SAP Business ByDesign Marketing: A Guide for Partners

[Former Member]

BY DESIGN MARKETING BLOGS: THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS

There has been a dramatic uptick in ultra-generic marketing blog posts in the ByDesign space, both by SAP and by Partners. Take quick glance at the ‘Featured Content’ for some great examples.

The typical ultra-generic ByDesign Marketing blog typically goes something like this:

• Partner describes some generic business problem, siting various sources and studies. This usually occupies 90% of the blog’s content.
• Next, Partner mentions ByDesign and that it contains a feature that will help alleviate this business problem. The feature itself is not described…merely its existence.
• Finally, Partner promotes themselves as a ByDesign provider.

Here is a fictional example of the above template:

“Small business face challenges with limited resources and increasing complexity in their supply chain and vendor relationships. In fact, blah blah study states that most small to medium business process X number of invoices, with a limited accounting staff.

Typically not having an IT organization, these companies can use a platform such as SAP Business ByDesign to process invoices easily in the cloud, enabling on-demand access to key vendor relationship data.

To learn more about how SAP Business ByDesign can help your business thrive, contact blah blah person at blah blah company for more information”

Until now, I’ve taken a pessimistic approach to these types of blog posts, slamming/flaming them, and therefore making my passion for excellence appear to be childish lack of self-control. So in short, I have been a part of the problem, not the solution. It’s a new year, so I’m going to take a new approach: help, rather than criticize. (Note: I reserve the right to criticize.)

So how can partners provide more compelling marketing content, that may actually generate some leads, opportunities, and deals? I humbly offer my opinion below:

HOW TO MARKET BYDESIGN IN YOUR BLOG

Continue to highlight business problems, but demonstrate the value that ByDesign can bring to solve this problem in a way that is better than the competition.

Rather than gloss over the existence of a feature, describe the feature in a way that excites a prospect. Will ByDesign revolutionize your Order-to-Cash process? Will ByDesign provide business insight you’ve been missing for years?

Make sure to emphasize why ByDesign is better than every other system that contains the feature you’ve described as existing in the system, because every system also contains this feature. Here are some highlights to get you going:

• ByDesign is a fully integrated platform that allows you to view the life-cycle of sales, projects, customers, financial health, etc., in an unprecedented fashion, using a customizable, and cutting edge analytics engine.
• Have a special business requirement? SAP ByDesign has a developer ecosystem that can meet your needs and fill your gaps.
• With ByDesign’s open platform, you have the opportunity to automate and streamline common business processes like never before.
• The ByDesign community is full of passionate individuals with wonderful ideas for improving the platform. These ideas are regularly reviewed and implemented by SAP and its Partner Community. The community is engaging and collaborative, so you’ll never feel like you’re ‘on an island’ and always have many paths to support.
• The ByDesign user experience is the best in the business for a full business suite, with constant innovation and improvements being made.
• ByDesign brings your business to the next level with on-demand access from anywhere in the world, robust security and user management, and the decades of business process expertise of SAP, all built in.
• Not ready to bring all your processes to the cloud? ByDesign offers a simple subscription model that allows you to implement more and more functionality at your convenience, with no additional cost.

These are just a few core benefits that I would emphasize in a marketing blog post.  Describe generic scenarios and expect no response. Demonstrate unique value and get results.

With all the push to ‘Step Up to the Cloud,” it’s time to also “Step Up your Marketing Blog Posts.”

Follow me on Twitter @JudsonOnDemand.