Your company can secure MDF funding from Fortune Brands—and here’s how!

Your company can secure MDF funding from Fortune Brands—and here’s how!

Feb 3, 2022 | Co-Sell Webinar, Event Industry, Microsoft, Uncategorized, Virtual Events

If you are a cloud solution provider or you own a SaaS company, you should be looking for new ways of growing your business, reaching new audiences and potential customers, and of course, generating more revenue. One of the best ways of doing that is by partnering with Fortune Brands and hosting Co-Sell events.

Perhaps you know what Co-Selling is, or maybe you know someone that has secured MDF funding in the past and managed to host a Co-Sell event with Fortune Brands. Co-Selling is the perfect opportunity to expand your audience, increase your network, generate leads, and increase profitability in your business. The bottom line here is: You SHOULD be Co-Selling by now. 

However, the truth is that not many companies know how to do it. In fact, most companies don’t know that there are funds available for them to carry on with all of their marketing activities. Many companies feel that it is overwhelming or don’t know they can secure MDF funding for these activities.

A tremendous amount of money is destined for marketing development.

And that’s not even it. Millions and millions of dollars destined to Co-Op go unused yearly after year. In fact, it’s estimated that the current annual budget for Market Development and Co-Op is around 70 billion dollars. That’s a tremendous amount of money, isn’t it? However, almost half of it is effectively used for its purpose. It means that nearly 35 billion dollars don’t meet their purpose and go wasted.

Although big companies are not bragging about their marketing boosts for co-selling, the truth is that most tech companies are not familiarized with marketing since it’s not a natural fit for them. 

In the end, MDF’s ultimate objective is lead generation. HyperScalers love co-selling. And they really are willing to engage in business cooperation with you. Therefore, funding most likely will be available. Hyperscalers such as Microsoft Azure offer options for collaboration and funding.

What do you need to secure MDF funding for your Co-Sell event with Fortune Brands?

Although learning how to secure MDF funding isn’t rocket science, it isn’t the most straightforward process in the world. In order to do it, you have to comply with certain requirements first. Especially when you’re talking to Microsoft.

Microsoft offers CSP Partner Incentives Cooperative Marketing Funds. CSP partners earn Co-op as part of their incentive reward, and they can leverage co-op to fund demand generation, market development, and readiness activities. These funds are destined to increase the brands’ awareness and drive sales pipeline growth through marketing activities such as (guess what?) Co-Sell Webinars.

However, if things were that easy, everyone would be spending those Co-op Marketing Funds, and no money would go unused. Sometimes, guidelines and guides can be very tricky to understand or find. On some occasions, companies don’t even know where to start. For example, ask yourself the following question: Do I really know how much money my company needs to host a Co-Sell Webinar? Do you know the process for budgeting a Co-Sell Webinar? What are the best practices? Who do I contact for it?

We’ll stop the questioning there. We don’t want you to feel overwhelmed! On the contrary, we want to help you get through this process and come up victorious with a budget for your next Webinar and clarity on the process.

To start co-selling with Fortune Brands, you have to get your fundamentals right. And for every company, the process will be entirely different. Some of the companies that you can partner with to embark on your co-selling adventure are Hello Alice, Women In Cloud, Microsoft, Google, IBM, Amazon, Mercer Mackay, and many others.

Companies such as IBM, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have similar processes to engage with them in co-marketing strategies. The first thing you must do is to complete your business profile. It’s definitely a to-do because companies can’t go anywhere with you if they don’t know where you are in their Marketplaces.

Generally speaking, hyperscalers have a menu of services to help you go to market, and many of these tools are automated. It doesn’t matter if your company doesn’t have marketing staff or even a Junior marketing staff. They have resources available for you that we’ve invested at no cost, so you can create turnkey marketing activities and campaigns.

It all sounds fantastic, right? However, they will not tweak what you need for your business. That means that you, as a company, should have a systematic way of delivering value to the market, built on the technology that the companies have. Co-selling is just another component of partnering with Fortune Brands, and you can see it as the engine you’re creating for your demand.

You must complete all the steps and have all the deliverables that the company asks you for implementing your cloud-based solution. You need to know your offer, what your solution is all about, and where it is in the Marketplace. Don’t go into a conversation with them to simply have a conversation. You must have your business model ready, with all the basics. That way, when the company opens the door to you, you should be prepared to discuss business, not to go back to the drawing board. Start the conversation!

There’s one thing you have to take in mind before even considering co-selling with Fortune Brands. First, you need to have a solution (or solutions) published in their Marketplaces. That’s the very first step every company must take. You must have good content levels to describe your solution to create engagement with your company and solution. With that level of engagement, then you’ll start measuring consumption and performance. Once you’re a part of the engine, your solution is embedded in the Fortune Brand’s sales tools.

You have to promote your solution and business, create enterprise interest, showcase your experience, and that’s a responsibility on your part. That would give the hyperscalers an excellent insight to make your solution more attractive for customer choices when they’re faced with an opportunity to bring something new or a new customer to reach a market with new customers and value.

We know that it is a lot of information, and it may seem very overwhelming at first. But at Meylah, we’re here to help you sky-rocket your company with new ways of generating revenues and leads for your company. 

And the best way of helping you is by extending the invitation to our upcoming How to Plan and Secure Funding for Your Co-Sell Webinar with Fortune Brands, which will take place as a FREE event on February 8, 2022!

In this webinar, you’ll learn how to:

  • Understand a plan for a Co-Sell Webinar.
  • Estimate what you need for hosting your Co-Sell Webinar.
  • Create a budget plan for your webinar.
  • Prepare an investment request for the Co-Sell webinar.

You can take a look at all the information by referring to this link. We’re so excited to have you here with us!

There’s a new opportunity to learn how to Co-Sell with Microsoft for you

We’re thrilled to announce that we have launched a new Udemy Course: The 5-Day Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft Challenge!

Subscribe and learn how to plan & host your Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft directly from the experts! No prior webinar experience is required. You’ll learn the step-by-step process for setting your webinar from scratch.

The only requirement is that you must be looking for a great opportunity to promote and sell your cloud/SaaS solution through webinars, and preferably be a Microsoft partner.

Click here for more information!

Cloud/SaaS Solutions Marketing and How To Make It Right

Cloud/SaaS Solutions Marketing and How To Make It Right

Dec 1, 2021 | Business, Co-Sell Webinar, Marketing, Microsoft, Virtual Events

Since the beginning of the pandemic, online businesses seem to be the new normal. Day after day, we’ve seen even more and more companies going online, which only means: more competition. However, the pandemic is not the only trigger for companies going online—especially SaaS businesses.

SaaS businesses can be anywhere in the world. They can provide services to anyone worldwide. Let’s take Speaker Engage or Airtable, for example. A company in Rome needs to plan and manage their next co-selling event, or a marketing team based in Lisbon needs to use a system to follow up.

Nevertheless, despite having the whole world at your disposal, sometimes it gets hard to get new clients and make your business grow, right? Perhaps, you’re facing one (or some) of the challenges that SaaS companies face:

  • Cloud/SaaS products are dynamic. They’re constantly changing and updating.
  • Since it is a niche market, you need to be accurate about who you’re selling to.
  • Sometimes, your clients may need your solution, but they don’t understand your terminology.
  • In a world full of competition, it’s hard to stand out.
  • B2B has short-term sales cycles, so it’s crucial to build a loyal database of customers.
  • And many others.

If that’s your case, then you’re not alone. Many B2B companies have the same challenges when it comes to getting new customers.

The best strategy is through Event & Education-Based Marketing.

But not just any kind of marketing. SaaS customers tend to be more logical than emotional when it comes to decision-making. That’s why marketing should be focused on another point of view: value.

Educational-based marketing is a tiny but valuable part of content marketing. People are always looking for content on the internet. Especially content that can help them grow or add some value to their lives or businesses.

Let’s put it this way. When people start to realize that your brand is giving them some kind of value, you begin to generate awareness towards your brand. Therefore, you’re already marketing your brand and services with little effort.

However, to generate awareness, you don’t necessarily have to focus on selling. In fact, you shouldn’t. Instead, you should focus on creating a story and a narrative for your brand. This will generate interest, and your brand will be on everyone’s radar.

Always remember, people, buy from other people, not from brands. That’s why it’s so important to generate trust. And people will actually trust your brand if you educate them, always keeping in mind that you’re doing it because you don’t want them to struggle. You’re actually helping them to avoid or overcome the obstacles you faced along the way.

Once you create your narrative and generate trust, it’s time to develop authority. Because let’s face it, if you have to go to the doctor, you’ll definitely feel calmer if they are well prepared and inspire confidence. The same happens with marketing. The more you share your knowledge with others, they’ll start looking at you as a reference on the matter. That way, your brand will be known as a reliable source, and you’ll get new potential clients for that.

By doing all of the above, you’ll also be qualifying your sales funnel. If more potential customers trust you and know how valuable your brand is, it will make becoming a customer much more manageable.

And of course, the best strategy to optimize your lead generation with content creation is through virtual events.

Virtual events: a valuable way to enable event-based marketing for your business

Virtual events are a resource that SaaS companies (and every company in general) have to showcase products and services to create more opportunities and connections.

Have you and your team ever considered making a webinar? If not, your should! Webinars are the ultimate marketing tool. Here are some reasons why you should start planning your next online event:

  • They are an excellent way of creating quality content for your audience.
  • It’s the perfect scenario to reach new boundaries and regions, which translates into new potential clients.
  • 60% of companies design their webinars to convert attendants into paying users.
  • Around 73% of business-to-business (B2B) marketers think they can get high-quality leads thanks to webinars.
  • About 54% of professionals watch webinars every week.
  • You can generate income just by people attending your webinar.
  • Between 2% and 5% of the attendants will buy from you.

This last fact may not sound like a lot. But it is. Depending on the success of your event’s marketing campaign, that 5% may translate itself into an exciting number of new customers. 

Just imagine that you sent 16.000 invitations for your event. If 5% of the people you invited to attend your event actually do it, you’ll have around 800 spectators. And if 5% of these spectators purchase your product or service, then you’ll have 40 new customers at a single event.

If you think that these numbers are great news, we have an exciting announcement for you. 

We’re excited to announce that the 5-Day Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft Challenge will be available for all of you eager to learn how to finally partner with Microsoft and generate more leads and opportunities for your company.

Signing up is very easy! You can follow this link and register. You’ll get access to the course (including our fantastic Office Hours) for just $49,99.

We can’t wait to have you on board!

5 Reasons to Manage Your Co-Sell Events with Speaker Engage

5 Reasons to Manage Your Co-Sell Events with Speaker Engage

Nov 1, 2021 | Business, Event Industry, Marketing, Virtual Events

Managing co-sell events doesn’t have to be rocket science. As you may know, Co-Selling is the Holy Grail of tech companies, especially those that offer solutions, apps, and services. It’s no secret that everyone wants to co-sell with big companies such as Microsoft, Google, IBM, or AWS. Maybe that’s the reason why you’re here in the first place! 

However, the hassle doesn’t end when you get your ‘Co-Sell Ready’ status. That’s actually where the fun begins! Hosting a co-sell webinar with Microsoft is an excellent opportunity to expand your audience, generate leads and increase profitability in your business.  It’s the perfect place to showcase your most valuable products and services to Microsoft’s incredible communities (and, of course, your potential clients).

Despite that, year after year, millions of dollars allocated to co-marketing programs get unused.  The reason is that, to access these co-marketing programs, you need to either develop a tech solution, host a co-sell event or build a multi-mode digital marketing campaign together.  

Let’s think about it for a minute, shall we? Don’t forget that you have a business to run, meetings to attend, a team to lead, emails to answer. I’m not here to tell you all of your responsibilities. You undoubtedly know them better than I do! But, I can tell you that managing your next co-sell webinar shouldn’t make your life more difficult. 

Thankfully, there’s a cloud-based solution that is here to solve all of your co-selling event problems. And although I wouldn’t say I like to brag, I’m talking about Speaker Engage.

Here are 5 reasons why you should use Speaker Engage for your next co-sell event:

You can handle multiple online events.

Although everything is centralized, every event has its place. Get all the info you need for each event, curate your speakers, manage sponsors, create event campaigns, and more for each event. You can stay on top of everything without losing track of the details. How convenient! Right?

Increase the productivity of your team.

Productivity is critical in process management; it makes our jobs easier. With Speaker Engage, you can forget about the endless Excel and Google Sheet files. Thanks to our dashboards and user-friendly user interface, team collaboration has never been easier and straight to the point. Everything is done faster.

Manage all of your speakers 

Curate your speakers. Quickly determine which speaker suits you the best for each session. Get all the information you need about them at a glance of a click. Manage tasks, make requests, and send information to your speakers. Speaker Engage is the Communications Engine that will power your event.

Email Marketing. Easy. Fast. Convenient.

Speaker Engage makes email marketing and communications so simple. With preloaded Templates for your email campaign, you’ll never have to start from scratch. Just adjust, schedule, and move to the next task!

All you need for your co-sell event in one place.

Forget about surfing between hundreds of apps, jumping to your calendar, login into your email marketing service, and then switching to your mail to get in touch with your speakers. It sounds really messy! But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Having all of your marketing and communications in one place will reduce the workload by A LOT! The key to success is working smarter, not harder.

Planning and managing an online event may sound complex. But it doesn’t have to be this way. We’ve created The Ultimate Virtual Event Planning Toolkit just for you! So you can start right away and crush your next webinar! You just need to click here to download it. 

The bottom line: focus on your business. Speaker Engage will take care of the rest. 

Time is money. There’s no doubt about it. That’s why having a cloud-based platform such as Speaker Engage for your next online event is the right move! It will help you reduce the stress, and the hassle of organizing and managing your online event will save you time.  

With the best cost-benefit relation, Speaker Engage maintains an affordable price, while being the best tool to help you reduce the workload, contact management, promotion management and streamline all the email systems in one place for your co-sell events. 

We want to make online event management convenient and straightforward. But, we also want you to really know how to do it. And what better way of learning than participating in our 5-Day Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft Challenge!

It will be jampacked with information about co-selling with Microsoft, in the hands of the very experts of the industry. By the end of the challenge, you’ll be able to:

  • Set up your Co-Sell Webinar Plan.
  • Set up your Co-Sell Webinar Communication Engine.
  • Set up your Co-Sell Webinar Platform.
  • Develop your Co-Sell Webinar Creatives & Presentation.
  • Publicize and Promote your Co-Sell Webinar. 

So, what are you waiting for? Sign-up here and step up your co-selling game. 

Speaker Engage. You stay on top of things. Your events run smoothly.

 

Take your cloud business to the next level with Meylah’s 5-Day Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft Challenge

Take your cloud business to the next level with Meylah’s 5-Day Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft Challenge

Oct 19, 2021 | Business, Event Industry, Featured, Marketing, Tech, Virtual Events

Learn how to plan and run a Microsoft Co-Sell Webinar!

Register now to Meylah’s new 5-Day Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft Challenge!

Are you ready to start crushing your business game? Because at Meylah, we are 100% prepared to help you and your company get to the next level. But, how tho? 

Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Our team has invested hundreds and hundreds of hours developing a new 5-Day Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft Challenge just for you. If you got to this point, it’s because you heard (for sure) about ‘Co-Selling with Microsoft‘ somewhere.

First, you must understand that Microsoft is looking for software companies that offer solutions, apps, and services that might fit their clients’ needs. Becoming co-sell ready is the magic sauce to accelerate your market growth and profitability. So that’s an excellent opportunity for solutions that already are “Co-Sell ready”.

You may be wondering, why is it important to Microsoft that you co-sell with them? Well, here is your answer….There are 4 main reasons:

  1. Gaining access to customers to get insights and expand markets
  2. Product Differentiation and Filling Product Gaps
  3. Extending and Expanding Their Sales Teams
  4. And last, but never least, catalyzing cloud consumption 

Now that you know what they care about, let’s discover the ways you can partner with Microsoft and their channel partners to co-sell

  • The first is selling through their Cloud Marketplaces by publishing your solution, service or consulting.
  • The second is getting access to Partner-to-partner relationships (P2P) through Cloud Solution Provider engagements.
  • And the third is Traditional Co-Selling which is selling via their inside sales and/or enterprise field sellers.

As you may think, the first two options are the ones that have the most revenue. Why, tho? Simple. With these, your company is exposed to an enormous audience, which translates into more potential clients and opportunities.  

The thing about co-selling is that it’s very similar to crypto; everyone wants a piece of it, but few people really know how it works (stay tuned for that). And even if you do know what Co-Selling with Microsoft is, are you even sure how to run your next webinar with them and generate leads to your business?

Run your next Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft like a charm

From shopping to watching your favorite TV shows and movies, everything is done online nowadays. That’s also the case for businesses (and big companies) that want to present their shiniest and newest products and services to the public. Why should YOU be the exception?

Sometimes, running an online co-sell webinar may be a little overwhelming. But that shouldn’t be the case for you. With the correct tools, tips and tricks, it can be an excellent opportunity to create new connections and opportunities for your business.

That’s what the Meylah 5-Day Co-Sell Webinar Challenge is all about! You will get incredible insight into how things are done and what others you must keep in mind when preparing your next co-sell webinar with Microsoft. 

We really want everyone to participate. And $500 worth of tutorials, tools, and other features, you can join us at this event for just $147. 

Still not convinced? To make it more appealing for you, we’ll be offering a $100 discount for the first 30 participants that sign up for the challenge! The only thing you have to do is use the code [20COSELL] and you’re good to go!

What are you waiting for? Don’t miss the offer!

Join the Challenge Now!

But, hurry! Before someone else grabs your spot!

Take a look at some of the incredible features you will get by signing in to the Challenge for this fantastic  price:

  • You’ll learn how to run your next Co-Sell Webinar with Microsoft.
  • Access to our most useful Ultimate Co-Selling Webinar  Planning Toolkit.
  • Exclusive access to our Office Hours & extra content after every Challenge day (from 5 to 6 PM PST).
  • Access to industry experts to guide you to run your perfect co-sell webinar 
  • Permanent access to the videos and all the Challenge content post-event
  • Access to cloud software discounts to run your next webinar!
  • And so much more!

Starting on November 1st. Stay tuned for more information!

A Growth Hacker’s View: The Future of Speaker Invitation and Engagement Process

A Growth Hacker’s View: The Future of Speaker Invitation and Engagement Process

May 26, 2021 | Event Industry, Tech, Trends, Virtual Events

Video conferences, business networks, and community activities are becoming increasingly popular with each passing day. According to Global Market Insight, the video conferencing market reached USD 14 billion in 2019 and is expected to increase at a CAGR of more than 19 percent between 2020 and 2026. But as these meeting methods scale new heights, the process of selecting the speakers and sending invitations is becoming increasingly complex.
(more…)