Late last month Cisco unveiled an expansion of its Marketing Velocity brand to help partners reach customers in transformational ways through their marketing activities. The new Marketing Velocity connects and integrates Cisco’s existing capabilities under one offering, bringing to the industry a comprehensive program to support partners in their own digital transformation. The expansion targets partner end-to-end capabilities such as elevating their marketing practices, delivering marketing funds, broadening enablement tools, and accelerating their field activation. Check out the .
Cisco Strengthens Marketing Velocity to Spur Partner Digital Marketing Innovation
Analyst Take: Cisco’s expanded Marketing Velocity now encompasses four major components:
The four components of Cisco’s Marketing Velocity meets the burgeoning across-the-vertical board demand for smarter, more personalized digital marketing. Cisco touts that B2B customers are already 60 percent through the buying process before engaging a sales representative and 61 percent of B2B transactions now start online. As such, there is little wonder that Cisco partners prioritize digital marketing as an urgent support area.
Cisco Further Differentiates Marketing Velocity
Cisco provides the business foundation to innovate digital ecosystem digital marketing with over 62,000 partners globally and @85 percent of Cisco’s revenue going through the channels. In contrast, Juniper’s Digital Marketing program, while offering 13 years of experience, pales in comparison with only 41 successful campaigns delivered and six major brands engaged. 5G stalwarts Ericsson and Nokia offer digital marketing support as part of their digital transformation portfolios and overall professional services, but it is difficult to discern how many partners are supported and how many digital campaigns have been successfully executed.
Even with such key differentiators, Cisco must deal with scaling challenges. For example, Cisco risks diluting the Marketing Velocity program’s digital marketing focus while supporting digital marketing campaigns within omnichannel environments. In expanding the Marketing Velocity’s capabilities, the potential for mission creep increases, especially in collaborating with 62,000 partners globally and orchestrating increasingly complex marketing endeavors.
Marketing Velocity Ready to Power Global Digital Marketing Innovation
Overall Cisco is consistently adept in collaborating with its vast partner ecosystem and the challenges of scaling the Marketing Velocity program is a strong candidate for more of that same consistency and reliability. Many of Cisco’s 5G/digital transformation supplier rivals aspire to have the challenge of managing a vast partnership ecosystem, especially in the area of digital marketing collaboration, and they have their work cut out in catching up with Cisco in this area.
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The original version of this article was first published on Futurum Research.