Mangled in translation

How often have your marketing folks toiled and sweated to create brand marketing about a new product or service, spent months training the organization on delivery, and working with sales to crystallize your key attributes – only to have your dealers or partners "amplify on your behalf" with an abomination of your message?

Your logo is stretched, your colors are off, the message is "massaged" to fit their own chord, or your artwork is jammed into a collage with other competitive brands and offers?

Wouldn't it be great to drive the customer to you first, for clarity, and then back to the channel for purchase? We've found a combination of incentives for marketing excellence, and the right mix of social media can make a difference.

Try incentives to motivate training adoption, marketing approvals and collaborative selling strategies. One of our partnered selling programs delivered the strongest sales results in 5 quarters, including 200% in sales engagement above forecasted goals, 5% year-over-year in segment growth and 10% net new customer wins.

And leverage social media to drive customers first to your website, and then to the dealer for detail and purchase. One organization we follow was able to more than double website traffic in 3 straight months over the previous year through referral traffic alone. The result was an increase in website traffic by 21% in April of this year. And Facebook and LinkedIn were the two biggest catalysts.

Find a partner with experience in partnered selling incentives (you can consider that a blatant plug) and make sure you have a well-defined social strategy. Facebook and LinkedIn are great for more substantial messages, but don't forget about Twitter and Instagram for simple and consistent touchpoints that reinforce your mission or values.

And avoid risking a mangled brand message that your organization spent tireless hours and substantial dollars to create.