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

2. Foundational Marketing: The Buyers Journey
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: The Buyers Journey
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.

3. 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, and delivering the right messages at the right time
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.  

4. How to use this workshop
Trainer Guidance
If using as individual modules omit this slide.
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

5. The buyer’s journey Delivering the right messages at the right time

6. The cloud buyer’s journey
Trainer Guidance
Introduce the buyer’s journey. Explain that there are different phases or stages buyers progress through in their buying process and our role is to nurture them along that journey.
The cloud buyer’s journey
The research firm IDC identified the stages a buyer goes through in making buying decisions. Similar to what is called the sales cycle, this model provides guidance as to what the buyer is concerned about through the various stages. Our goal is to nurture them through the various stages using appropriate messaging and content.

7. Nurturing prospects along their journey
Prospect & client acquisition
The first 3 phases – Explore, Evaluate, and Purchase - are all focused on Prospective clients.
Explore: At this stage, prospects have a business challenge and are looking for solutions. Their goals could include lowering costs, raising productivity and/or responding to competition in their own market. They’re looking for information, so partners need to clearly communicate to that prospective client what their unique value proposition is. And be very specific! As prospects search, they use keywords specific to their needs, so focus on business segment and vertical as much as you’re able.
Evaluation: The prospect is validating sellers by taking demos, following references, and enlisting in product trials. Partners want to get to know and keep track of those prospects s and find good points of intersection. At this stage, the prospect may share information with the partner – this is where you begin to get to know the prospects and can ensure your messages to them are relevant and valuable.
Purchase: The prospect is ready to commit and become a client. This is a great spot for partners to provide testimonials, quotes, ROI tools, case studies, whatever the prospect needs to tip them over the edge.

8. Nurturing clients along their journey
Client retention & growth
The next 3 phases are focused on what happens once they are clients.
Expansion: On-boarding, driving consumption and growth. The prospect has purchased and is now a client that is using the solution. Now they’re ready to move from pilot to company-wide rollout, for example. At this point, partners should consider providing best practices to drive success, plus leveraging your service, sales and marketing staff to help cross- and up-sell into happy accounts.
Renewal: The client is reviewing to decide whether to continue the relationship. A key insight from successful cloud partners was to reach out and check in with your clients starting 90 days in advance of renewal and make sure all outstanding issues are resolved and avenues for cross-sell or up-sell are addressed. Don’t leave renewal to billing or auto-renewal.
Advocacy. The client loves you! They want to be an advocate for you, so let them: make your client the hero in your marketing. Get testimonials, case studies, and shout outs on social media.

9. Different marketing materials for each stage
Tweak your messaging and content depending on where the recipient is along this journey. In this manner you can fine tune your messaging so you can use to help nurture prospects into clients and clients into long term business relationships. This leads directly to how you can make the quality of your client’s experience with you to be a fantastic one. Look to each stage of the buyer’s journey and determine how you can improve the experience. Then look at the complete journey and see the experience from the client’s viewpoint. Throw in some problems, learnings, and questions and see how it's handled by your team. It's no longer great service that defines a great relationship and retention but the whole of the experience. For example how can you make a prospect’s experience during the Evaluate stage exceptional? One idea is to make sure your website is easy to navigate and self-explanatory, with plenty of thought leadership documents to download.

10. Cloud buyer’s goals per stage
Trainer Guidance
This chart helps us understand the buyer’s goals for each stage of the journey. Review each.
Cloud buyer’s goals per stage
During each stage of the journey, the buyer has different goals and concerns. By understanding these, you can begin to think about what types of messaging and content you might need for each stage.
During the Explore stage, prospects are looking for solutions to business challenges. Your website and content should help prospects find you and communicate that you can help solve their challenges.
During the Evaluate stage they are comparing solutions and vendors. Solution demonstrations and trials give the prospect the ability to “touch and feel” the solutions. References from clients help convince the prospect to work with you as opposed to another partner.
The Purchase stage is the transition from prospect to client. During this period tools to help them commit and sell the decision internally are useful.
During the Expand phase, additional functionality and more users can be added. Use cross selling and upselling techniques during this phase.
During the Renew phase, satisfaction with the solutions and provider are evaluated. Don’t wait until the renewal date to focus on this. Begin early, resolve any outstanding issues and then focus on getting them to commit to another year or more.
The Advocacy phase is when the relationship shifts from vendor & buyer to a more strategic partnership. This is the time to develop case studies, get testimonials and references, ask for referrals and joint speaking engagements. See the module on Advocacy to learn more.
You want to have appropriate content for each stage of the journey for each persona. Use that content to nurture them along each stage.

11. Nurture marketing Communications for creating long term relationships
Trainer Guidance
You might ask if anyone has heard of, or is using Nurture Marketing techniques.
Nurture marketing
Communications for creating long term relationships
Credibility
Trust
Thought leadership
How?
Personalized communications
Educating rather than selling
Education imprints you and your company in their mind
Nurturing leads through each stage of the journey
To help move prospects and clients along each stage of the journey, use nurture marketing techniques and principles
What is Nurture Marketing? It’s about establishing and maintaining top-of-mind awareness and being viewed as a thought leader. It’s about your clients’ perception of your credibility and trustworthiness. It’s about being the indispensable resource they need and want. This is what creates long term relationships.
To do this you use personalized communications and focus on educating rather than selling. It's very much like hydroponics. For each plant the perfect nutrient formula is calculated and dripped directly onto the roots. Like hydroponics, Nurture Marketing, when coupled with the buyer’s journey, allows you to deliver the right message, for the right persona, at the right time.
The lessons of Nurture Marketing help us understand that not every prospect is right for your company. This can be due to a number of factors including budget, timing, need, and responsibility. When the right people are identified, Nurture teaches us that your message needs to be tailored to the buyer persona within your target and delivered at the right time. Timing in marketing is everything.
Nurture Marketing recognizes this and understands that it’s nearly impossible to time when a person will be ready to buy. Over 70% of people who have a business problem that needs a solution will buy anywhere from now up to 3 years from now. Nurture Marketing utilizes all the tools that marketers have available to keep top-of-mind, teach, identify buying behaviors, and demonstrate thought leadership to the point when a prospect is ready to buy and to enter the sales closing process. Tools include Social Networking, digital marketing, content marketing, and marketing automation to gauge when the time is right.

12. The Pillars of Nurture Marketing
Trainer Guidance
Describe each of the pillars
The Pillars of Nurture Marketing
Reciprocity
Persistence
Consistency
Ethics
Rapport
Nurture Marketing is a discipline that Jim Cecil (Chairman Emeritus of Nurture Marketing) developed over 20 years ago with Microsoft. It positions partners as expert advisors on topical challenges—as well as providers of solutions to those challenges—from the early stages of potential buyers’ journeys. Partners become a valuable resource to prospects well before they become clients, laying the groundwork for trust and long-term relationships.
Nurture Marketing is built upon 5 key principles:
Reciprocity – Nurture is about giving without expecting anything in return. By volunteering your thought leadership through social media, blogging, website, and downloads of problem-solving content you are giving. Human nature tells us when someone receives something that they view as valuable it’s only a matter of time to when they will want to repay your generosity.
Persistence – Since timing is almost impossible to predict, a Nurture Marketing campaign must be long term, so when somebody is ready to buy, your company, products, and services are top of mind with the persona. By understanding the buyer’s journey, Nurture provides the thought leadership content that supports each stage to the eventual sale. In the cloud era, even after the sale it’s important to Nurture the relationship through each and every renewal and upgrade.
Consistency – Content provided throughout the buyer’s journey should consistently represent your brand. Tone, logos, culture, and even your corporate colors should be consistent whenever you communicate with a prospect and client. This is important in maintaining a memory anchor so each message is remembered as being from your company no matter where a client hears about your company.
Ethics – Central to Nurture Marketing is that you honestly represent your brand and, if your not capable of delivering a solution, you’re honest about what you can and cannot do.
Rapport – People like doing business with people they identify with; therefore accurately conveying your company culture will deliver clients for the long term. This is especially important in the cloud era where switching to another cloud provider is not difficult.

13. Putting all this together
For the personas identified in Buyer Personas module
How will you engage & nurture each of them along each stage of the journey?
See the Content Marketing module for content planning
See the Advocacy module for testimonials, references and case studies
Other modules in the workbook will provide insight and ideas on how to create assets

14. Trainer Guidance
This worksheet can be begun in class if time permits, otherwise have students do this after class. In all cases show them the example on the next slide
Individual activity
Identify how you will nurture each persona along the journey
You need specific assets, actions, and tactics to nurture buyers along the journey. This worksheet will help you plan how to do this.

15. Example Trainer Guidance
This is an example of some tactics you may use for each stage of the journey based on the Hannah HR persona from the Buyer Personas module
Example
Personas
Explore
Evaluate
Purchase
Expand
Renew
Advocate
Hannah HR
Specific web site pages, search optimization, Pay-Per-Click campaign, blogging
30 day free product trial and client testimonials
Create a return on investment document regarding the value of saving days of work each year
Teach client employees how to use self-service access to their HR benefit information
Set calendar reminder to meet with client 90 days before renewal date.
Ask client for referrals, testimonials, case study, joint speaking engagement at an HR conference
For each persona and for each stage of the journey, identify the assets, actions, and tactics you can use to help nurture them along their journey.
In this example we used the persona we identified as Hannah HR’s Frictionless Fridays in the Buyer Personas module. Some tactics may be applicable to all the personas you identify in your business, such as using your website and blog to attract prospects during the Explore stage. Others, such as a 30 day free trial may not be applicable to all.

16. Worksheet Personas Explore Evaluate Purchase Expand Renew Advocate
Use this worksheet for your own business. For each persona and for each stage of the journey, identify the assets and actions you can use to help nurture them along their journey.
You may not have all the assets needed for each stage, in which case you will have to plan on creating them.
See the Content Marketing module for content planning and the Advocacy module for how to get testimonials, references and case studies.
Other modules in the workbook will provide insight and ideas as to how to create these assets.

17. Review There are six stages of the buyer’s journey
Trainer Guidance
Review what was covered in this section. You can add other items to this list. The diagram below is for reference.
Review
There are six stages of the buyer’s journey
First three are about prospect & client acquisition
The next three are about client retention & growth
You need specific content and messaging for each stage of the journey, for each persona
Nurture marketing helps move them along the stages

18. Partner resources to use
Marketing helpdesk: your marketing questions to the workshop developers
Smart Partner Marketing
Microsoft value props partners can use
Marketing planner tool
Partner Marketing Center Ready To Go Marketing
aka.ms/pmc
readytogo.microsoft.com
ModernBiz campaigns
aka.ms/modernbiz
Workshop feedback and questions