Which activity will get technology manufacturers to pony up Marketing Development Funds (MDF) for their channel partners (integrators, resellers, etc.)? Today, there is really one critical path… Demand Generation.

Most Demand Gen activities end up being ineffective. Why? Because despite the potential “warmth” of prospect lists and well-trained teams making calls with pithy, intelligent marketing scripts, few Demand Gen service providers offer additional tools to heat up their contact.

What really warms a call? Proactive communication. Sending the prospect something before calls are made. Give the lead generators a report of who opened or clicked through an HTML email sent prior to the calling campaign. The key is a branded message that starts before the call, continues through the call and follows up the call. This type of business intelligence can even double the number of truly qualified prospects reached through a Demand Gen campaign.

I have worked in the High Tech industry for more than a decade in marketing, communications, consulting and business development roles. The most consistent trend that I’ve observed while serving in these positions is the shift in the reseller and integrator environments, in terms of brand equity, mission and sales focus, to the IT business solution.

In the new millennium, small, medium and large business enterprises have de-emphasized the value of purchasing technologies as commodities. Today, vertical end-users and CFO’s are more often final arbiters on technology purchases, forcing reseller channels to retrench their client outreach. This puts critical business issues (CBIs) at the forefront instead of bits, bytes and service cost reductions alone. Solving real business problems, in terms of how a client raises their shareholder value, how they interface with their customers, how they comply with regulations, how they reduce real estate burden costs by virtualizing technologies, etc., gets the power-sponsor to respond and sign a deal.

My current firm, Mitra Creative, supports the marketing needs of a number of reseller, integrator and custom software development company clients. We are building new branding, communications, salesforce automation and digital/print advertising and promotional solutions every day that respond to the needs of high tech companies to sell to business end-users. We will delineate these trends and some of the solutions that Mitra Creative and others have devised to respond to the current requirements of tech marketing and business development in coming entries. Stay tuned!

Welcome to the Mitra Creative Blog. Check back for valuable information about:

• Marketing and Branding Strategy
• Web and Multimedia
• Vertical Industry Trends: Especially in the High Tech, Media/Entertainment/Publishing and Education fields
• Social Networking and Web 2.0
• Business Demand Generation
• Digital Video
• Asia/U.S. Marketing