MarTech Interview with Kris Blackmon, Head of Channel Communities at Zift Solutions

Kris Blackmon, Head of Channel Communities at Zift Solutions has a few suggestions for marketers to keep in mind when it comes to building a brand’s digital communities:

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Welcome to this MarTech Series chat, Kris, tell us about yourself and your journey in the B2B tech marketplace. We’d love to hear about your new role at Zift Solutions…

My first exposure to the B2B tech industry was as a technical writer at a niche software company based out of Dallas, Texas. From there I moved to a B2B tech marketing and PR firm, and it was while I was there that I was approached by what was then Penton Media as editor-in-chief of a channel publication called The VAR Guy (or Gal, depending on who you were talking to!). Penton was acquired by Informa, and I assumed the position of senior content director in charge of event programming, editorial content direction, and communities.

In 2020, I left Informa to join the channel consultancy JSG, where I consulted on go-to-market strategies, marketing strategies, and community-building initiatives. My career path was perfectly suited for Zift’s new Head of Channel Communities role. At Zift, I lead our thought leadership efforts and events strategies, run all content, and work to build both internal (advisory board, user groups) and external (networking events, speaking engagements, targeted outreach) communities.

How can communities help marketers and brands reach out in a more relevant manner to their audiences, while staying deeply connected to vendors, can you talk about a few practices marketing team should keep in mind when growing their digital communities?  

It sounds intuitive, but so many organizations don’t really take the time to understand their audience on a granular level. Sales and marketing probably have an ideal customer profile to work from, but it often doesn’t go as deep as what a communities marketing strategy needs – you need to do that analysis all the way down to the end user. You really have to be able to speak the language of your audience, to understand what keeps them up at night and what gets them excited.

That’s why it’s so important to actually show up to industry events and hear what attendees are most interested in. What are they talking about? What watering holes are they visiting? Where do they get their news? Content is also important, but not in the sense that it is to traditional marketing where content is trying to push prospects through the funnel. You’ve already closed that deal. Now you have to keep them engaged, and that’s a different beast. To hear what content that you’re putting out is resonating, leverage digital tools like social listening and audience monitoring platforms that will allow you to see what your audience is saying about you and engage in real time. Form individual relationships, particularly with influencers in your field, that turn your audience into brand ambassadors. There’s quite a bit of one-on-one outreach involved.

What type of content and programs help drive this experience in your view: can you talk about some of the brands in this marketplace that have a strong hold on doing this well?

Forming a peer group, user forums, and places for customers to exchange best practices while also being kept abreast of new product releases is a cornerstone of the strategies that the tech industry uses to form communities. Apple and Microsoft, for instance, do this extremely well. The goal isn’t just to connect to your customers, but help your customers connect with one another, too.

Having a partner program is a great way to gain exposure to new customer segments and have your brand associated with respected organizations. Apple and Microsoft both have developer ecosystems as well as more traditional referral partnerships that drive value for both organizations. Zift has a strong roster of partners we work with to improve our customers’ experiences.

If you have the funds, hosting even a small event can help people put faces to names and solidify the relationships they’ve developed both with your brand and with your customers. Almost every big tech company does this, but you don’t have to be Salesforce Dreamforce to make a difference. Even something as small as an exclusive dinner or happy hour can help here.

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Can you take us through the five base fundamentals of building out a strong channel partner experience and what you often see marketers or brands getting wrong here?

Here are a few. Though I have a lot more where that came from! You start with knowing your goals. Are you looking to expand market reach? Move into different verticals? Rapidly grow revenue? You can’t even begin to consider a channel play until the C-suite and finance can hammer this out. This should lead you to a budgetary discussion where you decide how much you can afford to invest in the program, which, in turn, helps you make decisions like whether or not you need to hire additional headcount or if you’ll offer market development funds.

You have to nail down these fundamentals before doing anything else, including marketing and communities. Otherwise, your partners are just left with a ton of questions and no answers. Then it’s about constant and reliable support, which is a function that touches communities because it impacts upsell, cross-sell, renewal, and communications strategies. This is where user forums can come in handy because they help alleviate the pressure on tech teams if partners can learn from one another to troubleshoot on their own.

Enablement is key, and touches sales, marketing, and technical education and resources that help partners be self-sufficient and confident in selling your product or solution. And this is key: Have clearly defined and transparently communicated rules of engagement with your direct sales team and amongst partners. Channel conflict is one of the top complaints of partners about vendors. No one likes to have a lead or deal snaked out from them by the vendor or a larger partner. That will earn you a nasty reputation very quickly.

For B2B tech marketers and martech-ers looking to revamp their core marketing models and martech to align to revenue goals (seeing how marketing is now meant to drive pipeline and performance more than ever), what thoughts come to mind?

Marketing touches nearly every aspect of the organization, from product development to sales to customer success, so you can’t work in a silo anymore. There needs to be constant communication and a strategy that is formed by subject matter expertise and supported by data. You’ll have some of that data internally already, but it’s imperative to get granular with your CRM, marketing automation, sales-centric tools, and other systems so you have an accurate idea of what you need to be saying and who you need to be saying it to. Then it’s about content. In the end, it doesn’t matter how advanced your martech capabilities are if you can’t reach your customers with targeted, relevant, personal, and engaging content. Of course, then it’s up to martech to see what’s resonating and what isn’t so you can adjust that content strategy as you need to and define how much investment you’re willing to make. Those budgetary considerations need to be tied to sales and finance; we’re talking about CAC and CLV so the higher-ups can definitively see how marketing spend aligns with your organization’s overall revenue goals. It’s funny, but getting those numbers is often easier said than done, especially with smaller organizations in the middle of a rapid scale process. For instance, in order to scale, companies often build a partner program, and the CAC of a new end user you get through a partner will be different than it is with direct sales and marketing strategies.

Can you comment on the growing use of AI in this space and thoughts around AI and the future of martech? 

I’m so excited about AI and marketing! I think it’s going to make marketers so much more efficient and effective. We’re already seeing it, and we’re still in the salad days of AI. Conversational AI has been around for a while, and we’re seeing more and more applications of generative AI every day.

We recently added generative AI to ZiftONE in our portal page editor and to-partner communications suite and are looking forward to adding even more over the next year to make marketing to- and through- partners easier.

I’m a true believer in making data-based decisions, and I think AI is going to give us a slew of advice about how to leverage the data we have, such as customer modeling to predict behavior or past performance metrics to predict the success or not of a campaign. Think of all the time that’s going to save, all of the manual errors it will eliminate. We have a way to go before AI can truly be integrated into the full martech stack because of things like existing security concerns, but once that’s allowed and easy to do, I think there’s no aspect of marketing that isn’t grounded in AI. Even communities.

Before we wrap up, take us through five must-dos you feel every B2B marketer needs to follow on a daily basis…

Research, research, research. Research your market, your customers, your prospects, your ICP, and everything you get your hands on. Back it up with data, and together, that will give you your messaging strategy. You can’t operate in the dark. You have to be in the know for marketing to be effective.

Explore different content avenues at every opportunity. Don’t just stick to blog posts and e-books. Short-form videos, ABM and IBM targeted strategies, interactive content, UGC, podcasts, what have you. Where can you be creative with content, and where can you be creative in your strategy to deploy it?

I have worked with so many organizations that don’t fully leverage their CRM. Every single detail about every single touchpoint needs to be entered into your CRM so everyone is on the same page in terms of how marketing communicates with current and potential customers. If sales isn’t doing this, then you can’t really back anything up with data.

Speaking of sales, marketers have to realize that they’re on the same team and communicate like teammates. No more conflict between sales and marketing! This may mean you need a RevOps role or something similar, but I see too many sales and marketing teams battling amongst each other rather than working together.

Lastly, keep an eye on what your competitors are doing. Where are they outpacing you and why do you think that is? Do you want to emulate them or are they nipping at your heels already? What’s working for them? I’m not saying don’t be creative and develop your own strategies, but you’d be a fool to ignore the competition. Let them light the spark that you use to fuel a creative, innovative campaign.

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