VAR Partner Co-Marketing With Acumatica: A Practical Guide
VAR Partner Marketing
Acumatica Value-Added Reseller (VAR) partners need a slow but steady stream of net-new deals to maintain profitability. Acumatica VAR marketing teams focus on providing the qualified leads necessary to create those deals. A few new deals each year... Though this sounds reasonable and achievable, anyone who has worked in marketing for an Acumatica reseller knows how challenging it can be to capture the leads required to accomplish this task.
Marketing costly ERP software is very different from marketing a restaurant’s Wednesday lunch special. Thousands of customers resemble the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) of the restaurant’s Wednesday lunch special in any given city. On the other hand, the number of people who resemble the ICP of an ERP software product in a given city may be counted on two hands. Because the number of potential customers is so small, targeting them is difficult. This is the core challenge for those in marketing roles at Acumatica VARs.
Because Acumatica utilizes a 100% indirect sales model—meaning they sell exclusively through a global network of over 450 VARs rather than a direct sales force—the platform relies entirely on its partners to find customers and close deals. Acumatica offers some support to VAR partner marketing teams, but the partners are liable to carry the lion's share of the weight of responsibility.
Marketing professionals at Acumatica VARs have reported feeling intense pressure to prove a return on investment (ROI) for their marketing dollars. Especially in a dry sales season, the weight of expectation can feel almost crushing. Because of this pressure, which marketing teams face, it is typical for them to fall into a "lead-gen-or-bust" volume mindset. However, marketing actions taken while in a state of desperation hardly ever bear fruit. Rushing leads through qualification into the sales process usually burns them out or leaves them poorly qualified.
For Acumatica VARs to build a sustainable pipeline, they must pivot toward strategic co-marketing. This practical guide outlines how Acumatica VAR partners can shift their mindset, develop vertical-specific strategies, leverage built-in marketing tools, and ultimately run campaigns that prioritize lead quality over sheer volume.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Step 1: Shift Your Mindset From Quantity to Quality
The traditional VAR marketing playbook often revolves around short-term sales cycles and annual vendor plans. However, this fast-paced, short-term thinking ignores the reality of modern B2B purchasing. The average technology purchase process takes just over two years, and 67% of the buyer’s journey is conducted digitally before they even engage with a sales representative. Prospective buyers will emerge when they are ready, not when you prefer them to. An old axiom well illustrates this concept: “When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” The best thing a VAR marketing team can do is this: establish an authoritative digital presence, so when a company goes looking for ERP, they find you.
Rather than churning through low-quality leads, your goal should be to design "evergreen" strategic nurture campaigns that demonstrate your business's value long before the purchase process begins. Consider that 50% of qualified leads are not immediately ready to buy. By nurturing these leads over time, you build trust. In fact, marketers report that leads generated through nurtured, account-based marketing campaigns are 66% more likely to advocate for your company and provide positive references.
Step 2: Market To Your Existing Customers
Do not forget to speak to the customers you already have. Customer retention and customer lifetime value are typically ignored by Acumatica VAR marketing teams. However, communication efforts made to retain customers are very worthwhile. It can cost anywhere from 5 to 25 times more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one, and your current customers are 60% to 70% more likely to purchase another product or solution.
Step 3: Define and Target a Specific Industry Vertical
The days of blasting a generic "we have great people and value our customers" message to a massive audience are over. Recipients of that email will hit delete 10 out of 10 times. One way to stand out to prospects is to focus your messaging on a specific industry vertical. The more directly and personally you speak to people, the more likely they are to respond.
Acumatica's recent data proves that specialization is the key to VAR growth. Today, Acumatica's verticalized Industry Editions (such as Construction, Distribution, and Manufacturing) account for nearly 70% of new contract value.
Deciding what vertical your VAR is going to pursue is not necessarily the role of the marketing team. Stakeholders from across the company will converse to make that decision. However, once your company has chosen its primary and secondary verticals, the marketing team needs to do everything they can to speak to SMBs from those spaces. B2B buyers prefer specialists. Prioritize marketing efforts that demonstrate your industry knowledge and experience in your chosen verticals.
Step 4: Build Topic Pillars and Clusters for SEO Authority
Once you have identified your vertical, you need to ensure buyers can find you online. Though referrals by current and former customers will be a boon to your pipeline, your company needs to be throwing ropes out to casual online perusers and serious researchers who are acting with intent.
Search engine algorithms have evolved; instead of optimizing for a single broad keyword like "ERP," you must now focus on long-tail keyword phrases. The most effective way to do this is by creating a "Topic Pillar" supported by "Topic Clusters." For example, if you are targeting the medical device manufacturing vertical, your main pillar page might be optimized for "medical device manufacturing software". You would then create a cluster of supporting blogs and press releases targeting related phrases, such as "job costing for medical device manufacturers" or "top 10 implementation mistakes to avoid for medical device manufacturers".
Every piece of cluster content must include a backlink to your main pillar page. This structure signals to search engines that you are a highly authoritative source on this topic, driving your organic rankings up. Acumatica partners have seen tremendous success leveraging platforms like HubSpot to automate and track the performance of these pillar strategies. Furthermore, by incorporating AI-driven SEO strategies—much like Acumatica does to target queries like "cloud ERP ROI"—you can capture high-intent buyers actively looking for vertical solutions.
Step 5: Master the Art of Content Repurposing
Creating content takes a massive amount of time. Instead of constantly producing net-new pieces, smart VAR marketers create a few high-value assets each year and then rework them to generate content that is well-suited for multiple channels.
Here is a practical example of how to stretch one piece of content across the entire buyer journey:
The Pillar Page & Whitepaper: Start by creating an educational guide that solves a specific pain point (e.g., PCI compliance or supply chain visibility) and publish it as a web-based pillar page. Offer a PDF version behind a lead-capture form.
The Blog Post: Write a high-level blog summarizing the whitepaper's main points, using long-tail keywords in the title and URL, and include a call-to-action (CTA) linking back to the download.
The Webinar: Translate the whitepaper into a PowerPoint presentation and host a live webinar for your database and prospects.
The Video: Record the webinar, optimize the title and meta-description with your keywords, and upload it to YouTube with a link back to your pillar page. Video is highly effective; 90% of buyers say product videos are helpful, and 64% are more likely to purchase after watching one.
Paid Digital Ads & Direct Mail: Extract key statistics from the content to create web banners for paid LinkedIn ads or print it out as a physical takeaway for trade shows.
Step 6: Dominate LinkedIn with Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
Your buyers are researching online, and LinkedIn is the premier platform to reach the modern B2B tech buying committee. Today, up to 4 out of 5 employees impact business technology investments, meaning you must target beyond the traditional IT roles to include finance, operations, and purchasing.
LinkedIn is uniquely equipped for VARs because it allows you to target audiences by specific titles, accounts, seniority, and vertical skills. You can even target "Lookalike Audiences" who share traits with your best existing customers.
While 95% of channel marketers solely rely on standard Sponsored Content, you should diversify your touchpoints to stand out. Utilize Carousel Ads to showcase multiple features, Video Ads to share customer testimonials, and personalized Dynamic Ads, as 71% of tech buyers are more likely to consider a brand if the communication is personalized. Furthermore, using targeted LinkedIn ABM to reach C-suite executives in niche verticals is a proven tactic for accelerating pipeline velocity for midmarket deals.
Step 7: Capitalize on Acumatica’s Integrated Marketing Software
As an Acumatica partner, you have the advantage of using the powerful software you sell to execute your co-marketing strategy. Acumatica delivers a comprehensive, integrated marketing solution that connects directly to your CRM and financial data.
To maximize your co-marketing efforts, be sure to utilize these built-in Acumatica features:
Lead and Campaign Management: Aggregate leads from trade shows, web forms, and purchased lists. Use Acumatica's segmentation tools to automatically route leads based on custom criteria (like geography or industry) to support highly targeted vertical campaigns.
Integrated Document & Email Control: Maintain a central repository of up-to-date collateral, whitepapers, and price lists. Use predefined, brand-consistent email templates to send monthly newsletters and track open rates natively.
Integrated Financials for True ROI: Because Acumatica's marketing tools integrate with billing, you can link specific sales orders and invoices directly back to the original marketing campaign. This allows you to track actual costs against actual revenue, moving away from vanity metrics (like "cost per lead") and proving exact campaign profitability.
HubSpot Integration: If you utilize HubSpot for your topic clusters and inbound marketing, seamlessly sync that data directly into Acumatica CRM to automate your long-term nurture marketing.
AI-Powered Insights: Leverage Acumatica's AI tools to instantly generate summaries of customer interactions, sentiment, and recommended next steps, saving your sales team hours of manual review.
Step 8: Leverage the Partner Ecosystem and External Communities
You do not have to market in a vacuum. A key component of partner co-marketing is amplifying your voice through established industry networks.
Publish content where your audience already lives. Look for high-authority guest blogging opportunities to earn valuable backlinks to your website. For example, the ERP Software Blog is a fantastic platform where partners can publish posts; leads generated in your territory are routed directly to you, and partners report an incredible 75% close rate on these highly-qualified leads. You can also submit guest blogs directly to Acumatica, which opens two slots a month for partners, providing a massive brand-authority backlink.
Additionally, join online grassroots communities like Acu-connect, which was created specifically to help ISVs and VARs share education and expertise around the Acumatica ecosystem. When offline, focus your event marketing budget on industry-specific trade shows rather than generic tech events to secure critical mass in your chosen vertical.
Finally, if you have customers or contacts who might not be ready to buy from you directly but need an ERP, take advantage of the Acumatica Alliance Program. By referring companies, you can earn significant referral fees for the first year of a new customer license, while Acumatica handles the sales, implementation, and servicing.
Conclusion
Executing a highly targeted, prospect-nurturing strategy with evergreen content takes time and patience. When you move away from tracking raw lead volume and start focusing on lead quality, you might initially feel like you are losing momentum. In reality, however, you are paving the way for better, more profitable customers.
By defining a clear vertical, structuring your content for SEO, repurposing your assets, and leveraging both LinkedIn ABM and Acumatica's built-in marketing tools, your Acumatica VAR business will stop churning through “half-qualified” leads and start acting as a trusted advisor to prospects who are looking for ERP software to transform their business.
