xerox transforms channel partners’ social presence with socialondemand® from purechannelapps™

Commercial in Confidence – (c) purechannelapps Ltd. 2014 1

How Xerox transformed their channel partners’ social presence with socialondemand from purechannelapps

Olivier Choron, CEO and Founder, purechannelappsAndy Hill, Channel Partner Social Media Manager, Xerox Tony Gibiino, Zerographic, a Xerox partner


• purechannelapps™, UK-based, incorporated in 2011

• socialondemand®: social media amplification software

• newsondemand: dynamic and targeted e-communications software

Background purechannelapps


Empowered tech buyers are two-thirds into the buying cycle before engaging sales

Forrester Research

73% of IT executives are influenced by social networks in decision making

Socialcast

60% of business decision makers say branded content helps them make better product decisions

Socialcast

Why drive demand? Why influence?


What are the pain points for partner social media marketing?

B2B organisations are struggling to involve their brand advocates in this ‘influence’ cycle.

Employees, partners and other brand advocates have no time, resources and, in some cases, limited marketing expertise.

Intermediaries are unable to produce professional collateral.

Too many brands are vying for their intermediaries’ attention.

Need simple, easy-to-use tools and programmes that get results.

Brands need to develop and manage ‘influence’ programmes on a global level.


Challenges: Driving end-user demand in a complex ecosystem


socialondemand®

Extensive analytics engine to report

on the success of each partner, post, campaign, and geography

Robust multi-level content creation and approval

workflow to support multi-regional and multi-business unit

organizations

Comprehensive filtering for partners

who can select to only receive the content that matters to their followers

Leverages content-publishing APIs

for Twitter/ Facebook/ LinkedIn. Partners do

not have to login to their social networks to repost

content.


socialondemand®

The posts are published automatically on the partners’ social network(s), if they have selected this option.

1. Brands inputs news items (and tag them)

2. Partners receive the news, log in, view/ edit/ post the items

3. The news items are posted on the partners’ social network(s)

4. Their followers (buyers) read the posts, click on the links and call their partners!


Brand messages can reach much wider audiences, as you can leverage your sales

teams, sales/channel partners (all types), alliance partners and other brand advocates.

Content reaches those that count – the ‘consumers’ - through those who can actually sell the ‘sales staff/ sales partners’.

Easy for partners to become ‘socially active’ (3 clicks: email to post)

It empowers the ‘through’ intermediaries with compliant content (closer engagement with the brand and more socially active)

Enterprise-class platform (27 languages) enabling you to distribute social mediacontent globally

Cost-effective solution, with a SEM-smashing cost per click of just $0.09/ $0.35

The results and benefits


Amplify your messages through your advocates’ social networks

You may not do social media…

But your customers/ prospects, employees, sales partners and brand advocates do!

Social media amplification will enable your extended sales teams (internal and external) to be more engaged (with you) and more ‘socially active’.

You will be able to reach new audiences and drive sales via social media.

socialondemand is a new and cost-effective way to influence potential/ existing buyers.


Xerox Case Study: Background

Looking to improve its partner social media marketing, Xerox approached purechannelapps in late 2013.

Xerox* works with thousands of partners in 15 countries and 11 languages.

Local language content was key to building a truly relevant and effective social presence for its partners.

Whilst Xerox has a comprehensive partner portal in place, social was still largely a manual, time-consuming, process without any tracking capabilities.

*Xerox Channel Partner Operations Western Europe + USA


Xerox Case Study: Approach and Solution

Xerox reviewed and considered various solutions.

purechannelapps was chosen due to the following:

• Proven success with other global companies like Microsoft, Adobe and McAfee.

• Integration with social media networks like Xing, which was big for Xerox partners in Germany.

• Ability to get results immediately.

socialondemand platform was initially launched to Xerox’s partners in the United Kingdom, in 2013.


Xerox Case Study: Approach and Solution

purechannelapps managed the launch professionally.

purechannelapps was hands-on and responsive whenever there was a deadline or a problem to solve.

purechannelapps was proactive during after-sale, with weekly account management calls which have become a useful forum to share experiences, learn about best practice and results.

Since launch, purechannelapps has introduced a number of new features to improve proposition, usability and functionality including posting to LinkedIn Company and Groups pages, and Facebook FanPages.


Xerox Case Study: Results

20 partners with 91 accounts

91 accounts added giving access to over 300,000 followers

30% of all partners using the platform daily

30,000 Clicks

570 likes

Up to 28% click-thru rate per post

500+ Posts by Xerox

Posting to 34 LinkedIn Groups


Xerox Case Study: Results

We mix Xerox product content with relevant industry news.

Two early posts demonstrate the power of socialondemand:

• The “Why Strategic Planning is Crucial” post generated 768 clicks, with a 28% click-thru rate.

• The post “MFP Tips: The forgotten art of envelope printing” was posted by 85% of all partners.

Comparing click-through rates achieved with this program versus other forms of social media marketing, Xerox Social on Demand outperforms them.

Numbers are obviously important, but another measure of success was the take-up from the partners. There is real power in the system, particularly for our partners.


Xerox Case Study: A Partner’s Perspective

We've been reselling Xerox products over 20 years. As a fully authorised Xerox Premium Partner ,we know our products and services inside out. We were also awarded Xerox Concessionaire of the year in 2011.

We have just started on the social media journey this year but have already:

- Twitter – 400 followers- Facebook – 6 likes- LinkedIn – 137 followers

We have a highly socially-active sales team but creating content is hard to achieve consistently.

We joined Xerox Social On Demand in 2013, and posted 530 times generating over 2,500 clicks.



Adding our accounts was really easy, and we could even add our own personal accounts, like my LinkedIn profile, and LinkedIn Groups.

When a post is sent to me, I get an email notification. I can even edit the content to make the message personal to me and my followers whilst retaining content integrity.



When I click send, the content is then posted to all my social media accounts I have selected.

What’s brilliant is that the content is of high quality and is relevant to us. Plus it looks like it’s coming from us.



“I’ve had the benefit of using socialondemand in 2 different companies now. In both instances I found the tool to be a massive time saver for companies and marketers with limited resources. It enables me to engage in a full content strategy on social media, and augment my existing program. The automation within the tool is also really useful, and getting relevant, timely content from Xerox helps both us, and Xerox on building a meaningful social presence.”

Toni Gibiino – Zerographic, Premier Xerox Partner

“My experience of the socialondemand platform has been a really positive one. The tool is intuitive to use and I like the extra features which have been put into the platform, this really adds value. I like the analytics engine within socialondemand, and find the dashboard feature really useful in getting important snapshot information, quickly.”

Lauren Stott – nustream, Xerox Partner


Thank you.Olivier ChoronCEO and Founder, [email protected]+44 (0)7876 472 461 / @purechannelapps

mailto:[email protected]

xerox transforms channel partners’ social presence with socialondemand® from purechannelapps™

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