These businesses still accrue marketing funds, but then struggle to spend them strategically or valuably in the eyes of you - the vendor.  When they are spent, it’s typically on one-off campaigns usually centred on giveaways or relationship building events - activities that are simpler to execute, but offer little to no measurable ROI for either you or the business owner.

Overall though your channel partners all have similar challenges:

• Minimal marketing and marketing system knowledge
• The stakeholder charged with marketing often wears a sales or admin hat as well 
• A long-standing sales-driven culture means the role and value of marketing is ill-perceived
• The view that working with an agency is expensive, or past experience and results have left them with little confidence.

Our Marketing Enablement Program, customised for resellers, is designed to help vendors and their partners address these issues.  It’s a practical approach that highlights any gaps between their marketing ambitions and their marketing capabilities, ensuring they don’t waste time on activities that don’t suit their business.  It includes reporting and administration activities to ensure compliance with your program requirements along with a simplified campaign to help provide an initial ROI.

You’d now like to take a more systematic approach to marketing and lead generation but not sure whether to hire your own staff, use an external company, or some combination of both. 

The right answer depends on what your business needs to achieve and your existing marketing readiness.  Also hiring staff can be an expensive and time consuming process and if you haven’t hired marketing staff before, it can be difficult to find the right person.

The two essential skills needed for marketing in any organisation:

• The right strategy, broken down into the right tactics based on your capabilities, budget and objectives
• Efficient and capable execution of those tactics on time and on budget

It’s rare to find someone who is good at both of these skills – marketers typically fall into one camp or the other.  So unless you can afford to hire two people, you need to think about which of these you really want this person to do and then think about how you’ll manage the other.

This is where an agency like Pepper Marketing can really help as we have the resources to manage both strategy and execution.  Given that we also don’t work with retainers, it can be more cost effective to start working with us initially and get a clearer idea of what you’d prefer to bring in house.  We can then work with that person in whatever ongoing capacity meets your needs.

Our Marketing Enablement Program is the best starting point in these situations.  It’s a practical approach that highlights any gaps between your marketing ambitions and your marketing capabilities, ensuring you don’t waste time on activities, staff or a structure that doesn't suit your business.  It also helps you set up your own systems and processes to allow an appropriate degree of marketing self-sufficiency based on what you need today and what you will need as you grow.  

As a small business owner, you don’t have the time or money to experiment with marketing.    You want to quickly identify those activities that will give you the best return and start getting results.  Where possible you’d also like to do some things yourself to keep costs down, spending money where it will generate the most value. 

Our Marketing Enablement Program is the ideal starting point.  It’s a practical approach that highlights any gaps between your marketing ambitions and your marketing capabilities, ensuring you don’t waste time on activities that don’t suit your business.  It also helps you set up your own systems and processes to allow an appropriate degree of marketing self-sufficiency based on what you need today and what you will need as you grow.  

As a marketing department, you’re responsible for developing and executing the marketing strategy to support your business objectives – that’s the value you provide your organisation.  Even so, there are always areas you could use some help with.  Perhaps some specialised design, copywriting, database validation, or marketing automation execution. 

As a full service agency, we have the resources to act as an extension to your existing team, filling whatever need you may have.  Someone to bounce ideas off, help you execute your plans and support you when needed without the need for a retainer or a strategy workshop.