Webinars are back.

According to a recent report from Crossbeam, webinar utilization is now back to pre-pandemic levels and continues to grow.

But as soon as I tell you that, you’re immediately reminded of the fact that your last webinar saw just 25 registrants and only a few attendees, right?

If everyone’s doing webinars again, they must be seeing some success, so how do we get there? How do we drive more qualified leads from webinars, and what’s their proper place in our funnel?

That’s what we’re covering in today’s episode of Partnership Unpacked.

Welcome back to Partnership Unpacked, where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at strategic partnerships, channel programs, affiliates, influencer marketing, and relationship building… oh, and you get to learn too! Subscribe to learn how you can amplify your growth strategy – with a solid takeaway every episode from partnership experts in the industry.

A few years ago, I was tasked to run a series of webinars with partners for us here at Agorapulse. I’d been hosting large virtual summits with multiple speakers and sessions, but hadn’t really planned one-off webinars.

And it showed in the numbers.

While one of the webinars saw over a hundred registrants, the others were all well below that and were considered a failure. I turned my attention back to massive virtual summits and those work great, but I can’t do more than one per quarter due to bandwidth.

If you’re anything like me, you’re hoping that webinars can be a tool for bringing in new sales leads and funneling existing prospects closer to won-closed. How do we build a repeatable, scalable process for executing webinars that deliver on that promise?

That’s exactly what Justin Zimmerman is going to talk to us about.

Justin has spent years in the partnership world and saw there a huge gap - and potential - for brands who were underutilizing webinars and partnerships. He’d experienced the same pains we all have with underperforming experiences, and then cracked the code. He started seeing more and more success with his initiatives and began to share that knowledge and experience with others. He now consults big brands on their webinar strategy, has playbooks available for others to learn from that we’ll get into today, and regularly takes the stage to share his wisdom with the crowd.

I talked to Justin Zimmerman about:

♉️ Why brands should invest in partner webinars

♉️ How to leverage partners and webinars

♉️ What your webinars goals should be

Learn more about Justin Zimmerman

• Connect with Justin Zimmerman on LinkedIn

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode

• PartnerPlaybooks.com
• Airmeet
• HubSpot
• Subscribe to the show calendar: agorapulse.com/calendar
• Learn more about Agorapulse with a free demo

Full Transcript: https://www.thesocialmediahat.com/blog/driving-more-partner-sourced-leads-from-webinars-w-justin-zimmerman/

Brought to you by Agorapulse: the #1 rated social media management solution.

Music by Jumbo, "Peripheral" (feat. Plum Soul)

Produced and Hosted by Mike Alton

Warren Buffet once said, “Partnership is not a legal contract between two equal individuals. It’s an emotional alliance between two people who are committed to each other’s success.” And that’s true, isn’t it? Whether you’re new to strategic partnerships or have been doing this for years, you doubtless understand that your most successful endeavors have been due to the relationships you forged with your partners.

But as the field of partnerships has grown in recent years, so too has the challenge to partnership leaders who are now tasked to support every aspect of a business.

How do you secure the right background for a successful career? And how do we develop the necessary skills to foster emotional alliances that achieve business results?

That’s what we’re covering in today’s episode of Partnership Unpacked.

Welcome back to Partnership Unpacked, where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at strategic partnerships, channel programs, affiliates, influencer marketing, and relationship building… oh, and you get to learn too! Subscribe to learn how you can amplify your growth strategy – with a solid takeaway every episode from partnership experts in the industry.

When I left college after having studied History and Computer Science, my first salaried job was handling ERP support for Dana Corporation and helping our 80,000 employees deal with their questions about Baan, Lawson and Oracle. After a few years, I joined a local IT firm as Sales Manager and a few years after that, took a break from IT and sold swimming pools and hot tubs in Northern Ohio. Later I became an entrepreneur and started my own marketing business, The Social Media Hat, leveraged that into a role as CMO of Sitesell, and then shifted to Agorapulse where I’ve been leading partnerships since 2018.

While one could say that I’ve been in sales & marketing for over twenty years and that the majority of that time has been in the digital space, the reality is that my career has not been a straight line.

Surely it doesn’t always have to be like that. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a better understanding of what partnership leader roles today require in terms of skills, and how those can be developed and applied?

That’s exactly what Greg Rust is going to talk to us about.

Greg is the Senior Director - Global Holdco's & Digital SI Partnerships at Oracle and a 5 time Partner of the Year. He has decades of experience as a Global Strategic Alliance Executive that’s based on years working in sales, product management, and more. He’s established trusted relationships with key executives across multiple industries and verticals, and has just the diverse background and perspective we need to tackle this topic.

Partnership Unpacked host Mike Allton talked to Greg about:

♉️ The ideal career path of a partnership leader today

♉️ The importance of establishing trust, both internally and externally

♉️ The role of communications and diplomacy in business partnerships

Learn more about Greg Rust

• Connect with Greg Rust on LinkedIn

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode

• Oracle
• Subscribe to the show calendar: agorapulse.com/calendar
• Learn more about Agorapulse with a free demo

Full Notes & Transcript: https://www.thesocialmediahat.com/blog/the-importance-of-trust-communications-amp-diplomacy-in-strategic-partnerships-w-greg-rust/

Brought to you by Agorapulse: the #1 rated social media management solution.

Music by Jumbo, "Peripheral" (feat. Plum Soul)

Produced and Hosted by Mike Alton

Would your organization benefit from a global network of reseller partnerships?

In a time when marketing budgets are shrinking and global economies are in turmoil, having resellers on the ground in various regions and countries who have already established a trusted relationship with your target audience is a real asset.

But such a network isn’t tossed together overnight.

Where do we start, and how do we grow and scale reseller partnerships to levels like what Snap has accomplished?

That’s what we’re covering in today’s episode of Partnership Unpacked.

Welcome back to Partnership Unpacked, where I selfishly use this time to pick the brains of experts at strategic partnerships, channel programs, affiliates, influencer marketing, and relationship building… oh, and you get to learn too! Subscribe to learn how you can amplify your growth strategy – with a solid takeaway every episode from partnership experts in the industry.

We’ve talked in a previous episode about building agency partner programs and the idea of using resellers to grow our businesses is a topic I wanted to dig into more.

How do we structure these programs? How do we expand into new regions? How do we measure success? I have so many questions…

And what better way to learn than to talk to someone who has been there from the beginning with a tech company like Snap.

Max Rivera joined Snap at an early stage to launch the international expansion practice before the company's IPO. He’s led high-performing global teams and launched the business across new markets in Latin America, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Today, he is leading some of the largest business partnerships, and he’s also an angel investor and board member for startups in emerging technology sectors.

Partnership Unpacked host Mike Allton talked to Max Rivera about:

♉️ How reseller partnerships work for tech startups

♉️ How to start a reseller program that can scale globally

♉️ How to measure and achieve success with reseller partnerships

Learn more about Max Rivera

• Connect with Max Rivera on LinkedIn
• Connect with Max Rivera on Twitter

Resources & Brands mentioned in this episode

• Snap
• Subscribe to the show calendar: agorapulse.com/calendar
• Learn more about Agorapulse with a free demo

Full Notes & Transcript: https://www.thesocialmediahat.com/blog/how-global-partnerships-can-generate-billions-in-revenue-w-max-rivera/

Brought to you by Agorapulse: the #1 rated social media management solution.

Music by Jumbo, "Peripheral" (feat. Plum Soul)

Produced and Hosted by Mike Alton