Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Akilah Murrell - Building a Winning Channel Marketing Strategy
In this engaging episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Akilah Murrell, Senior Manager of Channel Marketing at 360 Insights and podcast host of Channel Talks. Akilah shares her expertise on building meaningful vendor-partner relationships, implementing impactful marketing strategies, and empowering partners at every stage of their journey.
Discover how Akilah’s unique perspective—shaped by working with both vendors and partners—helps bridge gaps, foster trust, and ensure mutual success in the channel ecosystem. From understanding the importance of partner feedback loops to leveraging organic marketing strategies, Akilah provides actionable insights for channel professionals looking to elevate their game.
Highlights include:
- The magic of collaboration between vendors and partners.
- Practical tips for collecting and acting on partner feedback.
- Using simple, organic marketing techniques to drive growth.
- The transformative impact of authenticity and video storytelling in modern marketing.
Don’t miss this deep dive into the future of channel marketing, where authenticity and innovation are reshaping the landscape.
Connect with Akilah Murrell:https://www.linkedin.com/in/akilahmurrell/
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welcome back to partnerships unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about partnerships and channel on a weekly basis. My name is alex whitford, I am the vp of revenue here at channex and this week I'm very excited to welcome our special guest akila. How are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm doing great great yeah, I'm doing extremely well. We were just discussing before we got recording. My new son is six weeks old, and so I am feeling slightly sleep deprived and very excited, but no, I'm really excited to get in today. I think we're going to have a really awesome podcast. Maybe if the uninitiated you could give us a little bit of a rundown of who you are and where you've been.
Speaker 1:Sure, well, as you know, you just mentioned my name, I'm Akilah Morrell and I am the Senior Manager of Channel Marketing at 360 Insights, under the Elevate umbrella. So we really focus and hone in on channel marketing strategies. So everything from to through and with partner strategies you name it we do it. I'm also an event speaker. I also speak a lot at workshops. I work really closely with partners on their digital marketing strategies. I'm also a podcast host of the Alliance of Channel Women. So really proud of you know the things that I do here in the channel. I love it. I've been around for a long time I'm not going to say how many years, but I'm dedicated to the channel.
Speaker 2:That's awesome, I think, the thing I really like about speaking to people in your position. I've got a running joke on this podcast that if you're born in distribution you end up going really, really far. Because I speak to so many executives, and I think it's because if you sit between vendor and partner, you intrinsically deeply understand the channel, because you're getting sort of dual perspectives and not getting a sort of biased viewpoint in terms of how the channel works. I'd love to understand from your perspective how has that dual perspective shaped your channel understanding?
Speaker 1:You know what that's such a great question? Because you're right, that dual perspective has made me who I am today, which I kind of sit in the middle right, and I see there's pluses and minuses on both sides. But from my vantage point, what I really like about working with both the vendors and partners is I'll see what their strengths and weaknesses are. So, for example, for vendors, oftentimes you know wonderful people to work with. They have such a library of products and services that they wanna roll out to their partners.
Speaker 1:But oftentimes I feel like vendors sometimes forget about the definition of partnership. It's a partnership and so in that partnership you have to take care of the other. And so oftentimes I find vendors thinking and I've been on that side as well where it's like hey, partnership, you have to take care of the other. And so oftentimes I find vendors thinking and I've been on that side as well where it's like, hey, I've got the best marketing campaign, here's the best tool for my partners. Here you go, Use it.
Speaker 1:And I've forgotten to really put myself in their shoes and really understand their needs. And I think that's really important, that sometimes we can be one-sided, and then partners alike right, they want the world. Give me all the leads, Do it all for me. I'm just going to show up. And so I think, both at that intersection, that's where the magic happens, because you have to remind yourself why this partnership in the first place. What was the value? Because, obviously, the vendor brought value and so did the partner. So, always keeping that at the forefront of what it is that brought us together, and let's really hone in on that and let's both win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that. I think one of the things that's so common about vendors making very sort of vendor orientated decisions, let's say, is that very often the people that are making those decisions are very far away from the actual partnership right. They don't speak to partners enough. That distance allows us to sort of psychologically become very insular, because we're speaking to people within our own brand all day, every day, and I think that's a real mistake, because partner feedback helps us drive better strategy, better relationships. What are some of the practical ways from your perspective that you feel you can encourage, drive that behavior, to continuously get that partner feedback that's so valuable?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think just you know it's talking to your partners, getting that feedback and not just collecting the feedback, which is sometimes where it stops and I'm talking from personal experience, because I've done this before Like, oh yeah, we've got a partner survey, this is great, let's talk to them about the tools, the PRM, let's talk about deal registration processes, processes, and then the feedback stopped right there. Never once did we actually loop in key stakeholders, we didn't really close the loop, and so I think that's where the magic happens there as well is closing the loop, getting the feedback and then talking to the right people internally and then actually implementing some of that feedback. Can't be everything to everyone, but just that open dialogue and open line of communication is really important and, by the way, it doesn't have to be an official survey. This is through your PAMS partner account manager, whatever the title you may call, your account managers that deal with partners, but always looking for feedback, because I think that open line of communication is also going to build trust with the partner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the things that I've really found interesting we get lots of super senior people on the podcast and the amount of the really successful ones, you know the ones that are really killing the game.
Speaker 2:And I really sit there and I go how many partners do you speak to? And I had one that told me he'd spoken to 10,000 partners face-to-face in three years, right, and then 10,000. And so I was like that's insanity, right. But from his perspective, he was like Alex, that's my job. Like if I we are so far away from the end customer, uh, as a brand, because we've got distributors and partners in the way, if I can't go and speak to my partners who are speaking to their customers all the time, we're just we're learning so slowly and I thought that's so instructive culturally because if he's got time to do it, everyone has time to do it. And then I love the point that you're making, which is one thing is hearing the feedback. The second is actioning it and the level of trust that that builds within your community to say, hey, yeah, actually this product feature came as a result of partner feedback. What an awesome way to sort of celebrate that partnership.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and when you think of the channel, it's all relationship based, right? We see that constantly. It's such a small world. It is such a small world, and so building those relationships is going to be key and is absolutely tied to your bottom line. There's no two ways about it. One thing I was going to mention too is I don't know if you remember this, I don't know we're not talking ages, but I am older than I look so back in the day like voice of the customer programs. Those were huge and oftentimes, sometimes in the channel, I feel like we miss that. We lose the voice of the partner. I want us to bring that back because that is so important. That's all about feedback, right? What are they saying? So I would love to see more of voice of the partner type of feedback within our space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one of the companies I think does this extremely well is AWS. So we've had a few of their executives and I'm friends with a lot of the team that work at AWS and it's one of their mantras. Right, they're the most customer obsessed company in the world, but they really, really take it to the nth degree. Right, they deeply understand that partners hold key information. That key information has to be fed back. How do we continue to iterate and drive that forward? And it's why I think they make such good decisions, because at the core of their decision making is what does the partner care about? What does the end user care about? Because that is what drives strategy, and so often we hear around leaders and visionaries and actually all they're doing is taking the feedback and actioning it at a very high level.
Speaker 2:They are taking the feedback from the customer. It would be great if the product did this, or it'd be great if our rebate structure was like this, and all they are doing is aggregating and acting on that information effectively.
Speaker 1:Right, that's it, simple strategy right, but it works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. Talking of simple strategy that works. I know you have a one to five scale around helping partners to get from novice to no marketing all the way through to a really all-fledged flowing marketing strategy. Talk us through that one to five scale.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, oftentimes the partners that I do speak with that I advise, a lot of times they don't have like a huge marketing overhead to part, it's just them, right? Sometimes it's the owner and they're wearing many hats and so they have little to no marketing. And usually when I come in I'm very realistic, I'm like we're not going to boil the ocean. Let's understand where you're starting. Understand your starting point, because your starting point is different from everyone else. We can't compare ourselves, especially like partners, to vendors. Like vendors have a totally different starting point than partners, and then even within the partner realm there's different starting points. So where are you now? And then, where do you want to go? That's gonna be key. And so oftentimes when I'm talking to partners, a lot of times they just have a website and that's okay, that's your starting point. So now, how do we move the needle? And as we have these strategic discussions, we talk about well, where are you trying to go? What are you trying to be? How are you trying to connect with your audience so we may move from like, okay, just a website, that's great. That's been working for you. Word of mouth has working for you with your sales team.
Speaker 1:Now let's talk about. What is your online presence look like? Right? Because we all know that a lot of the due diligence, a lot of the research is done online before ever engaging with a human being. So that's a captive audience. That, if you do not have an online presence, that's a missed opportunity. So then we talk about well, what's next?
Speaker 1:My recommendation would be to build out your personal profile, especially on LinkedIn. We know LinkedIn is still the number one B2B platform. Build out your personal page. Now you may hear other people say, well, you got to build a company page. Yes, we'll get to that. I feel like that's a stage three, but build out your personal one first. Why? Because people do business with people. They're looking to see who they could be working with. And again, here comes that trust factor. Right, they're not going to necessarily trust a brand before they trust an individual. We're not Apple, nike, you know. We're not IBM, we're smaller than that and so it's important to build your online presence personally and then maybe taking it a step further and building out that company page that links back to your personal page, but that gives you an idea of like start. Know your starting point. If it's just a website, add social to the mix, right, and then start sharing content, maybe even authoring blogs, but look at it as building blocks. Don't try and do. Don't try and do it all at once.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that because I think we have lots of relationships both from a business perspective but also from the podcast in the MSP world. And the MSP world I find so fascinating because I think, as partner segments go, they are the best technical business and they rely so much on word of mouth, usually terrible at marketing as a flat rule. As a flat rule, and yeah, I have seen time and time again when these customers and leaders, specifically within these msps, take it upon themselves to go okay, we are building a brand, we are building social, we are going to start, you know, optimizing maybe some basic stuff around seo localized to a certain area, but very sort of uh, cookie cutter procedures that will really elevate huge reactions work because the core of their business is so good, because they've, you know, they've grown over 20 years just from word of mouth. Marketing can play such a catalyst. So it's awesome to see someone like yourself evangelizing how simple steps forward can really radically change your business absolutely, absolutely and especially organically.
Speaker 1:right, you may not have a huge budget, and that's why I do recommend starting with social and and looking at it as as building blocks, because then there comes a point in time where you do have to look at SEO, sem, but you can do a lot of. You could do a lot with organic growth just utilizing the platform as is today know very well, and all they did was interview their customers, that's it.
Speaker 2:And then they just recorded those sessions, put up clips on their social and all it is is word of mouth on steroids, right, because you're taking your word of mouth and you're just talking about it very vocally and then suddenly they were just getting oh well, I have exactly that problem that that customer is talking about, like literally that one, and they're just getting inbound demand, because a small amount of consistent marketing activity represents a huge difference in performance.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and you said something that's so key is video. All they did was take clips. There's storytelling. That's all we're doing. That's marketing. It's storytelling. How well can you tell your story and how well are you connecting with the audience by understanding their pain points and answering and addressing those problems and those pain points in your video content? That's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know the difference between sales and marketing is just how many people are we speaking to, right? But it's the same core structure of hey, people appreciate stories, people appreciate data, people appreciate information from a kind face, all of that stuff. And if we can cascade that similar piece and I really believe it doesn't have to take time, especially for the brands out there that help partners with tooling or processes I think that really helps streamline that activity. But that small uptick I've seen produced you know it's shocking amounts because these businesses have grown substantially without doing anything from a marketing perspective. So just a small amount of marketing really creates that performance difference. Right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:So I used to work at Zoom and I think there are almost no companies in the world that benefited from COVID about as much as Zoom did. It was an insane period to be Right, but not only did it affect's uh, bottom line and my mortgage payment, but it also affected how marketing's done at scale and I know people pivoted very hard to sort of digital first strategies talk to me about how you see that motion yeah, you know, I mean definitely covid was a major disruptor, which, which we know, and I mean it's virtual everything.
Speaker 1:Now I think what it's done is offered another route to communications. We talk about route to market, but route to communications now, because everything is pretty much, I think, hybrid. We're really moving into this hybrid space and it's here to stay, right. Remember, with events, we were all about face-to-face, face-to-face, and then that was gone. It was nonexistent. So what do we do? We turned to digital, to virtual, and so, of course, companies like Zoom did really well. I feel like that strategy is here to stay. I see, I often see hybrid options, you know, for in-person plus virtual. I'm also seeing so many more things, just so much more is being accomplished. It's even more efficient now. We think of masterclasses. How many of us took so many masterclasses during the pandemic? Because we had access to that information and it was easy for us to consume, it was flexible, less expensive, and so I think those kind of strategies, those digital, virtual strategies, are here to stay and if you're not offering some sort of virtual virtual experience, then you're behind.
Speaker 2:You're definitely behind yeah, to me it's. It's almost logical, right, because you, you sit there and you go how much? How much door-to-door sales do we do anymore? And we go, no, no, we know, phone sales are better because we just get a thousand more at bats a day, right, so we've just got a much more efficient, even if the conversion is worse. We've got a much more efficient way of having those conversations.
Speaker 2:Digital marketing is the same. Yeah, we can attend six events a year and maybe the conversion of those events is fantastic, but we can also do 70 marketing events a year digitally, and so instead I I really think that volume versus conversion conversation just needs to happen. And then I really think it comes down to who is doing that. Digital, digital marketing approach, digital event who's doing that really well, learning from them and embedding that. But really I see that as both beneficial to you, because you're able to do it at a much more scalable way, but also from a customer or partner perspective. It's so so much less of a. I don't have to fly into Vegas and attend a 20,000 person event and do all of that stuff. It's like, oh, I can get a percentage of that value, but I can do it. You know 9am on a Monday, just before my first meeting. Get some value and move on to the next thing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, and it gives you the opportunity as well to showcase you know, your thought leadership, your expertise, the subject matter expert.
Speaker 2:How many times, I mean, I feel like we're lost in these big conferences sometimes, and so a virtual strategy is another great way to just grow your brand organically amidst all the noise, awesome, just touching on organic growth strategies, I think that's something that you spend a lot of time educating both vendors, but mostly partners, in terms of how you can drive a significant amount of growth without spending too much money. Right, I think a lot of partners are really nervous about marketing because they think, brilliant, that's 15 grand a month on paid advertising, that we're not going to see any ROI on. How can partners dip their toe into marketing to be successful?
Speaker 1:You know, I think there's so many ways. There's so many ways. I want to answer this. I don't want it to be too complex, Like my mind automatically goes to like an integrated marketing approach which is really important, right, because they all got to be.
Speaker 1:All your channels have to be connected and speaking to one another and you should be leveraging content at each channel. But when I think of a partner where, if it's a starting point, thinking of that scale, again I would say you know, start with LinkedIn. That's not the only platform, but I would say, start there and begin sharing content that resonates with your audience. How do you know if it resonates or not? You got to look at engagement numbers. What are you sharing? Pay attention to the topics, pay attention to folks who are actually engaging with your content, the ones that have high engagement. Do more of that Post, more of that post, more of that of that particular topic that's obviously doing very well for you, and throw video into the mix.
Speaker 1:You would be surprised at how many people are still not leveraging video, still not leveraging video content. Youtube turns 20 years old this year 20. It's been 20 years of video and so many of us still have not leveraged video. So it's still an opportunity to really stand out from the rest, but again, offering that valuable content that's really going to help someone solve their problem, right? And I always, always say lead with value Before you share any content, ask yourself so what?
Speaker 1:Who's going to care? Who's going to benefit from this? Is this really and truly valuable? Or am I just here on social just sharing, just to share? So be intentional about what you share and make sure it is valuable. But I think, organically, that's going to be your best place to begin, because you'll find that your growing follow, your following grows and then, before you know it, people think of you because you're out there sharing the content that resonates with them and then, before you know it, you know people think of you because you're out there sharing the content that resonates with them and then, before you know it, they may be reaching out to you to possibly do business with you, knowing that you have the answer to their, to their needs yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:The piece that I would add to it, because I see it's a really common mistake that partners make is they try and become super corporate, super professional when they do their first marketing show personality.
Speaker 2:Personality is what wins in all media, whether it's writing or through to video. What we care about is buying from people and if that means that you are brash and confident or you you're funny or you're charming, show it, show it right. If you've got a laid-back office with dogs in I'm speaking about our office um, it does insanely well on social. If you go on channexcom about us, you can see there's dogs in our in our careers page and and in our meet our team. Reason is because that's the sort of company that we are and like we like to show sounds small, but I know customers who want to buy from us and who have built relationships with us because they go, yeah, but we are dog people as well. We, we, we enjoy that energy, we like a friendly company and so the bit that I was I would really encourage not only do you create your company page but, like you were saying earlier, your personal page with your personality wrapped into it, right. I think that's so important that's golden.
Speaker 1:Golden authenticity is golden. And again, like it fits right into the people, do business with people.
Speaker 2:So exactly that right and exactly, and the last thing you want to do is portray this super corporate, you know, clinical, uh image and then when they call you, you're not that at all. Right right. So at least portray that honesty, that authenticity, and I'm convinced people want to do business with you because most people are kind, good people and showing that is a really great thing, absolutely. So maybe, pivoting into some visionary stuff, I'd like to understand from your perspective what do you see as the next big thing, the next big innovation? What's going to change channel marketing over the next few years?
Speaker 1:I think there's several things and one you just mentioned actually you stole my thunder, but authenticity is going to play a really big role in just being human and I've said it 10,000 times and I know I've said it on this podcast already is the human factor, people doing business, business with people and so we want to see and we want to hear your stories. We do, because that's what's going to connect us, and so I think that authenticity factor is going to be really important. Striking a balance of really portraying who you are to your audience is going to be key. So that's one area we're going to see that really grow and I think that's going to happen through the use of video. People are going to storytell even more utilizing video because they realize that friendly face, that connection you need. That it's not just words on a page used. It's just part of our culture now, and I often say I don't believe marketers will be replaced by AI, but marketers who do not leverage AI will be replaced. I strongly and firmly believe that because we have to look at it this way.
Speaker 1:I know at the very beginning, when we were talking about social media and how businesses should leverage social and a lot of pushback because we all thought it was just like another Facebook and we didn't see that connection or that correlation of how social media can help my business. And when I would do my, when I'd go and do some trainings with sales teams, I would tell them hey, you guys, you know what you got to have a presence on social media. So much pushback because they thought that they were going to be replaced. They thought social media is going to replace them. That has never been the case.
Speaker 1:If anything, it would enhance their selling strategies and we've seen how social media has done that and I feel like it's the same with AI. Right, it can only enhance us as channel marketers if we leverage the tool correctly. It can really help us with personalization, enhance efficiency. It's a great starting point, so I really don't think it's going to replace us. And then, of course, video, video, video. I can't say that enough and there's a huge opportunity to leverage video across channel marketing strategies. Whether it's an email on social, in mail, there's going to be an opportunity to really communicate our content as channel marketers in video form.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the piece on AI, because I know it's something that everyone has to mention when we talk about forward vision, because it's so sort of game changing. But I really think that the thing that people really misunderstand in terms of AI is the people who win. Using AI are going to win bigger than than we have done traditionally, because you're just able to get so much more done. But the people who use ai the best are the ones that are going to win, and that just it takes time, it takes practice, it takes consistency. Guess what same. Like marketing, right, the people who do the most marketing typically are the best marketers. And so my advice is, while AI is relatively simple to use now, get good now, because in two years, when everything gets you know is five times better than it is today, you want to be ahead of that learning curve, because otherwise what will happen is that niche market will be carved up already, and then suddenly you're fighting against the tide, right, right? So start today.
Speaker 1:Start consistently and embed it in exactly, absolutely, absolutely amazing.
Speaker 2:Look we've. We've touched on a lot there. Um, I think the the real message that is, it's all about personalization. I think is the bit that I'm going to take with me. Uh, speaking of personalization, we'd like to be a little bit cheeky on this podcast and ask our current guest to network us into our next guest. Akilah, who did you have in mind?
Speaker 1:I'm going to nominate my really good friend, very good friend, Nicole Steele. She is the senior director of field and channel marketing at F5. So you're up next, Nicole.
Speaker 2:Awesome, nicole, we're coming from you. Akilah, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much.