal sales people or the account management team to become the marketing concierge arm of the organization. This is an absolute failure in the making, because most of the time the sales teams are too busy executing their own goals and objectives, and don’t have time to go learn a tool or a set of campaigns and thereby drive automation of the channel marketing automation platform by partners. Thus, a critical success factor in adoption of the channel marketing tools is either outsourcing to a third-party concierge service or providing concierge services internally.

Quarterly updates of campaigns around products that sell. It’s incredibly important to have fresh campaigns available—at least two to three campaigns per $100 million of business the channel is doing on a quarterly basis. Why that number? For every large organization, a typical product line varies between $100 million to $200 million. From a solutions selling perspective, if there is a quarterly refresh going on—perhaps the product is getting upgraded or there’s a pricing change or a promotion—there is something that can be loaded onto the platform that a partner can use to drive communication and lead generation from the company’s installed base and potential prospect base.

Alignment of partner incentives. As we touched on before, aligning partner rewards, rebates or market development funds (MDF) behind the adoption strategy of the channel marketing automation platform is absolutely critical. Let’s say a vendor has a program focused on driving upgrades of existing software. When the vendor rolls out that program, it is also essential to make sure that the MDF—whether for telemarketing or event marketing or online, search and social marketing—are available for partners to use and align with their own interests, so they can tap into the funds to drive execution. In this case, marketing partner concierges from a third-party agency could offer substantial help, taking advantage of the marketing services agency’s infrastructure. On top of that, if there are sales rewards whereby partner sales reps get additional incentives to sell and close deals, as well as additional backend rebates for partners, then the entire organization can be fully aligned behind driving a campaign within the marketing automation platform. This is another area where partner marketing concierges can help by coming in and educating partners, letting them know what campaigns they can pick and where their company can get extra rebates or margin, and explaining how their the partner’s reps can get reward dollars or loyalty points.

Celebrating success widely. We’ve already talked about this as a major challenge to adoption. But addressing the challenge is not difficult. A quarterly webinar sharing where partners have used certain campaigns, how they have generated hot leads in the pipeline, how they have closed leads, how many leads they have closed and what the largest deals or opportunities are can have a huge impact in promoting the efficacy of the channel marketing automation platform in driving demand. This is not a lot of work, and a partner marketing concierge can easily do it, but it can have a significant impact in building credibility in the channel, as well as aligning the sales team from within to make sure they’re actually seeing results from the investment that the channel marketing team is driving. Finally, when considering how to celebrate success, the organization also needs to reward employees internally—whether it’s a channel account manager or a channel business manager—for the right behavior in driving demand using the right tools and the right campaigns in the right way.

Yes, it can be hard to drive adoption of the channel marketing automation platform in the channel. However, it can be accomplished with a systematic approach. Certainly the barriers I’ve mentioned above might give rise to perceptions that the challenges are daunting, but the solutions I’ve suggested are straightforward and attainable, and any organization can deploy them in 90 to 180 days. One last tip: When deploying a marketing automation platform, the organization must start with a single region only. There is likely to be internal pressure to roll out a platform globally very quickly. However, without the alignment of partner marketing concierges, quarterly refresh of campaigns, partner alignment with incentives, alignment of account management infrastructure, and without figuring out meaningful ways to celebrate success, the results from one region may not be compelling enough to drive adoption in other regions. On the other hand, if the vendor is successful in adopting the platform in that first region, other regions can easily be convinced to follow suit and replicate the execution model by looking at what’s working and by localizing campaigns and incentive structures for a specific region or country.

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