Software-Marketing-Advisor Blog » Uncategorized

What’s More Important: Marketing Process or Marketing Plan?

jlc — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:00:19 +0000

7-Step Marketing Strategy Process

Too many leaders of small technology businesses think of marketing as either an afterthought (“Got the product ready… now I have to go market it!”) or a forethought (“Got to put together my marketing plan up front… then I’ll have my plan all ready to go when I launch!”).

The fact is neither approach is optimal. I really think marketing must be an integral part of the product or service development process in order to be as impactful as possible.

There’s just too much focus on putting together a marketing plan (whether before or after product development) as a “thing” that must be created. When in fact what’s needed is a marketing strategy process that is integrated with the product or service development process.

For example, here’s a good, simple summary of the marketing strategy process that could be adopted for any technology venture.

Some things to think about:

how does this tie in with your product definition and product development process?
where is the tie-in with sales?
how can the marketing function be as integrated as possible with the rest of the business?

Technology Marketers Should Put Customer Usage Models First

jlc — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:14:26 +0000

Technology usage model

Usage models are commonly used for technology and software products in testing, use analysis, UI design,… But I think one of the most important applications of technology usage models is in marketing.

What is a usage model? Basically, usage models are the ways in which customers use or interact with the technology product, software application, web service… whatever the product happens to be.

Some questions I think are important to ask ourselves are:

Why are usage models important in marketing?
How can we use usage models to improve marketing ROI?
Why don’t technology marketers focus more heavily on usage models?

Too often, technology marketers focus on the features… What cool things can this product do? What cool things can you do using this service?

But that’s thinking about it backwards…

Put usage models first, and that naturally gets you thinking first about the customer’s needs, and second about the features.

Isn’t SaaS Just Like Any Other Services Business?

jlc — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:54:46 +0000

In my last post I wrote about the key SaaS metrics:

Customer Monthly Recurring Revenue (CMRR),
Churn,
Cash Flow,
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and
Customer LifeTime Value (CLTV).

It’s a big leap for a software business to go from thinking about Bookings as their main metric… to now these more services-based metrics.

Then that got me thinking… Aren’t these just the exact same metrics that apply to all subscription services businesses?

What about your local health club… that’s a subscription services business. I can’t say I’m an expert in the health club industry… but I bet they also track CMRR, Churn, Cash Flow, CAC and CLTV pretty closely. And similarly Bookings really aren’t what matters: who cares if you signed up 100 new members to the gym this month, if you also lost 150 member who didn’t resubscribe.

If you’re planning a SaaS business, but have more of a software/technology business background… then it might be a good idea to understand a little more about how these other service subscription businesses are run and managed. Come to think of it, I think I will too!

There just might be some really good lessons to be learned…