Are UK VARs investing too much time and money in social media, at the expense of basic best practice?
Analysis of the digital footprint of the UK’s top 100 value added resellers reveals the sector lags behind in implementing digital best practice—and may need to reconsider how marketing time and spend is allocated.
What is digital best practice?
In a report commissioned by channel marketing experts, coterie, 61% of VARs were missing at least one basic digital best marketing practice. The most common failures were not properly curating their Google knowledge panel or their Google search engine results pages.
Why is this important?
90% of B2B buyers will look online before making a purchasing decision, failure to be found—and to provide basic information—means not even getting on the consideration list for new opportunities.
What should VARs focus on?
From the research, 69% of companies are doing a good job generating social content, specifically on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Social content strategies are labour-intensive and require ongoing investment, whether in internal or external resource. Whilst organic social content is important, companies run the risk of investing time and money publishing content in an echo chamber of existing contacts (customers, employees, suppliers and, yes, recruitment agents).
Prospects are harder to reach with organic social and for growth-focused companies this investment might need a rethink.
Conversely, only 35% of companies are doing a good job with onsite user experience. Arguably a conversion optimised website focused on prospect journeys will have a higher return on investment. Even if it is hard work to get right, positive UX only requires one-off investment every few years and should easily pay for itself.
What next?
To find out how you can outperform the top 100 UK VARs, and for more best practice tips, download the full report or contact us.
