Traditionally, Business Software vendor marketing has primarily focused on generating leads for sales to follow-up and engage with prospects. This was predicated on the complexity and duration of the sales, delivery, deployment and implementation processes for traditional On-premises solutions.
Software as a Service (SaaS) radically changes the delivery, deployment and implementation processes for business solutions. This creates opportunities to rethink the sales and marketing approach and processes for the SaaS solution model.
Business software vendors that started life in the SaaS world, primarily focus their marketing campaign strategies, materials and website on:
- Demonstrating the real product online, on-demand
- Offering a free trial to sign-up online right now to use the full product for a limited time period and subsequently convert to a paying customer
- Pricing and other specific information about subscribing to the solution
- Providing relevant information for prospective buyers in their context with multimedia materials
- Engaging with their audience using online marketing and sales methods to expediently make the sale online with or without salesperson involvement
- Alternatively, collecting contact information for generating leads for subsequent follow-up by a salesperson.
In contrast, On-premises business software vendors that also offer SaaS versions of their solutions, seem to be continuing their traditional marketing approach:
- Providing general information about products, solutions, industry applicability, etc.
- Focus on harvesting contact information for their lead generation process at every opportunity such as registration to read a whitepaper, view a video clip, etc.
- Limited or no information about subscription costs and terms
- Creating the need for a prospective buyer to provide their contact details to get additional information and details they need for a buying decision.
Some SaaS solutions such as CRM, Expense Management, eCommerce, etc. have a proven track record of selling online in a customer self-service mode with little or no live salesperson assistance. Prospective buyers may not be ready to buy all SaaS solutions, especially more complex or higher value solutions, in an online self-service mode. However, there are proven methods for opportunities to redirect the focus from marketing for leads to marketing for sales.
“I am the world's worst salesman, therefore, I must make it easy for people to buy.” ~ F. W. Woolworth
The ultimate objective is to make a sale – SaaS provides the opportunity to directly market for the sale, rather than market for leads for the sales process.
Have you shifted or considered shifting your marketing focus from leads to sales and what have you experienced? Your comments are always welcome.
Copyright © 2009 The Marketing Mélange and Ingistics LLC. http://marketing.infocat.com
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I am fortunate to have worked in a number of roles in marketing and other areas of businesses. I have done, run and led marketing. I have worked in other functions that are impacted by marketing.
I'm a keen observer on how marketing is positioned and perceived within companies and what is expected in return for the marketing budget. The Internet, Web and technology innovations continue to change and
expand marketing approaches and possibilities. Hopefully this blog will in some small way contribute to making marketing more effective for all areas.
