In order to create a win-win situation, the more products your partner sells, the more revenue you’re generating for yourself. So, it’s really in your best interest to help your partners market their products. And there’s a number of different ways that you can do that.
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SHOW NOTES
What we mean when we say OEM programs [00:50]
Different ways to help your partners market their product [02:00]
Ways to create omnichannel visibility [05:59]
OEM partnerships — the El Dorado for ISVs now [06:58]
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TRANSCRIPT
Liz Lemarchand: How is it that innovative software solutions have the ability to change the world yet they don’t sell themselves? How is it that I know my target market but I’m not able to generate enough sales opportunities? How do I even get started to create visibility for my brand when I’m not an expert in marketing? That is the question and this podcast will give you the answer. Welcome to SMplified: Software Marketing Made Simple!
Hey everyone, this is Liz from Media Dev and today I’m going to talk about why OEM program holders should help their ISV partners to market their solutions.
So, I actually started to record this podcast a little bit earlier and it turned into a who’s on first.
It is a little bit difficult sometimes to describe what we mean when we say OEM programs because there’s a lot of different varying definitions about what that means.
What I mean here, when I say OEM is really that ISV to ISV relationship.
So, when I’m a software vendor and I’m looking to embed my product directly into the software solution made by somebody else. So, just to clarify that one point first. And when this happens, what we’ve noticed is that there are a lot of OEM program holders who don’t believe that they should be involved in the marketing of that final product so that software solution that has the embedded features of the OEM and the reason why they feel that they shouldn’t get involved in the marketing process is that it’s the other software vendor solution. So, they believe that the marketing is really up to that other company to do.
But the fact of the matter is that in order to create a win-win, the more products your partner sells, the more revenue you’re generating for yourself. So, it’s really in your best interest to help your partners market their products. And there’s a number of different ways that you can do that.
One of the easiest ways is to write some kind of case study, and that can also help you for your own.
It’s true that there are some ISVs that don’t necessarily want a broadcast that they’ve embedded the features of another product into their own.
It becomes more like a white labeling type of scenario, but it’s true that if you have well-known brands, people know who you are and that can really add a lot of value to your partner product. I don’t see any reason why that shouldn’t be really highlighted and almost advertised to the end-user so that they can have even more confidence in the product that they’re purchasing. So co-branded initiatives. Key studies is one, but social media types of activities can also really help where you can highlight the benefits of that other software product to users, to your customers, your prospects.
You know, one of the things when we do outbound lead generation types of marketing campaigns for our customers who are all software vendors many times we engage in very high-level discussions with decision-makers.
And you can find that when you’re digging and really uncovering those pain points or challenges that the companies face, you may find an opportunity for a product that’s not your own, so by being open to a variety of different possibilities, you’ll end up better serving the end-user customer.
So just as an example, you know, let’s say I’m engaging with a prospect about a certain CRM and they don’t need a CRM but they have a need for a logistics solution.
OK, well if I am the only program holder and I know who has embedded my product, I may be looking to sell my product to an end-user customer but they may not need my product but they could need the product of one of my partners and then if I can highlight that not only am I still getting a win because indirectly I’m getting a kickback from the sale of that other product. I’m also really better serving my end-user customer. So, again, I know that may sound crazy for some early on program holders, like what do you mean now?
I’m going to spend my time trying to sell somebody else’s solution, but I think by having knowledge about the various different solutions that are part of the broader portfolio in that sense you may find that actually there are some ways of killing two birds with one stone if you’re able to do that, type of integrated outreach program
I think that can also come when you do some types of events or if you do other types of activities hand in hand with your partners, you can both essentially be working together to promote the two solutions at the time, so again, this is what I’m talking about when you’ve embedded when your solution has been embedded into the solution of somebody else’s product, and then you can work together to try to promote both of those products at the same time.
So in order to really enhance visibility, of course, you have to be Omnichannel, you have to be present everywhere. There are lots of ways to create visibility on social media as well as through email marketing, outbound telemarketing outreach, and social selling and we have tons of resources on our resource library that can get you started with any of those particular strategies or tactics. But the important thing again is to always be seeing the bigger picture.
In business, everyone wants to do more business and sell more products. That’s really the goal for anybody. So, when you are able to find creative ways to work with your partners so that you can both be promoting the various solutions together will make more sense for your business in the end of the day.
In fact, we find that OEM partnerships really are the El Dorado for ISVs now. It’s really the most interesting way to exponentially increase growth in sales without very much work, you know, end-user campaigns that we run, there’s saturation in markets for certain products and the fact is, is that you know when a company has already purchased and deployed a software solution, they don’t change it every year.
And some people don’t even want to look at what else is out there because they know sometimes it can be painful to deploy something new to get buy-in from leadership. And they have to prove return on investment and total cost of ownership. So it’s not a decision that’s taken lately to implement a new software solution unless there’s a really, really big need. And that need can be hard to come by, but when we’re talking about OEM, you know that widens the scope of the different types of solutions that are going to be accessible to your end-user customer, and they may have a need for something else like I said earlier, but your product is part of that other solution. And then without having to do anything, you’re getting the royalties back to you.
So that’s why we really believe that it’s important for OEM program holders to help their ISV partners to market their solutions so that you can benefit greatly from that increase in sales.
That’s it for today.
Thanks again for joining us and we’ll see you back here soon for another episode.
You just listened to simplified brought to you by MediaDev. If you have software marketing questions or need help marketing your software solution, reach out to us at contact@mediadev.com and check out other amazing assets for you on our resource library at mediadev.com.
