Smart Partner Marketing Workshops Trainer Guidance See the Presenter Guide for class / workshop setup Smart Partner Marketing Workshops

Foundational Marketing: How to Tell Your Story Trainer Guidance Discuss goals for this workshop Ask students: What are your goals? What do you want to accomplish? Also describe your goals for the students Our goals? Help partners increase their marketing skills to flourish in the cloud era Foundational Marketing: How to Tell Your Story This workshop will guide you through marketing in the cloud era by introducing modern marketing concepts and techniques that will be the foundation of your marketing efforts. We will focus on how to use marketing to grow your business. To do that you will define, revisit, and refresh who you are selling to, who you want to sell to, and why they will want to buy from you. This workshop is the first in this series of hands-on workshops. It and all the others are designed to be actionable. In our time together today, we will be using a combination of learning and practice to help you gain the skills and knowledge for you to take action and move forward with your own marketing campaigns.

Topics in this workshop Trainer Guidance Omit any items not on the agenda for the workshop you’re presenting Describe each item. How to tell your story Content marketing Advocacy Build your marketing plan Cloud challenges & opportunities Buyer personas & best clients The buyer’s journey Competitive differentiators Value propositions & elevator pitches Cloud challenges and opportunities – The current environment and why marketing is so important Buyer personas & cloning your best clients – Who are you selling to and who do you want to sell to? The buyer’s journey – Understanding the client lifecycle – the steps to a sale and after the sale Competitive differentiators - What makes you different? What makes you stand out? Value propositions & elevator pitches – What do you have to offer prospect and clients? What is your Wow factor? How to tell your story – Getting your messages and content right for your audience Content marketing – Using content to nurture prospects and clients along the buyer’s journey Advocacy - Making clients the focus of your marketing Build your marketing plan - Putting this all together   During this session we are going to focus on the strategic and tactic plans to deliver results. Bottom-line, if marketing is not delivering leads it’s not doing its job.  

How to use this workshop Trainer Guidance Describe workshop event to students Draw their attention to the workbook Some worksheets will be used in class Some will be used on your own off-line Some will need input from your staff You will learn concepts and ideas today We will practice using some of them as well. Don’t stop there. Continue to use the workbook after class to take action Class learning & practice Workbook after class We will use some of the worksheets in the workbook together, while some you’ll use after the class to create your own comprehensive marketing plan. In some cases, you will want to get input from your staff to complete the worksheet activities. These worksheets build upon each other. The information you derive from each worksheet will help complete a piece of the information needed to develop plans and take action. The worksheets are not complex or difficult. But you will have to think about the items the worksheets call for, so you can create the marketing plans that work best for your business. Digital marketing skills

How to tell your story Everyone loves a good story

Trainer Guidance Read the quote by Mark Twain, the American writer, entrepreneur, publisher and lecturer. I like a good story well told. That is the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself. - Mark Twain

Storytelling Everyone loves a good story Trainer Guidance Storytelling is one great way to communicate. It makes marketing more personal and memorable Storytelling Everyone loves a good story Stories make marketing personal and memorable People remember stories much more than statistics Everyone loves a good story. Storytelling can help you craft a compelling answer to marketing's toughest questions: who are you and what do you do? Think about how to tell your story so it’s interesting and draws your audience in. Storytelling can be an effective marketing tool no matter the venue, speeches, sales presentations, website copy, social media postings, articles, white papers, and e-mail campaigns. Stories can be short to illustrate a point or can be a central theme throughout a multi-step digital campaign or an entire website. Stories hold the interest of the audience and create a “memory anchor” to remember key points that you want to teach. Remember that stories can be told in pictures and video as well as writing great prose. Before you craft your story look at your audience. Who will you be speaking to? If your audience is mostly technical people, tell your story from their point of view. If it’s a business audience, keep the technical part of your story to a high level and speak to topics that interest your business audience. As we already discussed, cloud applications are frequently sold to the business buyer with help from your client’s technical team. Always speak to the decision maker in your audience, gearing your discussion to their level.

Example: Michael Dell, Dell Computers Trainer Guidance This and the next slide have good examples of stories. Example: Michael Dell, Dell Computers Fascinated by computers, he got his first one at age 15 and immediately took it apart to see how it worked. In college he sold computers and upgrades to other students from his college room. He did so well he dropped out to form his company. This story is a lot more interesting and memorable than “Computers looked like a good opportunity to make money so I started a business.”

This is a good partner story Trainer Guidance This is a good partner story Interknowlogy is a partner company that describes itself as “a think tank of makers who create for all digital surfaces” They’ve done a good job of storytelling. Here are a few excerpts from their “About” page "I love working with our customers to help them dream beyond what they thought was possible. Infusing an org with new tech, process, and raw ideas is always exciting. I also love working with our InterKnowlogists - their passion for tech combined with delivery gives me tremendous confidence in our ability to execute quickly. I've been in front of computer for more than 30 years and I've seen many changes in the industry. I've led hundreds of projects and worked with thousands of different customers. I guess that's why I have so much gray hair, but there's no greater pleasure than enjoying coming to work each day. - Rodney Guzman, Founder/Chief UX Designer & Architect "I love software and what excites me the most is innovation. We’ll always have that cutting edge component to us. And I am very proud of that because, clearly, I love the cutting edge. I love our laser focus on User Experience. We have always been a firm who does beautiful engineering under the hood. For the last many years we have focused on the Natural User Interface, NUI, and you can argue we are one of the best above the hood too.“ - Tim Huckaby, Founder/Chairman Interknowlogy

Good storytelling What do you want them to learn from the story? What do you want them to think and feel? What actions do you want them to take? Make stories a part of your brand What do you and your company stand for? What are the components of good story telling? Your story should be simple and easy to understand. Your story should be geared to the heart (emotional) and to the head (thought). Your stories should be real based upon first-hand experience, things you actually experienced. Use examples to help make your story real. Written, images, video, or spoken, your story should have a great headline or title, designed to catch your audience’s attention. Before you think about telling your story, think about the moral of the story or what you want your audience to take away after listening and remembering what you had to say. After listening to your story, what do you want them to think/feel about you and your company and, if the story involves a call to action, what actions do you want them to take after listening to your story.

You don’t need to invent stories to tell You don’t need to invent stories to tell. Just tell the stories about what you’ve invented Trainer Guidance How to decide which stories to tell How do you make up a story to use? Don’t! You don’t need to invent stories. Tell the stories about what you’ve invented Why did you start your business? What inspired you? How did you get started? What problems were you trying to solve? What problems have you solved? Specific client stories are better than generic stories Let your personality shine through Tell without selling

Trainer Guidance Emphasize the importance of using the vocabulary that resonates with your target market Use the right voice Deliver the right message To the right persona At the right time Use the language of business Use the vocabulary of their industry Focus on what’s important to them Describe the problems you solve You have to know and understand your audience. To be successful, they also have to understand you. Therefore, you want to use the same language. We’re not referring to French, English, Spanish or Chinese. It’s about the right vocabulary and the right voice. Unless you are talking with a technologist, it’s most than likely your buyer will talk in the language of business. You want to do the same. What do they care about? Usually they have a business problem they are trying to solve. You want to express how you can solve their business problems. If they are in a specific vertical market, know, understand and use the vocabulary of their industry. Don’t fake it – learn it! Become an expert in that industry.

Where should you use story telling? Your websites “About” page should tell your story Blogs, videos, and social media are good venues Case studies and client successes are great places to tell stories! Where should you use story telling? Certainly your website and About pages. You should use them in your blogs and social media. These are always more interesting when they have more personal points of view. Video is an excellent medium to use. Your case studies of client successes are excellent places to use story telling. See the section on Advocacy for more about case studies and making the client the focus on your marketing.

Review Stories make marketing personal and memorable They convey what you want people to think and feel Use the stories you already have In web sites, blogs, case studies Use the vocabulary of your audience and industry

Partner resources to use Marketing helpdesk: Email your marketing questions to the workshop developers SPMhelp@afcsgroup.com Smart Partner Marketing http://smartpartnermarketing.microsoft.com Microsoft value props partners can use https://partner.microsoft.com/en-US/Marketing/compete Marketing planner tool https://partnermarketingplan.microsoft.com Partner Marketing Center Ready To Go Marketing aka.ms/pmc readytogo.microsoft.com ModernBiz campaigns aka.ms/modernbiz Workshop feedback and questions SPMworkshops@afcsgroup.com