Everything You've Been Told About Channel Marketing Is Wrong: Part 2 - The Complex New Reality of Modern Marketing

The Complex New Reality of Modern Marketing

Digital marketing is creating unbelievable new ways to connect with customers. To a large degree, it can be the death of “The Billboard Method.” The Billboard Method is, of course, when you put your campaign ad on billboard on the side of the road. You hope some of the people that drive down that road see your ad. You also hope that some of those people might actually need what you are selling. It’s a game of hope.

But with highly targeted digital display, SEO and programmatic tactics, you can speak directly to those you care about based on their online behavior. But the problem is you can’t turn your back on highly effective traditional tactics — like Newspaper, Radio, TV and Direct Mail — that create awareness. So, while digital has deepened the arsenal of marketing weapons, it has also made our business much more complex.

Digital is also creating challenges for the Partners. Digital moves very fast. Innovations occur almost every month. Smaller Partners don’t have the time or training to keep up and determine which digital technologies are right for them. Even if they did, the day-to-day management of a Social Media campaign or List Management campaign would take them away from what they need to focus on: customers.

Most Brands are attacking this problem by developing more relationships with marketing vendors at the corporate level and offering their services to their Partners. Brands have more resources to evaluate these vendors and centralize contracts and pricing at the corporate level — vendors for Email Marketing, Nurture Marketing, Digital Display Advertising, List Management, Reputation Management and the list goes on and on. In a recent study done by a Lynn University MBA class, 70 percent of Brands surveyed said that they have increased the number of their vendors in the past two years.

For Brands, more vendors mean more legal fees for contracting, more heads to manage the vendors, more agency fees to create assets to vendor specifications, and more marketing funds dedicated to vendor margins instead of actual customer-facing execution.

For Partners, more vendors mean more choices and little guidance on how and where to invest their marketing funds.

MISCONCEPTION: Multi-Tactic Marketing Means More OpEx

Many marketing leaders are looking at their marketing budgets and seeing fewer and fewer dollars actually pointed at the customer. Vendor fees, vendor management costs and manual processes to get one campaign ready with 20 different MarTech vendors is driving OpEx sky high.

Draw a dollar bill on piece of paper. Now, shade in the portion that reflects OpEx dedicated to headcount and fixed costs. Now, shade in the portion for agency and vendor fees. Now, shade in the portion you think is dedicated to administrative work and manual processes. Now, shade in the amount that is lost on unfruitful campaigns that aren’t Brand compliant or directed to the right audience. How much of your dollar bill is left? That small portion is the amount you are using to actually talk to customers — the activity that drives traffic, leads and sales.

Brands know that digital is a very cost effective way to get their message in front of potential customers. But up to now, the only way to execute a digital strategy is to have a hoard of vendors supported by an army of Brand marketers. This strategy leaves Partners confused. So, they just check out on digital because they think it’s too complicated.

TRUTH:  You Can Expand Your Reach While Lowering Your OpEx

The increasing complexity of modern marketing is a challenge that SproutLoud has been focused on since Day One. Our solution is SproutLoud Launchpad.

SproutLoud LaunchPad is the Brand’s one-stop shop for building and executing multi-tactic Channel Marketing campaigns. First, your team chooses pre-configured campaign assets that have been prepared in SproutLoud Studio and loaded onto LaunchPad.  

Next, your team simply selects the tactics they want to launch with that campaign. From traditional Newspaper, Radio and TV to highly evolved Digital Display and Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads, SproutLoud has integrated 40+ best-in-class Marketing Service Providers (MSPs) directly into our platform to fulfill the tactics your Brand chooses. So instead of having your Brand team dedicate significant headcount, time and money to finding, selecting and onboarding Partners — SproutLoud does it for you. Now if you have a vendor you love that is doing a bang-up job, we can easily integrate them into the SproutLoud platform and take over the vendor management for you.

After choosing assets and tactics, your Brand team then selects the types of Partners who will run the campaign. Most Partners have varying degrees of capabilities. Platinum Partners might have a complete marketing department that you trust to take raw assets and create their own local execution. Gold or Silver Partners might need pre-configured assets. LaunchPad has a direct feed to your internal Partner mapping. This means your team doesn’t need to waste time trying to find the right Partners for each campaign.

Finally, LaunchPad allows you to attach Co-Op or MDF funds directly to the campaign asset — so your money is only used on your preferred messages and tactics.

With less OpEx spent on vendor management and more of it dedicated to message alignment, tactics and execution, your Brand will see more dollars pointed where they matter most:  the customer.

SproutLoud also positions your Partners to finally excel in digital. The digital campaigns Brands make accessible in SproutLoud LaunchPad become available to their Partners in the Partner Portal. Digital tactics — such as Social Media Content Publishing, Dynamic Local Display Ads, Pay-Per-Click Ads, Reputation Management and more — are already integrated with SproutLoud’s MSP ecosystem.  Your Partners don’t have to spend time evaluating, contracting or managing digital vendors. Most digital tactics on SproutLoud’s platform allow for set-it-and-forget-it automation, which enables your Partners to use more digital tactics with less effort.

Everything You've Been Told About Channel Marketing is Wrong