Considering the scalability of content marketing

I’m preparing a presentation for channel resellers next week at the Arrow ECS May Days IBM Partner Conference. The title (which was provided for me) is “Using Marketing Plans and Social Media to Create Selling Situations.” 

My first thought: “Wow…that could be a pretty broad topic.” In my 15 years of channel marketing, I’ve come to appreciate the differences of marketing at the vendor level versus marketing at the reseller level.  With channel resellers, we don’t typically talk about sales enablement, content marketing or strategic asset alignment.

However, my presentation has pretty much followed the same 4 critical components of  marketing execution that we talk about at the higher-level vendor level:

1. Messaging and positioning
2. Asset alignment
3. High-value content
4. Effective distribution

I’ve developed some slides and content around each of these components,and I think it could really change the way some of these IBM partners manage their marketing endeavors this year. The content is mostly directed toward channel resellers, but there are lessons and ideas for all vendors and companies. 

The ideals of content marketing–focusing on customer challenges–remain top of mind for regional resellers, as well as for large vendors.

 I’ll update these topics soon, and will let you know how the seminar went!