Resellers are currently exploring marketing-lead growth strategies as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
According to Exertis Head of Cloud Marketing, Helen Workman, resellers are moving away from a growth strategy that is built on sales and placing more emphasis on the marketing of the company following the spring lockdown that reduced sales opportunities.
Speaking to UC Today after the launch of Exertis Cloud, which includes a marketing platform and support for its customers, Workman said “our entire proposition is essentially split by three different pillars; confidence, simplicity and support. Coming from a reseller background, the main obstacle they face when it comes to selling Cloud is understanding. We're going to make it easier from a reseller perspective and an end user perspective to help them navigate those conversations about why an end user should consider migrating over to cloud.
We build the marketing plan, we execute it for them, report on it and pay for all of it as well, so it comes with zero charge to the customer. Alongside that, we're building a demand generation programme for resellers and, since launch. that's been a real attraction for a lot of resellers because digital marketing is such a niche topic and it's a heavy investment area when it comes to growing your business.
I think a lot of organisations are starting to move away from a sales-lead model and a lot are now starting to become more marketing focused, especially as we found ourselves working from home, so that's why it was important to us that we built out an actual marketing service to help them grow their business.”
Exertis Cloud customers receive a dedicated cloud success manager to help build their cloud proposition as well as the marketing-as-a-service piece that offers the digital marketing service free of charge.
The distributors cloud proposition will revolve around Microsoft 365 and Azure initially, with added integrations from Exertis’ security partners including Kaspersky, Sonic Wall, Storage Craft and Carbonite. Rik Hubbard, Exertis Cloud Services Director, said that the distributor is hoping that the Cloud integration will kick off a Device-as-a-Service proposition too.
