New Ready-to-Go packaged marketing plans for partners bundle marketing guidance and tips, customizable marketing collateral, and step-by-step processes that complement major Microsoft marketing initiatives. The plans, at least parts of which could be managed by nontechnical marketing staff, could boost marketing and sales by partners, particularly smaller partners who lack marketing resources.

What's in the Package

A Ready-to-Go Marketing campaign outlines a series of steps, such as the following, that partners can take to execute a specific marketing campaign:

• Learn more about specific Microsoft solutions, such as remote office solutions, through a series of 60-minute online tutorials, accessible directly from the Ready-to-Go site
• Update their Web site with banners, buttons, and Web page copy supplied by Microsoft so that customers driven to the site can learn more about the partner and Microsoft solutions
• Identify the target audience using their own customer list or one generated by Microsoft
• Execute the actual marketing campaign by e-mail or direct mail and follow up with a phone call
• Present the Microsoft solution to customers who respond
• Analyze the results of the campaign.

Fill in the Blanks

Ready-to-Go campaigns provide copious help for partners, supplying customizable versions of all the marketing collateral.

Partners can download customizable PowerPoint presentations, customer stories, white papers, references, financing options, and current sales incentives, most of which they can customize with their own names, logos, and business messages.

Partners can edit the text of postcards and direct mail online; Microsoft will then print the full-color documents and mail them to the customer-supplied mailing list. Costs are far lower than partners would pay to create, print, and mail their own marketing collateral.

Partners can generate their own customer testimonials using templates and guidelines supplied by Microsoft, and the company provides a phone script for calling customers, identifying how the Microsoft solution can best be tailored to their needs, and closing the sale or arranging for further consultation.

The company also supplies a spreadsheet that can be used to analyze the results of the campaign.

Microsoft can use mailing lists that it has generated or purchased to develop lists of likely prospects for the campaign, but partners do not see the list—Microsoft does the actual mailing of postcards, e-mail, or letters that the partner has customized, and partners will see the names only of customers who respond to the campaign.

Who Can Participate

Any member of the Microsoft Partner Program can participate in a Ready-to-Go campaign. Campaigns come with various levels of assistance, depending on whether the partner already has in-house sales and marketing staff and whether it focuses on a specific industry or service or a general set of customers.

The campaigns could prove useful to a wide variety of partners. Current marketing and sales staff can use them as templates for new campaigns, or to complement other marketing efforts. Small organizations could follow the campaign steps themselves or ask a contractor or outside marketing specialist to conduct it on their behalf. Marketing specialists who are members of the Microsoft Partner Program could identify (through the Partner Channel Builder) partners with relevant technical skills or solutions and offer to conduct a Ready-to-Go campaign for them.

Alignment with Microsoft

Not surprisingly, the Ready-to-Go campaigns make use of much of the work that Microsoft does for its own marketing: marketing messages and collateral are similar to that used by Microsoft, and these campaigns are aligned with Microsoft's own Customer Campaigns.

For example, Microsoft has its own infrastructure solutions customer campaigns; partners tie into them through Ready-to-Go campaigns for application platform optimization, infrastructure optimization and security, and branch office solutions.

As of mid-March 2007, three other campaigns are operational: Exchange 2007, desktop upgrades with Vista and Office 2007, and unified communications and collaborations. A Linux-to-Windows migration campaign will launch in Apr. 2007, and a Dynamics marketing campaign (called Drive Real-World Business Processes) will be available in May 2007.

Ready-to-Go campaigns can be accessed at https://partner.microsoft.com/us/readytogo (partner registration required).