Some Recent Software Marketing Articles

March 31, 2010

Here’s a quick summary of a few recent articles and blog posts worth reading, covering topics from influencing the B2B buy cycle, SaaS sales compensation, and what works in online marketing:

Selling B2B software? Even if you sell to the enterprise, the fact is that B2B purchasers gather a lot of their initial research on potential solutions online. That’s why having an internet marketing strategy (inbound marketing) is so key. Take a look at this recent article on ChiefMarketer.com about “Adjusting to the Web-Influenced Buy Cycle.”

If you’re moving to an enterprise SaaS model, then how to update your sales compensation plan might be on your mind. In that case, this recent blog post by Joel York at Chaotic Flow on “SaaS Sales Compensation Made Easy” may come in handy. Just remember that for SaaS you really need to focus on keeping customer acquisition costs (including costly sales comp) as low as possible – only use direct sales force when you really need it.

You can check out this recent survey by Go-to-Market Strategies on what worked & what didn’t in online marketing in 2009, in their report “Online Marketing Trends: What Worked in 2009 and What to Expect in 2010″. They found the best bets were email marketing and optimized websites, followed by social media tools.

3 Comments | saas, software marketing | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jlc

Best Marketing Software Strategy for Software Firms

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:

  1. Focus on Inbound Marketing Online
  2. Let Prospects Experience Your Software
  3. Cultivate Existing Customers
  4. Establish a Partner Ecosystem
  5. Maintain a Customer Conversation
  6. Develop a Channel Program
  7. Offer Complementary Services or Products
  8. Segment Your Market
  9. Differentiate with Niche Marketing
  10. Leverage Customer Case Studies

For more, read our latest article on Software Marketing Advisor: “Marketing Software Strategy for Software Product Companies”

2 Comments | marketing strategy, software marketing | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by jlc

What NOT to Post on your Customer Blog

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.

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Posted by jlc

Who is the Audience for your Marketing Messages?

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.

marketing message audienceThere 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.

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Posted by jlc

Get Your Software Marketing Plan in Order

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.

2 Comments | marketing strategy, software marketing, technology marketing | Tagged: , , | Permalink
Posted by jlc

How Important is it to be First?

November 12, 2009

first, winner, first to market, trophyI’ve started re-reading a useful little marketing strategy book I own: “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing” by Al Ries and Jack Trout.

Their first “law” is the Law of Leadership: it’s better to be first than it is to be better, they claim.

They give the example of Charles Lindbergh as the first person to fly the Atlantic solo. Have you ever heard of the second person, Bert Hinkler, even though he was able to fly faster & consumed less fuel? Probably not.

That got me thinking… is that law always true, and are there any exceptions to it? I think it’s a good rule of thumb, but we have to be careful applying it to technology products: There are times in technology marketing when being the first to market is not the best choice (for example, if the technology is not yet mature enough, or the supporting infrastructure isn’t ready for a compelling usage model yet). It has to be a strategic decision, with this as one consideration.

However, thinking about this “law” in terms of how to position your product or service makes a lot of sense: if you’re launching a project management software product it may not be smart to go head-to-head with Microsoft Project as a meets-all-needs basic project planning tool. Better to find a specific market segment where you have enough unique value or unique features to be the “first” to really solve their particular problems. Get traction and success in that subsegment, then you can grow from there.

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Posted by jlc

How to Make Sense of Web Analytics

November 10, 2009

web analytics, marketing data, charts
If you’re wondering how to make more effective use of web analytics data (aren’t we all?), then this upcoming free webinar looks like it could be a useful one to check out.

Avinash Kaushik is presenting on “Actionable Web Analytics: Five Tips for Insightful Analysis”. In today’s tough economic climate it is not the lack of data on the web that is a problem, it is our ability to make sense of it all that is the challenge. In this deeply practical webinar Avinash shares his favorite tips for taking reams of data from your website and finding the nuggets of actionable insights in it. Bounce rates, segmentation, pan-session behavior analysis, key non-ecommerce success metrics and more strategies will be covered. You’ll walk away knowing how to improve marketing efficiency, drive insights into consumer behavior, and generate greater returns on your online investments.

Avinash Kaushik is the Analytics Evangelist for Google, and has published a couple of books on web analytics. It looks to be a worthwhile webinar, so check it out.

1 Comment | software marketing, technology marketing | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by jlc

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