The Hidden Content of Microsoft's Ready-to-Go Marketing

Every marketer today is faced with the challenge of creating good content day in and day out. Coming up with new ideas and interesting ways to present information can feel pretty overwhelming on some of those days. That's when it's time to start mining Microsoft's Ready-to-Go (RtG) marketing site.

Through steady improvement over the past several years, RtG has become a marketing content goldmine for partners. Some of the nuggets take a little more digging than others, but we've collected a few worth sharing: 

• Notes in campaign PowerPoints. In most of the campaign sales presentation decks, there are speakers' notes in the first few slides. The notes are written in a more conversational tone than much of the Microsoft marketing materials, which makes them work well as a base for blog posts.
  
  
• Whitepaper out-takes. While the whitepapers in campaigns make perfectly fine calls to action in themselves, there is no reason you can't get a little more goodness from them. With a little reworking, you can turn each of the key points in the whitepaper into a blog post or article.
  
  
• Telesales guides. In many of the campaign Partner Readiness tools, there are telesales scripts to help train your sales team on key talking points. Each one of these gems can provide content for blog posts and articles, or even provide the basis for updating Web content. Common questions, role-based problem identification and product comparisons provide a ton of great content that is solution-focused, not product-focused.
  
  
• PowerPoint to ebook. eBooks are a great call to action for your Web site or campaign, and many of the sales decks on RtG can be easily transformed. Keep each eBook to one topic using the slide graphics and add explanatory text. Add your own value proposition and branding to personalize the document. 

Additional Microsoft Resources
While RtG holds the motherload of Microsoft partner content resources, there are more resources worth mentioning to enrich your inbound marketing:

• Microsoft News Center. There are lots of resources that you might not think to look for on Microsoft's press site. Infographics, press releases and research reports can all provide topics for blog posts. Video clips can help you add a bit of professional footage to your next YouTube creation.
  
  
• Drumbeat for Office365. Drumbeat is a new site that centralizes sales resources for Office 365. The resource page is a bit limited now, but worth the visit.
  
  
• Microsoft customer-facing sites. For everything from Dynamics to Azure, there are customer-facing Web sites that can provide ideas to help you build content. As much as anything, these sites can help you stay on top of layout and design trends to keep your marketing materials looking modern.  

Make It Your Own
As you tap these resources, use them as a base to build your personalized content. Your prospects need to see your personality shine through and understand the unique value that you add to the solution sets. Every piece of marketing content that you produce should help prospects understand how they can solve their business problems -- and how you can assist.

Microsoft's investment in marketing tools for partners has increased dramatically over the past several years. Take advantage of the opportunity to increase the quality of your content by building on Microsoft's work. That's what it is there for.

How are you using Microsoft resources to build great content? Add a comment below or send me a note and let's share the knowledge.  

Posted by Barb Levisay on December 05, 2013