Providing a Stellar Experience for Your Channel Partners
Welcome back to SproutLoud’s Distributed Marketing Jobs to Be Done newsletter. We explore how you can use software to accomplish the jobs that need to be done to deliver exceptional distributed marketing results.
We’ve done hundreds of Jobs to Be Done interviews with customers to get to the root cause of their challenges and build effective solutions. This bi-monthly newsletter is intended to help you understand these challenges and solutions while learning more about SproutLoud technology.
We understand the problem: Unhappy local partners or employees. Complaints.
Unhappy local users typically mean a lack of engagement is affecting your sales and marketing objectives.
In this issue, we explore 5 common obstacles to delivering exceptional experiences to your channel partners through your distributed marketing programs:
- Disparate tools
- Inconsistent support channels
- Lack of integration
- Waiting for money
- Complicated processes
Obstacle 1: Disparate tools
How does this affect channel partner satisfaction, engagement and adoption with my programs?
A: Disparate tools, usually referred to as single point solutions, means that your local users are engaging with many different software applications.
Disparate tools means different user experiences, more systems to learn and manage, and most importantly: disparate data silos. This increases frustration and confusion among local users when they try to deploy your sales and marketing content locally.
SproutLoud’s platform unifies disparate point solutions into one application, so local users have one centralized location where they can find all the content they need, deploy content in their local markets and receive unified insight into marketing performance.
Obstacle 2: Inconsistent support channels
How does this affect channel partner satisfaction, engagement and adoption with my programs?
A: Disparate tools usually result in inconsistent support channels. Nothing kills your local user experience like having to go to different customer support avenues to get answers.
Imagine if you called your marketing agency, and they gave you 10 different phone numbers based on how they categorized the kind of support you needed.
In a world where marketing needs to be connected and centralized for proper advice and account management, why offer something different to your local users?
SproutLoud provides a unified support structure so local users have one company to provide stellar customer support for all things marketing.
Obstacle 3: Lack of integration
How does this affect channel partner satisfaction, engagement, and adoption with my programs?
A: If your local users are independent channel partners, they have their own marketing stacks too. If local users are brand employees, chances are they use a centralized set of tools.
In either case, local users don’t want to be mired in manual processes to make their marketing work. It’s best to think about the integrations needed to support good, quality, turnkey marketing that targets their local prospects and customers.
SproutLoud integrations support a growing roster of connectors and third-party applications that eliminate manual processes and automate data flow for both local users and Enterprise brands that need to collaborate on local marketing.
Obstacle 4: Waiting for money
How does this affect channel partner satisfaction, engagement and adoption with my programs?
A: Local users often have to wait for money to be reimbursed on ads they have already placed in market. In particular, channel partners, who may be financing ads with credit cards or other ways, may not have the ability to fund additional advertisements until they are repaid. And this inhibits their ability to participate in additional Co-Op Marketing or MDF programs.
SproutLoud’s co-pay technology eliminates this issue, enabling local users to pay only their share, while the Enterprise brand pays its share in real time — no delays, no wait time.
Obstacle 5: Complicated processes
How does this affect channel partner satisfaction, engagement and adoption with my programs?
A: Local partners are your frontline in sales, marketing and customer support to the end users of your brand’s products and services. Complicated processes create inefficiencies and workflow bottlenecks that leave everyone frustrated.
The SproutLoud platform automates processes — such as creative approvals, content management and the allocation of funds — into consistent, easy-to-understand workflows designed to drive more adoption, satisfaction and engagement with Brand-to-Local Marketing.
