CRN Sales & Marketing Awards - Finalist Q&A with Russ Powell, founder & MD at Sharper B2B Marketing

Russ Powell talks being a finalist at this year's CRN Sales & Marketing Awards

What prompted you to enter the CRN awards this year, without giving anything away of course?

I’ve been a long-time follower and supporter of CRN (from way back in my client-side days) but this is actually the first time we’ve entered the awards for Sharper B2B. And it was all about timing and being able to back ourselves properly.

The CRN awards are a massive deal so if you’re going to enter you need to make sure you’re doing so with your best, most high-impact work – which is absolutely what we’ve done across the Best Campaign (Reseller) and Best Channel Services Company Campaign categories.

We wanted to wait until we had some truly brilliant, high-ROI, channel-specific work to share. Which we do, so the time was right.

What would you say is your company’s proudest achievement over the past year?

Like most of us in the tech industry, the last year has been a wild ride, and we (alongside our clients and partners) have been navigating some BIG ups and downs. But in amongst the chaos we’ve notched up some achievements we’re really proud of:

• We actually completed an MBO so we’re now an independent agency. This has been transformative for us as it’s given us much more headway to beef up our data science and research/intelligence offering, which then makes our creative work even better than it was before.
• We’ve expanded our client base significantly with global engagements and are now working with client teams (and their partner networks) well beyond the shores of the UK.
• We’ve been working with one of those clients to revamp their entire to/through/with partner activity. We rolled out the new program for them and the feedback from the partners has been glowing.
• We also won the biggest deal in the history of the agency last year, which is 100% channel focused. We’re under NDA with it all – so can’t really say anything - but it’s a fantastic vindication of the approach we take to channel marketing that such a large brand has put their trust and belief in us to help reinvent and reinvigorate their partner marketing programs. We’re obviously doing something right!

What are the key demands you are seeing from your customers this year?

It really depends on if we’re talking about those on the vendor side or those in the wider ecosystem – distis, VARs, MSPs, etc.

With vendor clients it’s really about nailing down how to effectively and efficiently deliver the 4 “shuns” for their ecosystem: Communication, Education, Motivation and Activation. Exactly how this is done varies vendor to vendor and partner to partner so it’s about finding what’s right fit for an ecosystem (at all levels) and rolling this out in a consistent and coherent way.

We’re also seeing a BIG push on vendors looking to bring more MSPs into their ecosystems too.

If we’re looking at things from a partner perspective though, the key demands are around making sense of what’s coming from vendors, being able to make use of this in a way that fits their business and then ensuring that any/all MDF is used to deliver as high-ROI activity as possible.

Lots of partners are also stretched thin when it comes to marketing capacity and capability, so it then becomes about not just how to do more with less, but how to do what’s right with less.

That’s where we’re finding our more creative approach to MDF-funded, co-branded, end-user focused campaigns is really delivering the goods for clients of all shapes and sizes.

What do you see as the main opportunities for the industry in the coming 12 months? How do you plan to capitalise on those opportunities?

Channel and partner marketing is a constantly shifting, moving, evolving thing. Those linear relationships that used to exist from vendor to partner to end user have changed entirely (and won’t ever go back to how they were).

End users – like us all - are experiencing “digital fatigue” from being constantly bombarded with ads, content, and campaigns online. That means the marketing channels and tactics that worked well a few years ago are continually dropping in effectiveness.

(That’s not to say people are turned off to all digital channels entirely. There’s just so much noise nowadays it’s become harder to cut through).

And many marketers feel like they’re on a constant hiding to nowhere to deliver vast quantities of leads to sales (and to have it done yesterday!)

But this is where the opportunity lies.

And it’s an opportunity to outthink the current way of doing things (before your competition do).

Rather than ploughing limited time, effort, and MDF into “lead gen” campaigns and top of funnel tactics – that by and large deliver very poor ROI – there needs to be a strategic shift to focus far more on strategic goals/objectives and ensure what marketing is doing to, with, for and through the ecosystem supports this.

I was speaking to a CMO the other day and she explained this beautifully as “The 3 Rs”: Reputation, Relationships and Revenue.

Marketing activity should be there to build reputation for all parties involved through consistent brand activity – not ambulance chasing potential deals with scatter gun campaigns. With a strong reputation that enables better, more valuable relationships to be built across the board. And that in turn will drive more revenue and more consistent revenue for all involved over the longer term.

Sure, this is a simplification and there’s loads more to it but it’s those vendors and partners that understand this - the power of brand, the importance of relationships and how to play the long game with marketing – that will be the ones who succeed (rather than get lost in the “sea of sameness”).

Which technology trend currently still in hype stage are you placing your bets on?

We’re actually in a beta phase with our own platform/tool at the moment that will help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of through/with partner campaigns.

It’s essentially an additional layer that sits between a vendors PRM and a partners CRM and/or marketing platforms to speed up and make more efficient the build, delivery and execution of campaigns.

It’s all to help that “long tail” of the partner ecosystem, who may not have the in-house marketing capability or capacity to stand up and activate campaigns properly, to be able to do so.

It will help level the playing field for smaller partners and mean more, better marketing is delivered to target audiences more consistently and efficiently. So it’s a win-win for all involved.

That’s where we’re placing our bets.

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