SOUTHERN AFRICA
Channel Partner Marketing Roadshow 2018
Dates: 15th January to 15th February. Best time to discuss, as its a new year, fresh budgets, and many will want to make improvements for 2018.
Number of Meetings: Between 10 & 25. Minimum 10. Dependant on partners willingness to meet. The focus must be on seeing as many as we can, regardless of whether they are active or not.
Reason for the Roadshow...
As we have seen over the past year, every channel partner has very unique requirements. Some service small regions, others larger ones, but all have one thing in common, they need a custom solution that allows them to overcome the challenges their regions present, and ultimately grow their businesses.
In the African market, we believe the best way to achieve this, is to personally go out and see each one, face-to-face. Sitting down with them to discuss their unique challenges, what they want to achieve, and building a personal rapport, is crucial for us to be able to demonstrate how we can be of assistance, are flexible to their needs, and provide them with a creative, localised, and effective solution, that works for them.
Our Goals...
1. Show that we are here to work with them and not against them. The program and what it is trying to achieve is not completely understood by all of the partners. Meeting with them face-to-face allows us to properly introduce ourselves, and explain how can make the program work for them.
2. Find out in detail, what each of their requirements are, their concerns, if any, with the program, and what they would like to be doing to better engage with their audience. A personal assessment.
3. Take the opportunity to showcase some of the creative solutions we can offer them. Physically demonstrating the need and effectiveness of landing pages, new and engaging content, and some of the ideas we have designed to help them, is far easier and more likely to be embraced by the partners, if we meet them personally.
Solutions & Services to present to partners...
Whilst we want them to understand that we can provide them with a multitude of services and solutions, I believe that focusing on certain areas for presentation purposes will be the best approach. The cornerstones of the overall pitch should be 'Foundation', 'Local solutions', and 'A long term approach to marketing'. With this in mind, I suggest we focus our demonstration on the following:
1. Landing Pages & Websites: Many of the partners require work in this department, so naturally this would be a good place to start. Using the examples that we now have available, we can effectively demonstrate the importance, how they provide a solid foundation, and the flexibility we can offer in terms fitting them into their current system, hosting, management etc.
2. New content and Long-term marketing: Meeting them personally gives us the opportunity to explain the pivotal role content plays in the marketing equation. Tied in with the conversation on landing pages and websites, we can encourage them to embrace the fact that their products and services need supporting content, and any marketing campaign requires content to maximise results.
3. Local Solutions: Here we want to demonstrate that we can help them to deliver solutions that are tailored to their markets, and that we can work with them on a local level. I propose that we demo a new product which JGT media will launch in the new year(January), that comprises of a two, monthly Digital magazines, and weekly newsletter for both Nigeria, and South Africa. These will provide advertising & sponsorship opportunities, features, news, and crucially, are dedicated to the Channel Partners, and will be exclusively for those two markets/regions.
Both the Digital Magazines and the e-Newsletter, will be hosted on the FTE platform, allowing the channel partners to access a large, and relevant audience from the start. The aim for these new products is to provide a platform for the partners to begin to use their funds to engage with the market place, in a more effective way. We have chosen digital products as they linkable to their website and landing pages, they can print them out for meetings if they wish, they are measurable in terms of results, they encourage the partners to create new content and think outside of the box when it comes to their marketing, and crucially, are optimised for generating leads.
Here are some of the features these new products will offer:
1. A local solution.
2. Weekly and monthly, on-going, showcase of their products and services.
3. Featured Channel Partner for the monthly magazine, and weekly newsletter.
4. Customised advertising and sponsorship opportunities.
5. Channel partner interviews and features.
6. Optimised to drive traffic to their website, and generate leads.
7. Help them to develop their own databases, and begin to nurture new and existing customers.
8. Showcase articles, white papers, success stories, and latest news.
9. Encourages them to develop new content.
10. A direct and ongoing marketing solution.
11. Measurable in terms of results.
12. Assists them in increasing their local footprint.