Partners have to change the way they deal with customers 26 August, 2009 By Chris Talbot

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In fact, the way vendors and channel partners are doing social marketing is starting to change a lot, said Michael Dubrall, managing director of Gilwell Group, during the recent "Exploring Social Media & Vendor Marketing Trends -- Survey Results" Webinar hosted by Integrated mar.com as part of its Trusted Business Advisor Webinar series.

Vendors and partners are having to change the way they meet their customers' needs, but they're also communicating with and finding customers differently than before.

"There's a huge change in the way we're interacting with each other up and down the value chain," Dubrall said. Some of the old ways of doing business are giving way for the new reality of social media marketing.

With customers pushing the market in this direction, vendors and partners are beginning to embrace the change and experiment with how they communicate with customers via social media. Partners have to take the lead if they're to be successful, Dubrall said.

According to Robert Cohen, president and business editor of Integrated mar.com, partners are worried about keeping up with the changes, but social media is important because trying to run a business the way it was done in the past isn't going to work.

Dubrall noted that there has been an increase in channel activity through social media sites over the last few months, and it's clear channel partners are embracing it. It's forcing patners to change the way they interact with and meet the needs of customers, but with the plethora of social media tools at their disposal, it can be chaotic and confusing.

"We're starting to understand that only a couple of these social media types are going to be successful for most companies," Dubrall said.

The market is moving away from traditional Web sites, most of which were written before Web 2.0 and no longer serve the needs of the customer, he said. Instead, customers are turning to social media and online communities (both independent and vendor- or partner-specific) for their information and communications. That's creating more two-way conversation.

To be effective at managing and attracting customers, partners can't just be sitting within their own domain or Web site; they need to be out creating connections to all of the places where their customers are, whether that's vendor sites, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube or some other social media site, Dubrall said. Partners need to figure out where there customers are online and then proceed accordingly, he said.

Everybody surveyed by Gilwell Group was spending an increasing amount of time on social media sites. In fact, salespeople said they spend approximately 10 per cent of their time on such sites. When asked about how much time they spend on specific types of sites, 36 per cent said they spent no time at all every week on business networking sites like LinkedIn , whereas 59 per cent said they spend between one and five hours at such sites, and five per cent said their usage was more than five hours. When it came to social networking sites like Facebook, 52 per cent said they spent no time, 37 per cent spent one to five hours, and 11 per cent spent more than five hours. With blogs about products and services, it was 54 per cent for zero hours, 41 per cent for one to five hours, and five per cent for more than five hours. For online communities, 57 per cent said they spent zero hours, 39 per cent spent one to five hours, and four per cent said more than five hours. Video on demand sites like YouTube are visited not at all by 66 per cent, followed by 34 per cent for one to five hours, and zero per cent with more than five hours.

Twitter is the fastest-growing social media outlet in the channel. While 81 per cent said they don't use Twitter, 19 per cent said they use it for one to five hours per week, and one per cent said they use Twitter for more than five hours. Ninety-three per cent of respondents said they don't use photo sharing sites, but six per cent said they spend one to five hours using them, and one per cent said they spend more than five hours per week using them.

End-customers are using social media sites more because they meet their needs, adn vendors are starting to see some huge benefits from using them, mostly around advertising, marketing and branding, Dubrall said. Vendors are also able to build up lists of people that communicate about their products. If set up correctly, vendors and channel partners can see who is viewing their social media messages, enabling them to develop databases of people who are interacting with them online, he said.

In the end, partners can drive down costs and improve customer satisfaction by using social media, he said.

"But again, this is a changing way of doing business. It's a different mindset," Dubrall said.

There are a number of things channel resellers are already doing online, including finding new customers, training employees and customers, improving close rates and shortening sales cycles, building customer satisfaction by staying in touch, creating partnerships with other resellers, and engaging in marketing activities.

However, Dubrall said there are several things channel resellers should be doing online, including connecting with their vendors via social media, evaluating and upgrading their online presences, finding out where their customers congregate online, creating professional online communities for customers, encouraging employees to develop and use their online presences for business (but with guidelines), and evaluating vendors and pushing for leadership and funding.

As Dubrall pointed out, there are many more ways to do business and communicate than there were even five years ago.