To be successful as a Microsoft partner, you must prove to current and potential clients that you are the best out there. To do that, you need to sharpen your marketing tools to ensure you are delivering a clear message to your audience. The Microsoft Partner Network Marketing Benefits have been created to enable partners and allow them to “make more possible.” There is an online portfolio filled with the best-in-class market content and programs to help you accelerate time-to-market, generate demand, and expand your business. Microsoft shared that within the next few weeks, they will go into more detail on these tools, but for now, here’s a short summary of each one.
1. Digital Marketing Content OnDemand
Microsoft refers to Digital Marketing Content OnDemand as your personal Digital Marketing Assistant. Partners can access customizable digital campaigns that can assist them in their marketing and sales departments. A new campaign is launched every Monday morning on the website and is typically a 10 to 12-week cycle. There are prewritten copies available for your social accounts, email, website, and blog.
2. Sales Enablement Program
With this program, you can find, create, and share the latest Microsoft marketing content from all of your Office 365 apps. The Qorus Content Hub provides the right amount of content and data to help your sales team close more deals. Microsoft partners have seen a great amount of success from this program, and overall productivity has increased by 20% for most. All of the content is stocked with Microsoft Partner Network material so that you can get to market in no time.
3. Smart Partner Marketing
On-demand training and resources within Smart Partner Marketing can help take your business to the next level. With digital marketing, you can enhance your organization’s efforts with the Partner Benchmarking Tool and OnDemand training. The materials are geared towards principles, strategies, and tactics that will strengthen your impact as a Microsoft partner.
4. Partner Marketing Center
The Partner Marketing Center is a digital library for customizable, solution–specific marketing, sales, and readiness materials. Included on this page are pitch decks, pre-written emails, and marketing assets that can empower your campaigns. Taking content directly from Microsoft will help your sales efforts when presenting to customers.
5. Marketplace Benefits
Marketplace is a channel that allows professionals to market and sell cloud solutions certified to run on Azure. With Marketplace, partners can drive more leads, promote their own solutions, and grow revenue. When a partner publishes to Marketplace, Microsoft provides the sales, technical, and marketing support to accelerate the process. You can build credibility through collaborative PR, optimize your Marketplace or AppSource, and access promotional benefits for your customers.
6. Geo-Expansion Readiness Assessment
If you are thinking of expanding to new markets, this is for you! The Geo-Expansion Readiness Assessment helps determine the solidity of your approach to when, where, and how to expand. After taking the test, you can look into Microsoft’s new digital-only program path. It is available to ISV partners who want to expand into new countries where they do not have a presence yet. Eligibility requires Microsoft co-sell ready status, solution listing in Appsource Cosell Solution Finder, and an active plan to become co-sell ready in your target countries.
7. Partner-to-Partner Readiness Assessment
The Microsoft Partner-to-Partner Readiness Assessment is intended to help partners of all kinds, determine their eligibility to connect with other partners. You will be scored 1 to 4 on how ready Microsoft feels you are. This is valuable because new partnerships can drive success for customers. We, at DCG, offer a specific type of consulting called Channel Consulting that is geared directly towards partners. We can assist with staffing and project implementation and have seen firsthand how two partners are better than one! To get started, head to the Start Partnering page and enter your email address.
As a Microsoft partner, it is normal to get caught up in your day-to-day duties and forget to research which tools to be using. The seven resources listed above are completely free for partners to use, and you can learn more about them by heading to Microsoft’s partner page. If you have any questions about how we at DCG can serve other Microsoft partners, send us a message! We are more than happy to discuss any upcoming projects you have.
