How to Improve Your Content Marketing as a MSFT Partner

What makes a successful content marketing strategy is always changing, shaped in large part by audience engagement and Google’s constantly shifting algorithm. But what are some content marketing basics that any organization could pick up and put into action quickly?

In this episode of P2PNow, we offer some advice on how to improve your content marketing beyond a simple blog post or a few tweets. From thought leadership content to webinar promotion, we’ve got you covered. Watch the session below or read on for a full transcript!

Transcription

Sam: Today’s episode focuses on the question that I hear from many partners: How can I improve my content marketing? Christian, you’ve spent a good amount of time working with partners on this very topic.

Christian: I have indeed. As a former technology evangelist and chief marketing officer for several other ISVs, content marketing has been a critical aspect of these roles.

Sam: What’s involved in a good content marketing strategy? Aren’t we just talking about a blog post on the company website and some social posts to promote it?

Christian: People might be surprised by the volume of content that is actually needed for a successful content marketing campaign. With marketing, there really is no end to how much time (and money) you can spend to create and amplify your content. Having co-founded several companies and bootstrapped a couple of them for many years, my approach has always been more of a guerilla marketing strategy

Sam: So basically, a do-it-yourself approach without a big marketing team or budget.

Christian: Yes, but even when I’ve had a team and big budget, the principles are the same. I always begin with a piece of Hero content. This might be an ebook or a whitepaper that you want to promote. It’s more substantial than a blog post or even a feature article in an online or print magazine. It’s more of a thought-leadership piece usually supported by independent research, but it should be aligned with your products and services.

In fact, I always recommend to keep the body of content very neutral and focused on providing value on the topic to your readers, but then adding in relevant side bars of content to promote your content and services with targeted calls to action.

Sam: A call to action? That would be a link to contact a salesperson, or register for a webinar?

Christian: Exactly. Or to sign up for a partner program. So you have your Hero content, and you should then build out a campaign plan around that Hero content. This might include a webinar with a pre-webinar blog post and a post-webinar blog post, multiple social posts to drive people to each, and each containing a call to action.

The pre-webinar blog and social posts would have a call to action to register for the webinar, the webinar would have a call to action to download the ebook, and the post-webinar blog and social posts would have calls to action to watch the on-demand recording and download the ebook.

All of them work together to drive customers toward the conversion activities of registering or downloading, with a percentage of those conversions wanting more information about your products and services.

Sam: There are a lot of layers. So how does AvePoint work with our partners on content marketing?

Christian: We work with our partners in a number of ways. We sometimes create joint marketing content Or one of our many experts may co-present on a webinar or at an event. And we might create joint email and social promotions.

Sam: As always, the first step is in working with your partner manager to identify ways that we can work together

Christian: And block out time on our calendars!

Sam: For sure. And as always, you can’t have a conversation about joint content marketing strategies without first becoming an AvePoint partner, so be sure to join AvePoint’s Partner Program by going to avepoint.com/partners.

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