Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
101 - Amy Bailey - Event Marketing in The Channel
Unlock the secrets to exceptional channel and event marketing as we sit down with Amy Bailey, the mastermind behind Unusually Unusual Consulting. Amy brings her extensive experience from her tenure at Telarus to shed light on the nuances of executing highly impactful partner advisory boards. Expect to learn the critical steps— from thorough pre-work to ongoing follow-up—that transform these boards into some of the most valuable events for partners.
Next, we explore the blueprint for a compelling online presence in the B2B and SMB markets. Amy shares actionable insights on optimizing websites, LinkedIn profiles, and social media to position partners as trusted advisors. Tune in to discover the importance of thought leadership and receive practical advice on avoiding the pitfalls of duplicate content. We also discuss the benefits of vendor-agnostic campaigns and how the Channel Marketing Association fosters best practices among channel marketers. If you're looking to elevate your partner marketing game, this episode is a must-listen!
Connect with Amy on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amybailey1/
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Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about channel and partnerships on a weekly basis. My name is Efe and I'll be your host in this episode. I'm excited to announce our special guest, Amy Bailey. Amy, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:I'm great. How are you?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great. Thank you for asking. I'm really looking forward to this conversation. We already had your partner in crime, Catherine, in the podcast before and I have to finally be talking to you. I've been following you very closely on LinkedIn. Your name has been popping up everywhere on my feed lately, so you're doing a great job and I'm looking forward to picking your brain about channel marketing and everything about event marketing. It's going to be a great conversation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited.
Speaker 2:Would you give us an introduction for those who may not know who you are? Could you tell us who are you and what do you do?
Speaker 1:Sure. So, like you said, my name is Amy Bailey. I live in Salt Lake City, utah area. I am a channel marketer by trade. I started actually selling call accounting in a channel management role and then was acquired by Tolaris and ended up being SVP of marketing at Tolaris for seven years. When I started it was me and three people doing whatever we could. We were very scrappy and agile, but when I left it was me and 22, with a full television production studio and 150 events a year. So when I left there I wanted to figure out what I wanted to do and decided you know I love the event side, I love partners, I love, you know, content, channel marketing. And so I kind of put all those things together and made my own business. I run Unusually Unusual Consulting. We do channel marketing consulting as well as event planning for the IT channel.
Speaker 2:I love that. So in our previous conversation we talked about partner and advisory boards or partner advisory councils. Same thing, and I have data here in front of me from Canalys. Shout out Jay McBain we're going to have him on the podcast soon but the data here says that over 80% of partners think that well-executed partner advisory boards are valuable and about one-third report that they're among the best and most productive events that they attend in a given year. However, not every partner advisory board is that well-executed and there are some nuances to it. So here the data says well executed and there are some nuances to it. So here the data says you know about 15, 16% says they're mostly fine but typically more value for a vendor, about 10% say it's usually a waste of time and I will only attend if I must, and about 8% says that they refuse to attend a vendor partner advisory board at all. So I would love to get your insights into. You know what are the nuances of executing a successful partner advisory board?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You know. I think when I look at that chart, you know, I see the 35% that say that they're the best and most useful productive events I attend and that's great. And I'm going to take you know with that that they're saying the ones that are executed well, that are planned well, that make the most use out of my time, are some of the best events I attend. And then I'm going to lump the rest of those 65% of the people together and say they didn't attend channel advisory boards or partner advisory boards that were well executed.
Speaker 1:And the first thing that comes to mind for me when you talk about a well-executed partner advisory board is starting at the beginning and understanding where the people are coming from. So doing pre-work, pre-surveys, pre-calls, pre-conversations, understanding what the partner you know is coming to the table with, and then being able to hit the ground running when you get to the advisory board with real in-depth conversations. I've been to many advisory boards where you know they've sat us around a table and they say like so what do you think of us? And that's a waste of my time. If you don't know basically what I think about you, then we're going to have a real hard time getting to the bottom of some real issues. So if you understand what they already think about you, what their concerns are, what are you doing that they like, what are you doing that they don't like, and then you start those conversations, that ends up being the really well-executed advisory board that you get something out of, and really what the partner wants to see is that change happens after they come to those advisory boards.
Speaker 1:So part of the advisory board execution is the follow-up after the fact. Here's a 30-day follow-up. We heard you. Here's what we heard from you. This is what we're working on. Here's a 60-day follow-up Okay, we've got these three things done and now we're working on the next three things. So it's really about that continual conversation. It's not a one and done event. The other thing is that make the most use out of my time. So while I'm there, yes, I want to be wined and dined and I want to probably do some fun activity, but I want to make sure that I can get my business done as well. So give me some hearty breaks so that I can stop and go back to my email and answer my customers or answer my team members that need things before I go back into more meetings.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that answer. I think a lot of vendors they. Obviously, when you do a partner advisory board, there's some value that you get right. So let partners know what you learned from that advisory board and how you're making changes.
Speaker 2:That's that's a really good answer and you talked about when you were giving your introduction at your time at tellers. You mentioned about 150 events a year. I think you you're a veteran in event marketing and you do this. You work with teams, you augment teams and helping them do more, better events, and I would love to hear your thoughts on. You know what are some of the common mistakes you see in event marketing, especially in the channel space.
Speaker 1:You know, I think going into an event and not having a plan. Yes, the events are great for networking. That's probably the number one thing that I hear about events. We all know that the channel is a relationship business and people want to be able to go and reconnect with people and have those great conversations. But if you don't have an action plan when you're going into events, you're going to have a problem right?
Speaker 1:So, as an attendee of an event, I know here are the people that I need to speak with. Here are the things I need to speak with them about. Here that I need to speak with, here are the things I need to speak with them about. You know, here are my follow-ups. If I can pre-book appointments. Those are all things that are really important for events. You know, if I'm the vendor at an event, I want to make sure that I have, you know, a catchy booth. I have some pre-event marketing that are inviting people to. You know, come to my booth, to come to a party, to come to a dinner or whatever that is. And again, I have that attack plan of the emails before the event and after the event where I can continue that conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a great example, especially now that I'm thinking about joining some events, maybe some channel marketing association, the ones that you're hosting. This was a good tip for me, but I think that also in our previous conversation you talked about. You know, maybe we're spending, maybe we're focusing too much about vining and dining the partners and spending money on that. Do you also see that there's now more pressure when it comes to marketing budgets? There's more pressure in terms of showing that ROI and showing something tangible.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I mean, I worked for a TSD. I understand that the TSDs need to get in front of partners, but I think that the suppliers need to get in front of end users, and so I'm seeing a big shift now going from the suppliers attending the TSD events almost exclusively to actually them working with the partners to plan some end user events, whether that's a breakfast, a dinner, axe, throwing golf top golf, whatever. But having those conversations directly with the buyer is really vital. I'm seeing more and more. You know you've got some research 74% of B2B buyers conduct half their research online. Before making a purchase. Like you're going to need to make sure that you have a great website, great content, before the purchase happens. But then I do still believe that relationships are important. People are want to buy from people in the end, and so if you're having those events with the end user, you have an opportunity as a vendor to make those relationships with the end user so that they feel comfortable in that buying process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think there's a non-measurable value of finding, of vining and dining those people. I fully agree with you. Yeah, another point that I think you mentioned in our previous conversation is that you mentioned you love working with partners.
Speaker 1:I do.
Speaker 2:You're also a channel-wise marketing expert. You work with tech channel partners to help them build and grow their business. To all partners who are listeners and channel marketers working at vendor teams. Why do you think that investing in marketing is more important now than ever?
Speaker 1:Well, like we said, 74% of those B2B buyers conduct 50% of their research online. They're going to go find your website. They're going to go find your LinkedIn profile. If that doesn't look like somebody who impresses them, they're going to go find somebody else. There's too many options out there for them to work with somebody whose website looked like 1986 built it, and so we really need to figure out a way to improve your presence online, whether that's through your website, through your LinkedIn, through your social media efforts. You know you don't have to do everything, but what you do you need to do really well, and so I always recommend the partners to have a really great, functioning website.
Speaker 1:You know a few different pages. Talk about who you are, what you do, what makes you special. You know be able, if you want to do a blog, do a blog. If you don't want to do a blog, fine, don't do a blog. But maybe instead you go and post on LinkedIn every week and you're putting some interesting content on LinkedIn. You're talking about your wins. You're talking about your success stories with your customers. You're getting testimonials from people. All of those things are things that you can do in order to influence a buyer before they're actually going to make a purchase, because they're going to go do that research and learn about you and listen to what other people think about you and then go and have the conversation with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I fully agree with you and you know you mentioned that data point that 74% of B2B buyers conduct half of their research online. I think if you're selling to SMB, then the data is even more extreme, because I got this data from someone at AWS, from their SMB leadership team. But SMBs contact their IT providers about 70% of the way through their buying journey. So they really like to look at solutions themselves. They really like to go online and look at partners and make decisions on their own, and if you're not visible to the SMBs during that part of the process, then I think you're losing out deals. I totally agree.
Speaker 2:The problem is most partners really lack the marketing expertise. That's one problem, but they also don't have a belief that marketing really works. I think that's also another challenge that, especially when their teams really struggle with we create the content, we make it campaigns in a box. It's really challenging to actually get the partner to take the time and invest in using the resources. Now, how do you think that suppliers can better support partners in that marketing enablement?
Speaker 1:Yeah, the number one thing that I see from partners is they don't want to pigeonhole themselves to one product, so they want to be looked at as a trusted advisor to their customers.
Speaker 1:And so if I decide that I am going to do a campaign for fill-in-the-blank supplier and that's not the right fit for my customer, then have I lost credibility with that customer? Instead, I would like to do a campaign about why this type of technology, why is cybersecurity important to your business? Why is a UCAS phone system important to your productivity? Content like that that is generic, that then lets the customer educate themselves, lets them understand that I can make the right recommendation, because the best supplier out there for you know, a UCAS system for 50 phones is not the same as the best supplier for 5,000 phones, right.
Speaker 1:And so you want to make sure that you're recommending the right package for your customer, and if you go out there with the 50 phone answer and you stumble across a 5,000 seat deal you're going to, it's going to be a miss, because the customer is going to think, well, they don't know what they're talking about. They could never support me with that 50 user phone deal. So I think it's really important that suppliers take a step back and not have it all be about them, but really put themselves in the partner's shoes. Of what kind of information does this partner want to give to their customer, and how can I support them in that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that thought leadership aspect is really important when it comes to marketing, that you know, positioning yourself as the advisor who knows about the solution and who's able to. You know who's able to solve your business problem. I think that's really important and I've been hearing some vendors also providing, you know, more product agnostic, vendor agnostic campaigns that are, more you know, aimed at helping the partner become a taught leader. I think that that's a very cool initiative.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's a lot of partners that you know don't really realize it. But you know you can't go and take a supplier blog, even if it's a blog that a supplier gives you like why do you need UCAS? You can't take that and put that on your website because you're going to get dinged for duplicate content. Because if every partner puts it on their website, google doesn't know which one started it and which one you know is the best. Or Google does know actually, and they're going to say, well, joe put it out there first, so we're going to give Joe credit for it and everybody that followed Joe is going to get dinged for it and that you don't want.
Speaker 1:But you can take that content and put it on LinkedIn, because Google doesn't troll LinkedIn like they do the rest of the websites. So if you want to go and publish that type of content, that's a great way to add thought leadership to your persona, but it's not putting it on your website, so you could put that on LinkedIn. You know, talk about how you can help people as an independent third party, and here is some content that you might enjoy. But then it, you know, hopefully they'll lead back to your website. You know, read more or learn more and it goes back to your website, but it's not that exact content on there.
Speaker 2:I agree, amy. You co-founded the Channel Marketing Association, also known as CMA. Yes, and CMA is a community for channel marketers to share their best practices and learn from each other, which is kind of similar to the reason why we do this podcast. Could you tell us a little bit more about Channel Marketing Association? Who is it for and why should they join?
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You know you can go out and get a college degree in marketing, but that's not going to teach you about channel marketing. They're probably going to mostly focus on B2C marketing. You might have a little bit of a conversation about B2B marketing, but that whole idea of selling something through a third-party channel is very different and most people don't understand what the nuances are there.
Speaker 1:It's hard, and so we created the Channel Marketing Association as a place for people to come together, share best practices, share their frustrations, their woes, their wins and really have a community where they can ask questions and get answers. So we've actually built a community on a Mighty Networks platform where people can log in, they can ask questions, they can answer other people's questions. We do webinars, we do weekly meetups. We actually have a virtual summit coming out. It's October 8th through 10th. The virtual success summit will be online and people who are members have different options to be able to listen to different parts of that. So we really would love to encourage people to come and join us.
Speaker 1:There are free memberships available, but you do obviously get more if you paid for a paid membership. So lots of options there, but we also have an event coming up in the spring. That's our in-person summit and that's looking like it'll be the last week of April in 2025 in Houston. So we're just working on this contract for that right now, so stay tuned for a save the date on that as well.
Speaker 2:Amazing For all channel marketers listening. I'll make sure to put Amy's LinkedIn in the description and also do you want me to put the website to Channel Marketing Association the LinkedIn page? Okay.
Speaker 1:Channelmarketingassociationcom is our website, so as long as they can spell channel marketing, they're good.
Speaker 2:I think the association part is the harder one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fair.
Speaker 2:All right, amy, this was a really great conversation Before I let you go. We always ask our guests to invite the next guest on the podcast. Who do you think we should have next?
Speaker 1:Well, you know what? My number one go-to girl for channel marketing is none other than Micah Rosales-Peterson. So Micah took over the presidency of Alliance of Channel Women this year. I am a former president of that organization as well, so love that. And Micah is with Intellisys and does a lot of great partner marketing, so definitely recommend Micah for this.
Speaker 2:Perfect, micah, if you're listening, I'm coming for you. I'll send you a message.
Speaker 1:All right.
Speaker 2:Thanks for tuning in and see you in the next episode.