When trying to reach a global market, many companies (with enough relevant examples in the IT&C industry) rely on strategic and local partners and resellers to place and sell their products and services. What they sometimes tend to overlook is that promoting the product or service is as important and can become a shared task. While initially new partners might need guidance to understand the overall strategy, your product’s top selling benefits and the type of customers you are targeting, over time then can turn into strong regional allies.

Think of a big release of a new product or service. You might draft the communication plan, have the new literature, press and blogger pitches, press release and special offers ready and then share them in due time with your partner network. They might, in turn, reach out to their customer base, press contacts and enthusiastic evangelists, boosting your promotion effort.

Of course, some will be more savvy when it comes to PR and Marketing, others might need some ongoing guidance. You could suggest how they can reach out to media outlets, how they can identify where the potential customers who need to be informed about the product or service are. If they need convincing, you need to focus on their benefits: properly communicating with customers, audiences, the press means more business coming their way. That does also mean a share of the income goes to you, but the main beneficiaries are the partners.

When considering a successful partnership, businesses need to stop thinking in terms of sales alone. Yes, how much a partner makes by selling your product is important. But can you also collaborate on increasing brand awareness, spreading the word about your product and getting more revenue for yourself and the partner in question? Can you collaborate on getting feedback from their customers to help improve your products and services and subsequently sell more, maybe even for a better price?

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Guest post by Selena Narayanasamy

The hybrid of watching videos and reading emails, arguably the two biggest ways to spend time on the Internet, seems like a match made in heaven. After all, what’s not to love about combining these two powerful means of communication? And video email is on the rise. What was once a tech-lover fantasy may now be a blossoming reality for the masses. This is thanks to both creative applications of old technologies and some emerging technologies.

Click-on-This: The Classic Approach

YouTube became popular because countless people sent emails to all their friends with links to funny videos. These simple links take people to a video site where the content is played. Revolutionary, right? Continue reading

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A five-part series on online branding for businesses by Ryan Chaffin

1. What’s in a Name? Everything
2. SEO: Marketing in the New Millennium
3. PPC as a Model of Smart Advertising
4. Social Media: Highly Accessible Advertising
5. Freshening Up: Maintaining Your Brand Image

As a business owner you have developed a unique branding image, cultivated that icon through SEO services or maybe a successful PPC campaign, and you have seen your client base increase significantly. The hard work is over, right? Unfortunately, your work has just begun. Maintaining your brand image is just as important, if not even more crucial, as developing it in the first place.

Remember when you were worried about differentiating your stress relief services from the rest of the businesses in your area? Remember the pressure that surrounded the search for a unique way to sell this stress relief service to the public? This was probably a hectic, stressful time for you as a business owner. But if you remember the stress, you must also remember the triumph of mounting a successful branding image and seeing the increased customer flow. The same thing must happen for you to maintain your positive branding image. You must decide how to keep your image fresh in the midst of changing technology and new businesses. What differentiated you from everyone before may be common now, forcing you to adapt and change as needed. Continue reading

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Research reports and survey results are always a great way to get some attention for your company and for the products and services you sell. A report on new threats from an antivirus company, a survey on how much spam companies get from a mail server developer partnering with an Anti-spam application, a report on how online users share news through social media from a news outlet, survey results on how journalists and bloggers want to be approach and through which channels from a PR or marketing company, these are all great ideas to help you plunge into an in-depth analysis and get some valuable data to spread through the industry and beyond.

While the interest in your company as a trend setter or key source when it comes to market analysis is a goal worth following, coming up with valuable information from your research and surveys is not always very easy. It takes time, quite some planning, reaching out to customers, peers, other industry analysts, wrapping up results in an informative, easy to digest text and then promoting it through all major outlets.

Yet data that concerns all is always more newsworthy than a new service or product or an enhancement to an old one. It’s something of far greater impact, not only useful to those in your field, but also a effective tool to help potential customers find out what problems they are actually dealing with and why they’d need what you’re selling. Plus, seeing major news and industry outlets mentioning your name along with your research paper or survey data does wonders to brand awareness.

Have you tried using research and surveys to increase brand recognition and to gain more customers and business partners? Which were the results and what resources have you invested to get the final product?

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How often do you come across people hired to promote a company or their products? I’m referring to those spreading coupons, those showcasing products at stands placed in malls, at those looking nice and interesting at trade events and promoting contests for visitors. How many times were they either too pushy or completely unable to help you?

The person you pay to spread out flyers of all kinds, to present your products or just look hot near a car you’re launching, is a company representative in the eyes of your customer. Customers generally don’t care it’s a temporary gig for them, that you had no time to train them or that maybe they’re just having a bad day. Potential buyers either want answers fast or not to be bothered by pushy people. Continue reading

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