Further Explorations In VAR Marketing
By Kahlil Crawford, MBA, Trusted Tech Team
Software innovation, like almost every other kind of innovation, requires the ability to collaborate and share ideas with other people. – William Henry Gates III
VARs Yesterday
The value-added reseller (VAR) economic model was formed over 40 years ago with an emphasis on reselling vendor technologies. Over the next 30 years, it evolved toward the prioritization of value-added services, enterprise resource planning (ERP), user mobility, and analytics.
In the current (intelligent enterprise) era, the VAR model is more dynamic (versus static) with an emphasis on intellectual property (content) sales and app innovation. This means that the generation and application of human intelligence are central to the proper development and implementation of digitized assets.
VARs Today
VARs have become highly critical to the success of most business software publishers. Publishers tend to use channel partners to rapidly scale their products to gain and increase market share. VARs, like Trusted Tech Team, can offer proprietary market expertise or software point solutions. However, due to a perpetually growing and changing market, VAR success is not always automatic.
Today, legacy VARs are losing market share because they lack a (contemporary) marketing structure. The same can be said for startup VARs that are yet to properly develop one. Therefore, it is pertinent that VARs operate in multiple software ecosystems. Trusted Tech Team offers enterprise software across a wide variety of sectors - General Business (Microsoft), Accounting (Intuit), Backup (VMware & Veeam), Accounting (Intuit), Creative (Adobe), Security (Webroot & Malwarebytes), etc.
Marketing Impact
When VARs promote and demonstrate their expertise, they are targeting their products and services toward IT Decision Makers (ITDMs) to gain buying interest and earn their business. Research shows that expertise is the top criteria ITDMs use when selecting a VAR, which is why differentiation is a highly important component of VAR marketing development.
VARs often differentiate from the competition by positioning themselves around their expertise, while using thought leadership to demonstrate and promote said expertise. To further influence the decision making processes of ITDMs, VAR marketers generally seek to enhance existing marketing partnerships or advertising spend.
In short, VAR marketing quality must out-value quantity and value must exceed volume. At Trusted Tech Team, we are working diligently to not only provide you high-quality software products and services but to help advance the emerging technology movement online and beyond.
Community Impact
A primary driver of any successful VAR Marketing strategy is a vibrant online presence - an important element of which is the company blog. The Trusted Tech Team blog executes a 5-Level Approach into our graphically-rich blog production process by being:
- Urgent - communicate the advantages of services in a manner that answers the question: “Why now?”
- Entertaining - create content that aesthetically naturally occupies the senses.
- Authoritative - clearly and definitively narrates our expertise and trustworthiness
- Actionable - produce marketing assets and solutions upon which the reader can directly act (links, emails, phone numbers, etc.)
- Integral - optimize header, paragraph, and sentence structure to enhance the impact of videos, images, and graphics.
The integration of these five levels is designed to provide our audience with a multi-sensory reading experience that addresses relative facets of their technological interests and commercial needs.
We welcome you to join our blog community and contribute to the ongoing dialogue surrounding the advancement of enterprise technology, business development, and emerging trends. Our team also welcomes your critical feedback, so we can continue to add value to your business operations and bottom line.
About The Author
Kahlil Crawford, MBA, is Senior Content Engineer at Trusted Tech Team.
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