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Welcome to the Nearbound Daily Newsletter—the #1 partnerships newsletter in the world keeping thousands of partner professionals on top of the latest industry principles, tactics, and trends. nearbound.com is a project of Reveal. Join the movement here. And ask NearBOT a question here.
PRINCIPLES
The real buyer's journey is messy
Brent Adamson, author of the legendary book, The Challenger Sale, recently commented on a post by Matt Heinz (Founder & President of Heinz Marketing).
Brent has a point.
Mapping the customer journey isn’t supposed to be “cute.” It’s supposed to be a documentation of real humans facing real problems.
Ask yourself:
- What’s my customer’s “oh-sh*t” moment?
- What problems leave my customers with under-eye circles?
- When, exactly, did things go from bad to worse?
People will pay you a lot to solve their most painful problems.
TACTICS
How to expand into new markets through partners
There are many reasons why B2B SaaS companies aim to expand their markets.
Some are included in this graph.
In the Nearbound Era, one of the best ways to enter a new market is your partners.
By leveraging the trust that your partner already has in the market you want to enter it's easier and faster to break in.
Play: Tap into partner intel with account mapping
- Choose 1 or 2 members of your Marketing team who are curious enough to learn how to improve their marketing strategy.
- Give your team access to your account mapping platform—a.k.a. Reveal.
- Help your team identify which partner has the highest market and persona overlap.
- Start account mapping. Filter according to the country or “new market” you want to break into. To quickly identify your partners in those markets filter also by account type and choose “partners.”
- Once you have the right partner, you will be able to get the right intel, and you will be able to deliver the right message to the right people to boost partner revenue. Now you can ask questions like:
- What other tech are they and their market using?
- Who are the people inside those organizations who can help you understand the strategies they used to enter this market?
- Who are the system integrators they have already worked with?
- Who are the local influencers?
FROM THE ECOSYSTEM
The state of the best company's marketing efforts
Traditional B2B marketing playbooks are no longer effective, which is why Peter Caputa (CEO at Databox) and his team are turning to the market to learn how companies are evolving their strategies.
Data from over 120 companies shows that leading companies are doing 3 things:
- Enabling in-house influencers/creators
- Social publishing over blogging
- Paid social over paid search
Companies used to go to the market. They’d create content in their silos and then push that content through their channels.
Now, companies are living in the market and thinking customer-first. To be effective they must start by asking the questions, “Where are our customers living and how do we reach them there?”
B2C THAT TEACHES US ABOUT B2B
Chick-fil-A doesn't get social evangelism
Like it or not, the age of the employee social ambassador is here.
In April, a TikTok creator and Chick-fil-A employee built a following of tens of thousands of people by reviewing Chick-fil-A menu items.
While Chick-Fil-A should have partnered with this employee, they instead notified her that her videos violated their employee policy.
Here’s an example of a company that does not understand that we’ve moved out of the Brand Era and into the Who Economy.
She stopped posting about Chick-fil-A per their request, and less than a week later Shake Shack offered her a paid deal.
In the Brand Era, companies wanted control over messaging because polished companies were trusted companies.
Contrast that with the Who Economy where customers don’t want overly polished brand messaging. They want realness, and they want it to come from people they trust.
B2B partnerships angle:
B2B partner managers have the opportunity to help their companies get ahead of these macro trends. Competition is fierce and the companies that succeed in the Nearbound Era will surround their customers with trust.
Don’t wait for this to become an industry standard. Help your marketers layer partners into existing content and campaigns to expand reach and credibility.
Read more about the Chick-Fil-A story here.
And learn how to build nearbound as an overlay to your company's GTM motions by reading Nearbound and the Rise of the Who Economy.
UPCOMING EVENTS
Stuff you don't want to miss!
- May 29th—Roles on a Partnerships Team—Join Antonio Hidalgo (Senior Director of the Channel Programs at Megaport) and Scott Pollack (CEO at Firneo) where they will dive deep into the various roles crucial to building a successful partnerships ecosystem. Register here.
- May 30th—Driving Revenue Through Technology Partners—Learn from Kelly Sarabyn (Head of Product Partnerships Advocacy and Enablement at HubSpot), Asher Matthew (CEO at Partnership Leaders), and Robbie Ptaszynski (Director of Strategic Pursuits and Priority ISV Co-sell at Microsoft) as they discuss the revenue impact partnerships teams can have and evolving from re-selling to co-selling. Register here.
- June 4th—Happy Customers Festival—Join Arrows, HubSpot, Reveal, PandaDoc, Grain, Wistia, Aircall and thousands of GTM leaders to learn how to unlock the full potential of HubSpot. Register here.
- Nearbound Summit 2023 Recordings—The future of GTM is nearbound. Watch the recordings to hear how B2B leaders across departments unite with Nearbound strategies and tactics. Listen here.
You're all caught up.
RECENTLY PUBLISHED ON NEARBOUND.COM
- Expanding into New Markets with Nearbound by Andrea Vallejo
- The GTM Bowtie: How To Overlay Partners Across the Complete Customer's Journey Part One by Ella Richmond and Will Taylor
- How GTM Leaders are Tracking Nearbound Metrics
- Your Deal Isn't Dead, It's Just Not Partner-Led by Andrea Vallejo
- How Sendcloud Achieved an 80% Increase in New Leads Sourced From Partners Using Reveal with Wilson Favre-Delerue
- The Elephant in the Ecosystem by Chris Messina
- The Era of Ecosystem Orchestration is Finally Here by James Hodgkinson
- How Fullstory Builds their Tech Partnerships Program with Reveal’s Help to Increase Their Renewal Rate by 14% with Nigel Liaw
- Nearbound and the Rhythm of Business by Jared Fuller
- Rhythm of Business Checklist by Jared Fuller
- How Pigment Increased Win Rates 5-10% with a Nearbound Overlay & Reveal with Wendy Wen
- How to use Reveal for Co-marketing Events
- Unleashing the Power of Nearbound: The Stats You Need to Know by Andrea Vallejo
- Howdy Partners #72: Psychology of Team-Wide Buy-In: The Answer to Partner Program Success with Maurits Pieper
- Mastering the Nearbound Rhythm of the Business: Key Takeaways from the Nearbound Book by Andrea Vallejo
See you tomorrow
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