February 4, 2010
For small/medium software companies, what are the best marketing strategies? Of course, that does depend on your market segment.. but there are still some key strategies that make sense for almost all software or services firms:
- Focus on Inbound Marketing Online
- Let Prospects Experience Your Software
- Cultivate Existing Customers
- Establish a Partner Ecosystem
- Maintain a Customer Conversation
- Develop a Channel Program
- Offer Complementary Services or Products
- Segment Your Market
- Differentiate with Niche Marketing
- Leverage Customer Case Studies
For more, read our latest article on Software Marketing Advisor: “Marketing Software Strategy for Software Product Companies”
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Posted by jleescastro
February 2, 2010
How useful is competitive analysis? As Michele Linn points out in her latest post “Five Key Questions Your B2B Competitive Analysis Should Answer” in her Savvy B2B Marketing blog, sometimes competitive analysis can lead to dead-end marketing strategies that are just copying your competition’s moves. A business version of “keeping up with the Jones’s”.
The best competitive strategy is to try to re-invent or re-define your category so that you are the market leader… a lot of great examples of companies that are out there that have done that.
Copying competitors won’t get you there… but competitive analysis can help you determine the best way to really crystallize your target subsegment that has you as the de facto leader…
So, yes, if you are selling software products or services, do invest some time in software marketing research to better understand your competitors. But instead of trying to follow them, use that information to develop strategies that truly differentiate you within your target segment.
Leave a Comment » | marketing strategy, software marketing, technology marketing | Tagged: enterprise software, marketing strategy, software, software marketing, technology marketing | Permalink
Posted by jleescastro
January 22, 2010
A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) is an effective way to make sure your marketing activities align with your business strategy.
Why is that a good thing?
It means that the money you spend on marketing is more likely to produce the business results you’re looking for (more customers, larger market share, increased revenue… whatever your particular objective is).
When you do a SWOT analysis, you brainstorm and list out your company’s
- Strengths (what are the positive attributes of your company, product or service?),
- Weaknesses (what are the negative attributes of your company, product or service?),
- Opportunities (where are the market opportunities for your product or service?),
- Threats (what are the main threats to your company?).
The SWOT analysis can help you find a way to use your company or product strengths to take advantage of market opportunities, and identify and work on weaknesses that might inhibit your ability to take advantage of those opportunities.
To be successful, it’s important to always be on the alert for market threats. Leverage your strengths to either eliminate or reduce the impact of threats, and work to address any weaknesses that may increase the criticality of threats.
Finally, prioritize marketing activities and messaging that highlight your strengths, and help you take advantage of opportunities.
For more on doing a SWOT analysis, take a look at this article: “Doing a SWOT Analysis to Focus Your Marketing Strategy.”
SWOT analysis is also included as part of our Software Company Business Plan Package and the SaaS Business Planning Package.
Leave a Comment » | business planning, marketing strategy | Tagged: business planning, marketing plan, marketing strategy, swot | Permalink
Posted by jleescastro
January 14, 2010
OK, here’s one of my pet peeves: if you have a blog or a twitter account linked from your business website, make sure the posts and tweets are targeted to your customers and what they care about.
Seems obvious, right?
But I see so many small technology and software companies that use their blog to discuss the trials and tribulations of being a startup rather than addressing the customer pain point that they designed their product to solve in the first place.
If you want to write about the experience of running your business, and share best practices with others, then by all means have a separate blog. But don’t think your customers could care less! Even worse, you don’t want them seeing your dirty laundry (why tell them about the firefighting you were doing yesterday to deal with the outage you had…?).
Make sure you have a customer-focused blog on your website, with posts that are of interest to your customer. Try to weave your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) through the blog, while making sure not to appear too salesy. Your blog should contain additional helpful information, tips, and product-related announcements that your customers and prospects will find useful.
Leave a Comment » | software marketing, technology marketing | Tagged: blogs, marketing, online marketing, social media | Permalink
Posted by jleescastro
January 7, 2010
It’s now 2010… do you have an updated business plan or marketing plan to address the new decade?
If you’re a software company, the industry is changing with the move to SaaS, outsourcing and other trends. It’s important to make sure you have a current business plan to make sure you’re positioned to take optimal advantage of these changes.
Take advantage of our SaaS business plan template, or the Software Company business plan template, and get started optimizing your business today!
Leave a Comment » | business planning, saas, software, software marketing | Tagged: business plan, business planning, Joanna Lees Castro, marketing plan, saas, software | Permalink
Posted by jleescastro
December 11, 2009
What’s the most important factor in product planning and sales/marketing for a technology startup?
In one word: FOCUS…
As a startup, especially in the technology space, it’s too easy to start thinking up all the exciting new usage models using your technology. Before you know it, you’re running three businesses when you should be focused on getting one off the ground.
How to deal with all those cool ideas that come into your head at the most inopportune moments?
Keep a notebook… that way, when you’re ready to grow the business you have some seeds of ideas to use as a starting point. But when you’re just starting out, it’s key to just pick one and FOCUS on it until it’s a paying business.
Leave a Comment » | business planning, technology, technology marketing | Tagged: business planning, technology, technology marketing, usage model | Permalink
Posted by jleescastro
December 8, 2009
I just read the case study on ISV eMASON on SoftwareCEO this week. It’s an interesting example of a software company that managed to triple their business in 2009, despite the slow economy and turmoil in their target market of financial services.
How did they do it?
Basically, with a singular focus on quality and solving the customer pain point to the best ability, flexibility and easy customization, being really clear on their unique value, and making it as comprehensive as possible within the bounds of the single point of pain the application is solving.
I think we could all learn from these tips… bottom line:
- understand your customer and feel their pain
- know your unique value – what really distinguishes your solution from the competition
- be fanatically customer-focused
Leave a Comment » | enterprise software, marketing strategy, software, software marketing | Tagged: enterprise software, marketing strategy, software, software marketing | Permalink
Posted by jleescastro
December 7, 2009
For marketing messages to be effective, you need to really think about who it is that you are speaking to. Too many marketers only think about a single audience for their message: the end customer. The end customer may be your primary audience, but they are not the only one.
There are a number of other audiences that may need marketing messages crafted specifically for them, including:
- Online influencers, such as prominent bloggers in your field, influential websites and analysts,
- Distribution channels,
- Sales and marketing partners,
- the press and media,
- your ecosystem partners, such as complementary software vendors, hardware vendors or system integrators,
- other key stakeholders that your end customer looks to for guidance or approval on their buying decision (this is especially important for B2B applications).
Your end customer will be influenced not only by your marketing messages directly targeted at them, but also by these other stakeholders and influencers. The more consistent messages they receive from different channels, the more likely they are to make a positive buying decision in your favor.
Bottom line: when crafting your marketing messages and marketing plan, don’t forget to build target messaging and budget marketing activities for all audiences that are important in influencing your customer’s purchase decision.
Leave a Comment » | marketing strategy, software marketing, technology marketing | Tagged: marketing, marketing plan, software marketing, technology marketing | Permalink
Posted by jleescastro
December 3, 2009
It’s December already… a good time to be thinking about your software marketing approach for 2010. Hopefully the economy will be picking up, customers will be looking for options, and you need to make sure your product is top-of-mind when they get into a buying mood.
At Software-Marketing-Advisor.com, we have just released our detailed, professional software marketing plan template package. It gives you all the pieces you need to easily put together a customized marketing strategy and plan for your software product, and we’ve even thrown in free consulting as well. You can check out the Software Marketing Plan package here.
1 Comment | marketing strategy, software marketing, technology marketing | Tagged: marketing, marketing plan, software marketing | Permalink
Posted by jleescastro
November 17, 2009
As I’m sure any software marketer knows, more and more of the sales and marketing of software is happening online. Even for high-price enterprise software, much of the initial customer data gathering and lead generation is often done online. I wrote a recent page on Software-Marketing-Advisor with some key tips for selling software online.
In an article published today on MarketingProfs, “The Surprising Evolution of Online Marketing in Software Sales”, Jayson Gehri talks about the trends in software marketing online, and some tools that could be quite useful to software marketers looking to extend or simplify their online marketing efforts.
Selling software online is about two key things: First, clearly communicate the benefits to your customer (in language they understand, not geek-speak or feature lists). Second, allow the prospect to experience the software in as real a way as possible. Jayson’s article gives some useful pointers to making the most effective use of online software demos.
For some additional help with selling software online, take a look at our list of key tips here.
1 Comment | software, software marketing, software sales | Tagged: online marketing, software, software marketing, software sales, web software marketing | Permalink
Posted by jleescastro
