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Xerox Reinforces Commitment to Partners with New Marketing Resources, Re-Designed Portal

Xerox is enabling its channel partners with a new set of marketing resources to help them market and sell the company’s managed print services and its ConnectKey-enable workplace assistants.

Amy Belcher, VP, Global Channel Marketing and Enablement, Xerox

The new resources and a re-designed partner portal reinforce Xerox’s commitment to deliver value-added benefits to its channel partner community, the company said. Now mobile-friendly and offering added functionality, the new portal features an improved online experience to allow partners to access marketing information, event planning templates and intel on Xerox’s products, services and support.

“We are undertaking a massive effort to make it easier for partners to do business with Xerox,” said Amy Belcher, VP, Global Channel Marketing and Enablement. “That’s a hot button for me personally,” she continued. “I know when partners are dealing with multiple vendors and multiple programs, if you’re not easy to do business with then you’re forcing sales resources to spend time on administrative work rather than actually selling.”

The re-designed partner portal is built on the latest version of the Impartner platform, which Xerox first implemented in 2014. The primary goal of the global upgrade was to make it easier “for partners to find the information that they need,” said Belcher. “It also makes it easier for us internally to update and change out the content on a more frequent basis.”

Xerox is also making a bigger investment in new tools and customizable marketing materials. “One size seldom fits all,” said Belcher, “so we are offering improved assets that can are easy to download on the portal and then be customized by the partner.”

Channel-Friendly Co-Branding Guidelines

The company’s co-branding guidelines have been updated to “make it easier for partners to a make it quicker and easier to understand,” said Belcher. “Obviously, we want to maintain and uphold the Xerox brand. But we’ve modernized our brand guidelines recognizing that partners need more flexibility to market and sell our products.”

A new Partner Event Marketing Toolkit, available to accredited Xerox MPS Channel Partners, was created to offer essential materials needed for hosting on-site customer events. Designed to help partners grow their business by promoting Xerox’s services and technology, the kit includes co-branded assets such as invitation templates, presentations, social media content and videos.

Xerox identified event support as a key component of its upgraded partner program because “we feel it’s really important for our channel partners to drive strong customer experiences,” said Tricia Bhattacharya, Global MPS Marketing Manager. For both virtual and in-person events, the kit “has all the pieces and parts to plan a great event, hold the event and then afterwards make sure that it met the customer’s expectations and follow-ups.”

To help partners who have little experience staging their own events, the kits include planning templates that provide instruction on “what to do you the week before, the day before or 30 days before or 90 days before,” added Bhattacharya. “We have a budget template as well to help them set a budget and track against the budget.”

Boosting Social Syndication

Xerox’s social media program was already “one of our more popular co-marketing and co-branded programs,” said Lisa Graham, Channel Marketing Manager. Xerox is striving  to enable partners to do use social media even more effectively by providing a variety of content syndication tool and creating more content to share.

The company is also providing partners with information on how to use social media channels independently. For example, the partner portal offers tutorials on how to leverage LinkedIn and write and publish blogs.

Next year, Xerox is planning to expand its offering of training videos to cover a wider range of topics. Partners who are just new to marketing will be provided information on how to get started. More advanced courses will be available to partners who are expanding their digital marketing capabilities. Xerox has invested in a new learning management system so “partners can quickly find and access the education they need to excel,” said Belcher

To extend the capabilities of its channel marketing team, Xerox is partners with external marketing agencies to provide marketing concierge services. The agencies will be available to provide a variety of services ranging from helping a partner create a value proposition to crafting campaign materials. The concierge program, still in development, may be reimbursable with accrued marketing funds. Until the program is finalized, Belcher said concierge service are being offered on a case-by-case basis.

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