User Profile
JLTry
MicrosoftJoined 2 years ago
User Widgets
Recent Discussions
How to get 5x higher billed sales in Marketplace
Elizabeth Beals posted the Forrester commissioned impact study on the value of the Microsoft Marketplace. Our team understands the benefits that partners can gain from the Marketplace channel and how engaged partners usually achieve 5X the billed sales compared to those who are less involved with the channel. I thought I would share my own observations on optimizing your partnership with Microsoft. How to drive higher billed sales in Marketplace Invest the time. Create a plan. Be persistent. Invest the time that you will need. The Microsoft Marketplace should be thought of as its own marketing channel. Like other channels, it requires ongoing attention and care to be successful. And let's be real: things don't always work the way they are intended at first. When that happens, you may find yourself digging deep for patience. But it IS worth it. You'll need to spend time creating and optimizing your listing on the Marketplace, and mastering Partner Center to utilize the analytics for your views and customer data. Also, it is important to connect your listing to your CRM to capture those leads. This is another area that may take some time to configure. It may not be practical to have a full-time channel manager, so consider streamlining your strategy as to how you will use Marketplace to focus your time. Consider which target audience represents your best opportunity. Will you see a larger impact with a B2B plan, perhaps working with other partners is a stronger strategy, or targeting end customers and driving them through Marketplace is the best approach? If you're not sure, consider your top 5 customers and their characteristics. Orthe next 5 customers in your pipeline. Are there similarities in segments that might guide you as to your best focus at the moment? Create a marketing plan and include Microsoft marketing benefits. Remember that your marketing efforts will help drive customers through Marketplace. While you may have marketing benefits from Microsoft that will help you drive awareness and supplement what you are planning, the strongest use of those benefits will be to complement your marketing plans. For example, there is a terrific resource from Microsoft available to partners for Digital Marketing Campaigns. This is Microsoft content that can be automated for you. While it is a great resource, it is best used in conjunction with your other digital marketing efforts. For more on how to think about digital marketing, here are two articles I found very helpful on LinkedIn: Thanks to Lee Corbett for posting a great guide to digital channels to drive demand that's worth a read, and Lee also has a quick start guide for a content marketing approach. Be persistent and ask for help. Take advantage of all the programs you have time to manage. And be sure to ask advice about how to incorporate benefits into your current plans. There may be more strategic uses for these benefits in your larger plan. For example, do you have an event coming up that you are planning on promoting, a target customer you are working toward closing, or an important update that is going live? These moments in time might represent good timing to employ some of the marketing benefits you might be receiving. Also, if you are meeting Microsoft sales people, if appropriate, perhaps ask who might be the right Microsoft Seller to speak to about the specific industry or geography that you might be targeting. Remember that not every Microsoft Seller is going to have insight into every vertical or community that might be helpful to you. If you are in a position to need technical support, you may find it takes longer to resolve than you might expect. Continue to follow up if needed, be persistent and advocate to get to a resolution. Remember that there are benefits for your customers to buy from you on Marketplace: easier procurement processes, streamlined vendor management and speed, plus the trust element. Once you invest the time and attention, the Marketplace can be a lucrative channel to help you drive that higher return. See the marketplace guidefor the best practices to help you maximize the return from your investment in the Marketplace, which I have also attached below. Thanks for reading, -JLWhy and How to use a Call-To-Action on your Marketplace Listing
The "Get it now" button on your listing can be frightening. Your Call-to-Action can alleviate their concern. The very actionable button across the Marketplace for transactable offers is "Get it Now." This is very powerful, clear and actionable. But it can also be frightening! We have all been trained to not trust a download button, and to generally not click on anything. And with good reason. Malware, spam, ransom, subscription billing, or that visit from IT to clean up your computer... not to mention the follow up memo to the entire company reminding everyone of the warnings. (I once had to make a 4:00am trip to the tech desk for an emergency wipe.) It happens! There are very real questions and concerns from users about clicking on that button, much from prior bad experiences. Will I download an entire new process onto the server? Will I lock up my computer for hours doing a setup? Will I cause a charge to me or my company? Will I be on the hook for this, or even fired? Even though the Microsoft Marketplace is a safe space, you can help remove potential obstacles and concerns. Include a specific Call-to-Action that tells your prospect what will happen when they click. If your listing is done well and you have led your reader's eye down the page with the content and formatting of your text, a strong CTA will anchor the text, indicate the next steps and encourage the action. This should help alleviate the concern about what might happen when they click, plus it should help to improve your click-through rate. Here are some suggestions: "Click on the Get it now button above to choose the best plan!" "Click 'Get it now' to set up your free trial!" "See a demo when you click 'Get it now' above!" "Click 'Get it now' to learn more!" And here are some examples: Abnormal Security says: Click the “Get It Now” button on the upper left to connect with one of our Email Security Experts. BitFractal says:FREE TRIAL (no credit cards required) directly within the app. Get it now and start using within a click. Intervy says:Click the Get It Now button above and give your team the gift of continuous learning, professional upskilling, and enhanced camaraderie with Intervy. AnnounceBot (in the Teams Store) says:Click Add to a team above to learn more and get your free trial! (No credit card required) Advanced tip: Be sure that you have connected your CRM system to your listing so that you can follow up immediately after the prospect clicks on Get-it-now. Learn more about that here:Connect to your CRM system -JL ISV Success Program Engagement Manager for Teams PartnersWhy and How to use Industry in your Marketplace listing
Position your offer to an industry for targeting advantage. Many partners avoid using a specific industry focus in their listing on the Marketplace (unless their offer is already specific built for a single industry like LawToolBox). But by utilizing industry examples and language, you can often give your solution a key advantage. It may be a no-brainer to think that prospects searching for a solution want to work with a company that understands their business. By including key industries, you can speak the language of that business, and offer examples or case studies that others in that industry can easily relate to. Microsoft has clouds forspecific industries that can help guide your decision to focus toward one or more of these, plus provide resources to help: Financial Services Healthcare Manufacturing Non-profit Retail Sustainability For the complete list of industries that are supported in Marketplace, learn more here:Marketplace Industries How to find your hidden industry trend Think you don't have a trending industry among your customers? Try this exercise: List your last 10 customers and note their industry List your 10 largest customers and note their industry List the 10 largest customers in your pipeline and note their industry Now how many are in the same, or related, industries? See any trends in industry types? This exercise may surprise you! How to remain relevant to all industries The most popular reason I hear from Microsoft Partners is the concern that if they focus on a single industry, then a potential customer in a different industry will overlook their solution or app. This is understandable, and there are some specific ways to address a few industries and still remain open to all. Develop industry-specific versions like Priority Matrix from Appfluence If you have enough of an opportunity with an industry that has very specific needs, like Government or Healthcare, consider doing a version of your app or solution specifically for those industries. There are obvious drawbacks to this, but it will allow your company to hyper-focus on that industry in your listing and your sales and marketing efforts. Choose 1-2 industries to target in keyword in text like BitFractal who addresses several industries in their first paragraph You can select up to two industries and two verticals per industry for your listing in Marketplace. As you write your listing, be sure to hit the pain points that are specific to your 1-2 complementary industries. While BitFractal addresses a number of industries in their first sentence, an alternative would be an example like this: Course creators no longer need to rely on their own voice Consultants can produce several versions with different accents and genders, for example. Add Case Studies and other material in your different industries At the bottom of your solution listing, there is a "Learn More" area where you can load up documents for your prospects. Remember to include: White paper with POV in a specific field Customer Case Studies that address specific industries and call them out in the title Utilize Private Offers to create custom solutions As always, you have the opportunity to create a Private Offer that can be unique and specific. By being more specific, you will be able to narrow down your targeting and go deep into one industry to help you gain an advantage in the Microsoft Marketplace. -J.L. ISV Success Program Engagement Manager for Teams PartnersGet Noticed in Marketplace with a Title that Works Harder
When you want to be found more easily on marketplace, remember what searchers see. They see your Title, your company name and the first line of your listing. How can you use this to your advantage? Make sure your Title tells searchers what your solution does. The first 50 characters will be displayed on the search page. Remember, your listing Title does not need to be the title of your app or solution. Here's an example from Solgari that adds the function into the title. The reader immediately gets an understanding of what this solution is, and very likely had typed in "call center" or "contact center" into search: Use the first sentence to be concise and communicate the reason for your solution. The first 100 characters will show up. Be sure to use keyword and SEO optimization insights to craft these. Here's an example from Autopilot that does this well. This summary quickly outlines the key benefit of the app: Use formatting to lead the reader down the page and reinforce your benefits. Start sentences with actionable benefits that speak to your audience. Again, Solgari does a good job of this in their listing. Even if this is a bit small to read, you can experience how your eye is drawn to scan the listing and take in the information quickly: What NOT to do See the missed opportunities in this search summary, and the fictionalized listing text. Would you click through or pass by? Just using the company name in all places doesn't help the reader understand the function of the solution. The headline that shows up in search does not specifically help the reader understand the benefit. The listing is repetitive and doesn't start sentences with key benefits for the reader. I would have passed this one by. Before you update your listing, go do a search yourself to see what is showing up. Can you stand out from the other listing? With these simple tips, you are off to a great start! There are some great guides and helpful info to create stronger listings on all of the Microsoft Marketplace outlets. Be sure to check out the links below. Commercial marketplace publishing guide Microsoft AppSource and Azure Marketplace Best Practices Guide Marketplace Strategy Guide Many thanks to Ed Grant from Solgari, and Adam Shapiro from Autopilot. -J.L. ISV Success Program Engagement Manager for Teams PartnersLinkedIn Marketing: Critical Hashtags for Partners
When you are posting on LinkedIn, there are a number of Microsoft hashtags you should be using at the bottom of your posts to help increase your visibility. This question has come up in different discussions with partners about how to get their messages seen by more of their audience organically. Thanks to the article fromTricycle-Europewho did the work for me on this. Top hashtags for Microsoft partners: #MicrosoftPartner #Microsoft365 #Azure #DigitalTransformation #CloudComputing #Cybersecurity #MSPartner #MicrosoftTeams #PowerBI #AI And, in general, the top 100 hashtags for LinkedIn can be found at this article by Taavi Lindmaa is absolutelyworth checking out! Edited to include the answer to Raj's add below: Raj:In order to find followers for each Hashtags, one can just enter the hashtag in LinkedIn search and go to that page to see the followers' count. JL:It's not as intuitive as you might think, but here are 3 ways to get to that info (with some assistance from Bing AI-Powered Co-pilot): Type a hashtag into LinkedIn’s search bar, then find it in any of the posts that come up and open it. You’ll see the hashtag’s follower count at the top, and current trending posts using that hashtag 1 . There are also some apps that can get to this info a little faster, such as a free app called LinkedIn Hashtag Analytics.This app helps get more insights into hashtags on LinkedIn, and helps you discover related hashtags and potential reach scores. You can also manually search for a hashtag on LinkedIn by pasting this URL string into your browser and add the keyword at the end. The below example is searching for the hashtag Social Media: https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/all/?keywords=%23socialmedia. Replace “socialmedia” at the end with the hashtag you want. You’ll see how many posts have used that hashtag in the past year. 😊 Here's some related source info for more: 1. bing.com 2. blog.hootsuite.com 3. linkedin.com 4. vistasocial.com 5. blog.hootsuite.com 6. inlytics.io 7. engage-ai.co 8. brandmentions.com -J.L. ISV Success Program Engagement Manager for Teams Partners
