Highly Competitive - software industry insights

Why Don’t Midsized Software Vendors Target Mid-Market Companies?

 

Many midsized software vendors adversely fumble the critical pursuit of game-changing market intelligence research and analysis that lead to strong go-to-market strategies. Continuously updated market intelligence is the keystone for understanding what software products vendors should be selling - and why; and to determine which customers and markets are the best fit for the vendor's offering now and in the future.

Midsized software vendors often lack essential experts, especially for solution and customer strategies, and strategic market intelligence. Usually these vendors don't have the resources to continuously update strategies. But just as often it's because strategic decisions aren't based on data and intelligence – they're based on "gut", previous experience or even ego. If any research and analysis are done, the work is often shallow and designed to "prove" what the vendor has already decided to do.

Vendors seem to proceed with no clear indication of how their offerings and go-to-market plans might align to a clearly defined business solution space, or to specific customer and market segments. The main focus of many software vendors is still on feature sets, instead of forging a sharp commitment to delivering authentic and useful solutions for specific industry scenarios and business problems.

Focusing on the right customers and markets simply means the difference between success and failure. There are many adverse outcomes of the failure to fully explore and understand the right target markets and customers. One serious oversight: midsized vendors often neglect a very lucrative market with lots of untapped potential -- Mid-market companies in every industry.

 

Strong Showings for Revenue and Growth

Several organizations have emerged that monitor the overall health of mid-market companies, in the U.S. and world-wide. A remarkable description of the mid-market comes from the National Center for the Middle Market:

If the Middle Market were a country, its GDP would rank it as the fourth largest economy in the world.

That kind of financial clout should capture the attention of numerous midsized software vendors. But here are additional strong stats for those who need more convincing:

National Center for the Middle Market ***

Initial research conducted by the National Center for the Middle Market has shown that the U.S. middle market is made up of almost 200,000 companies with annual revenues between $10 million and $1 billion, as of October 2011.

Employment growth for mid-market firms over the past 12 months was 3.2 percent, which added an estimated 750,000 jobs to U.S. payrolls so far in 2014. If mid-market companies deliver on projected job growth of 3.3 percent, the sector will create 59 percent of all new jobs in 2014.

 

Deloitte

Collectively mid-market generates approximately US$10 trillion of the US$30 trillion of annual gross receipts in the United States... and employ 43 million people...

 

Economist Intelligence Unit

In Japan, for example, the middle market accounts for a small proportion of Japan's total enterprises – 2.1 percent – but employs more than a quarter of total employment and generates about one-third of total revenues. Yet, like its counterpart in other countries, it receives comparatively little attention – arguably far less than it deserves given the middle market employs a quarter of the workforce, earns around a third of gross revenues and has demonstrated remarkable resilience amid the difficult economic conditions of recent years.

 

Gartner

Gartner predicts SMB IT spending this year will reach $901 billion, up from $868 billion last year, with estimates that spending will cross the $1 trillion mark by 2015.

 

The Mid-Market Opportunity for Midsized Software Vendors

Mid-market companies need software solutions that are sophisticated but not costly – and easy to implement and maintain. These companies need vendors who truly understand and support their business objectives for technology, and who provide right-fit solutions. Midsized companies embrace technologies as competitive differentiators and as a strategic means to sustain and grow their businesses. Midsized organizations need the right technology solutions to help them innovate their business offerings and to evolve with market changes to meet the needs of their customers.

And that's where midsized software vendors come in. Companies in the mid-market are interested in all categories of software solutions, from operational excellence to improving customer relationships. So there is limitless opportunity for any kind of midsized software vendor – if they make the decision to purposefully target midmarket customers.

A 2014 Deloitte survey focused on how midsized companies utilize technology both for infrastructure needs and for competitive fuel. The results resoundingly demonstrate that there is a tremendous opportunity for midsized B2B software vendors to provide solutions to their fellow mid-market organizations:

Technology is becoming a strategic imperative. The survey findings confirm that mid-market companies' view of technology is increasingly enthusiastic. Forty-one percent of respondents say their leadership views technology as a "critical differentiator and key to growth," while another 38% view it as "a strategic investment." Fewer organizations now view technology as simply "necessary." As a result, more companies are using technology as a means to increase the top and bottom lines and to meet the needs of both the workforce and the customer. Meanwhile, more than half the respondents report plans for increased spending on technology.

Many companies are embracing change and expressing a healthy appetite for innovation. Thirty-six percent of respondents are dedicating at least half of their IT budgets to implementation of new technology versus maintenance of existing systems.

Technology may become a great equalizer for mid-market companies. Cloud-based solutions, data analytics and business intelligence solutions continue to provide "large corporation solutions" to mid-market enterprises in terms of the operational capabilities, overall productivity and competitive insights.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Deloitte

 

Two Kinds of Mismatched Vendors

All too often, midsized B2B software vendors think that the best markets are in the large enterprise. These vendors are lured by big money and big deals – without considering the real costs of what it takes to thrive in those markets – as a smaller vendor. Many midsized vendors do not survive forays into the turf of larger software vendors.

The high-end enterprise is a very tough place for smaller software vendors. The field of potential customers is very limited, so competition is fierce. Larger software vendors already have established extensive relationships with these enterprises. Sales cycles are longer, which introduces more chances for failure to close deals – and for the squandering of finite resources for the midsized vendor. Even when a smaller vendor wins an initial deal with a large enterprise company, it is usually displaced by a larger vendor very quickly. With much deeper pockets, the larger vendor can easily offer steep discounts and free benefits.

Conversely, when large enterprise software vendors target the mid-market, these high end vendors rarely go very deep into the overall mid-market segment (and seldom into "small business" territory). For the most part, large enterprise software vendors still don't really know how to support mid-market business needs or provide the right-fit solutions. Even though they claim otherwise, many large software vendors miss the mark simply because they do superficial work related to understanding mid-market organizations. In reality, larger software vendors tend to treat the mid-market as one market, failing to see how different the many tiers of the mid-market are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Forrester Research

 

 

Know Your Customers, Find Success

A 2013 Forrester survey of executive level buyers revealed troublesome insight: the sales teams contacting these buyers usually had very poor understanding of the needs and problems of the buyer or even the buyer's role in the organization. Making things worse, sales teams met with these buyers with very little knowledge not only of the buyer's specific business but the buyer's general industry. Sales teams are meeting with important buyers without intelligent answers to customer questions, or even appropriate case studies to show product relevance to the buyer organization problems and needs. From my experience, this is especially true of sales teams for software vendors.

Many midsized software vendors are missing a huge opportunity to purposefully target midsized and smaller companies for their products and sales efforts. These vendors can find success by understanding how their products relate to mid-market customer needs, especially for specific solution scenarios. Success also comes to vendors that know how to properly serve midsized companies during the entire customer lifecycle. Too often software solutions are designed and developed with limited customer and target industry knowledge.

The decision for midsized software vendors to sell to mid-market companies should be a no-brainer. Midsized vendors are part of the mid-market – they can draw on their own buyer experiences for the software they purchase for their companies. There is also a healthy parity in relationships with fellow mid-market companies – a parity that is rarely exploited well by midsized vendors. Vendors as partners with their customers achieve success by helping their midmarket customers attain their business objectives. But midsized vendors can only do this if they understand how mid-market organizations buy and use software solutions .

 

Finding the Right Markets – Providing the Right Solutions

It's critical for midsized software vendors to fully understand the right markets for their solutions. But midsized software vendors often don't have the experienced resources needed to develop competitive and success-building strategies for product direction, customer targeting and robust go-to-market approaches.

Midsized vendors greatly benefit from a consultant who stands outside the company and thoroughly assesses the current vendor state, and then explores potential new directions that help the vendor stand out from the herd. The right independent consultant has the savvy and expertise to help midsized software vendors better identify and serve a strong target market and distinct market segments, as well as provide rich and authentic customer experiences. The consultant looks for innovative business models, new or underserved markets, and competitive changes to how the vendor does business to find a better road to growth, improved revenue and longevity.

Unfortunately midsized vendors many times turn to the large analyst firms for advice. Just as large enterprise software vendors are ill prepared to serve mid-market companies, most analyst firms don't understand selling software either as a midsized or smaller vendor, or targeting midsized or smaller companies as customers for software

Here are some of the jobs that I do to help your success:

• Fully understand target customer markets by segment, including needs and business objectives
• Identify who should use your solution and why – explore the problems your solution can address
• Research and select one or two industries you'd like to work with; then select segments in the industry that work well for your solutions – for now and in the future
• Analyze and build out specific industry scenario solutions that really work – focus on real target customers and real customer problems / needs
• Monitor customers who are using the scenario solutions: fine-tune, improve, evolve into other focused solutions
• Assess the success of the above to make decisions about new go-to-market strategies that will add growth to the company
• Truly support customers throughout the lifecycle of the customer experience – repeat customer business is the most profitable

 

It would be my pleasure to be your partner in making your software company more successful, with current and future solution strategies. I'll help you re-invent your software company: from business model innovation to new services and solutions, more targeted markets, true customer focus, and effective go-to-market strategies. More information – What I Do for Vendors and Buyers

 

*** The National Center for the Middle Market is a collaboration between The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business and GE Capital

 

Drucker graphic source: zenworkz.com

 

Related Links

Why Midsized Software Vendors Need the Guidance of A Generalist Who'sA Specialist

Meeting the Business Technology Needs of Midsized Companies

'Tech Savvy' for Midsized Companies Means 'Customer Savvy'

B2B Software Strategies: Startups, Starting from Scratch, Re-Inventing

B2B WEM / WCM Software Vendors Targeting Mid-Market customers: stay where you are!

Customer Buying Criteria - Applying customer & competitive intelligence to selling tools leads to strategic internal benefits

Three Journeys: Lifecycles of Enterprise Software Buyers & End Users

Symbiosis: Customer Experience and Business Process

Strategies from Top to Bottom - Content Marketing for B2B Software Vendors

The Customer Journey: Content Marketing for B2B Software Buyers

Selling Software Solutions to SMB / Mid-Market Companies – Who and How To Target

The Irrelevance of Porter's Five Forces for the B2B Software Industry

SMB / Mid-Market B2B Software vendors - Findability + web presence + social: attracting the "customer as buyer"

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

Meeting the Business Technology Needs of Midsized Companies

 

Current technology trends are important for all organizations. Most midsized companies have these technologies at the top of their lists: Mobile, Analytics, Cloud, and Security. And each year many midsized organizations dedicate more budget for technology as a strategic investment, as Deloitte noted in a recent study:

 

                                                                                        

Source: Deloitte

 

Midsized organizations gain competitive advantage not just from the technology itself but through the use of third party services that help organizations do more with technology purchases and their current organizational structures. Often services firms help these companies understand faster and implement better the technologies that can set midmarket companies apart from their competitors.

 

Obstacles to Taking Full Advantage of Technology

Of course, midsized organizations have challenges that block the way to fully capitalizing on new technologies. The predominant obstacle comes from a lack of the right IT people with the right skills, since many midsized organizations have constrained IT resources. Technology vendors that want to successfully sell to midmarket companies have to ensure that their solutions require as few IT resources as possible, to get up and running. For this reason midsized organizations are turning more and more to cloud / SaaS services.

Unfortunately technology vendors themselves add obstacles that make it difficult for midsized companies to connect to the right technologies. All too often these vendors and their sales and products teams repeatedly fail to:

• Explore the goals and needs of each customer organization
• Understand the industry and the specific business of a midsized company
• Make sure discussions are realistic for the midmarket
• Clarify overall business impact both for outcomes and for organizational situations
• Connect products and services offered to what they will accomplish for a midsized company

The midmarket is not one big blob of companies, but is comprised of multiple diverse tiers from the high end to the low end. Technology vendors must fully understand the customer perspective for each tier when developing products, and then for how they market and sell them -- if they want to acquire and retain midsized companies. To further attract and keep midmarket customers, vendors should be easy to work with, technology solutions should provide excellent usability and value, and pricing should be realistic for midsized organizations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Julie Hunt Consulting

 

 

Why the Right Technology Investments Matter

Midsized organizations have to put serious thought into their technology purchases and are best served by developing strategies around how these purchases and their subsequent use will help improve the performance of the company. Strategies should also focus on how budget cycles are handled. With constant and rapid changes in technology, midsized companies can't operate solely on an annual basis. Budget cycles are more functional on a semi-annual or quarterly basis, to keep pace with continuous business changes and market volatility.

Successful midsized organizations usually focus investments on the technologies and practices that most benefit their customers – larger enterprises could learn a lot from these organizations.

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Customer Journeys Trump the Traditional Sales Cycle

                                Originally published on CMSWire

 

While pointless debate continues in organizations as to who "owns" the customer experience (the customer of course!), the responsibility for nurturing and shepherding the continuous customer experience belongs to all teams that impact customers. At the core, much of the work should be accomplished by strong, continuously evolving collaborations between marketing and sales. Unfortunately in many companies there are still ridiculous and harmful walls between sales and marketing – and a lot of political nonsense, mainly tied to the 'blame game' when forecasts aren't met and deals aren't closed.

In reality marketing and sales have intertwined roles for engendering positive outcomes from customer journeys, whether they realize it or not. But all too often the efforts of these roles are disjointed. Both groups should work together to serve customers in every sense. Sales and marketing teams already have highly complementary activities when it comes to customers – the effectiveness of these activities is amplified when these two teams deliberately work together.

To connect authentically to what customers need and want, customer journeys trump the traditional sales cycle. The sales cycle has been an inside-out process, tied primarily to sales goals and operations. The customer lifecycle with a company comprises an ongoing journey before, during and after individual sales events. Sales and marketing teams need to be part of continuous customer engagement for the entire journey. Persistent nurturing of customer experiences also plays an important role in customer retention and advocacy, and sales has a responsibility here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Gary Magnone

 

 

The Customer Journey: Sketching Potential Experiences

There are organizations that still think that they can "design" customer experiences or regulate customer behavior. That's not ever going to happen, and it's a waste of time. The journey - the experiences - always belong to the customer, based on customer decisions. Many customer journeys are complex and erratic. Customer behavior can be unpredictable – journeys take twists and turns due to external influences and events beyond the organization. For one company and its products, there can be multiple customer / buyer journeys – just as there can be multiple customer categories and segments. It all depends on the products, how they are sold, the targets, and how well a company wants to interact with customers.

Customer journey square pegs cannot be hammered into company-desired round holes to fit inward-focused business processes. This is especially true for sales cycles or processes that only care about how a sales team wants to function – without any connection to how customers want to buy products and services. But organizations can design and orchestrate inspired and comprehensive support for customers across all internal functions and interaction channels anywhere. They can make sure that customers encounter consistent experiences anytime and that customers get what they need at any point in the journey.

Deep and broad customer understanding is necessary to: map customer journeys from customer perspectives; segment customers realistically; and comprehend customer needs and wants. Continuous customer intelligence is invaluable for nurturing better customer interactions that will make it easy for customers to buy from a company – and want to come back for more. Many current marketing processes provide what the sales team and others can put to good work: collections of customer action / transaction data, and the results of various analytics such as behavioral, social media and marketing automation.

Organizations also need to do a much better job of constructing integrated customer strategies at all levels, and should designate customer insight as a strategic core capability for the entire organization. Many companies still fall short on customer strategies, including specific customer experience strategic practices, as a recent Forrester study shows:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Forrester Research

 

 

Aligning Sales Functions with the Customer Journey

Far too often organizations fail to:

• Understand customer journeys at all
• Connect sales process to customer journeys and to what marketing is doing to improve and nurture customer experiences
• Build content marketing approaches that support how the customer wants to buy and interact – and then interrelate sales process to these approaches

Too many organizations still only think in terms of the traditional sales cycle when considering sales interactions with customers – frequently with revenue as the main goal. There is little acknowledgement of what the customer needs or how the customer wants to do business. Of course revenue matters. But when the main focus of sales efforts shifts to the customer's journey, and the goal is positive customer experiences that can lead to purchases, revenue follows. When revenue is the main focus, the customer seems to disappear along with potential sales.

The customer journey at its core is about people learning about products, finding out how to buy, deciding if they want to buy, then buying or not. The right content plays a key role for many steps in the journey. The customer journey can also include: coming back multiple times, getting post-sales support, recommending products to friends and colleagues, "keeping in touch", and growing a relationship. So sales must be very much a part of all of this, especially in a world where many buyers may be halfway through (or more) their buying journeys before considering talking to sales.

 

 

 

                                            

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Source: Forrester Research

 

 

 

Content Approaches that Serve Customers, Marketing and Sales

First and foremost content marketing must provide high quality content that potential customers want and need at different points of the customer journey. And that same content can align well with the needs of sales teams. But this will happen only if key elements of sales processes are mapped appropriately to the customer journey. The continuous exploration of customers and what they value throughout the customer journey points the way to the content that will deliver authentic value to customers and help to build trust in the vendor organization, particularly sales.

Sales teams want to take advantage of the same customer intelligence that greatly improves content, especially for targeted, highly personalized messages and information sharing. Intelligence delivered by behavioral analytics, marketing automation, and other customer-focused processes have parallel purposes to help both marketing and sales better engage and serve customers. And for content marketing to deliver timely and relevant information from the customer perspective, continuously updated customer intelligence is critical.

Content that answers customer questions about the business problems they face, or addresses their interests in certain types of products and services, is not only the right content for effective content marketing but also the right content for sales teams. Both sales and marketing will better engage customers with content that demonstrates a deep understanding of the customer's business, particularly when that content explores how to solve problems, improve operations or expand business reach. Content that pushes the current customer mindset while teaching new ideas for the business is highly effective.

Many customer journeys begin well in advance of an active search for solutions. Potential customers are often more receptive to exploring new thinking long before they have defined a problem or need. Content marketing opens the door to planting ideas in the back of customer minds, regarding potential business issues and opportunities, and new ways to handle them. Content that addresses topics of interest to specific customer segments has the strong potential to deliver unique value and increase meaningful engagement.

In many companies, sales teams don't put much time into current customers – until they want to sell them something new. Content marketing is a means to keep sales teams in touch with customers continuously after the sale, without having an overt ax to grind. Sales teams can make use of quality content to interact with customers and find out real information about their ever-changing needs and desires. The right content can be a great conversation starter – as long as sales teams sit back and listen to what customers have to say.

 

The Engaged Customer is the Glue of Marketing and Sales Success

It could be said that everyone in a company is in sales and marketing. But the better notion is that everyone is in the business of improving customer experiences to make it easier for customers to purchase and make use of products and services. Personalizing the journey before, during and after the sale needs the involvement of all levels of the organization, driven by a hierarchy of customer-focused strategies.

As with responsive marketing approaches, sales teams must abandon one-size-fits-all "sales cycles" and personalize interactions with prospects using continuously updated customer insight and sophisticated content marketing approaches. By truly interacting with customers throughout the customer lifecycle, sales teams should have a better understanding of when a customer is ready to purchase and what it will take to help them make the buying decision.

 

About the author: Julie is an independent consultant and industry analyst for B2B software solutions, providing services to vendors to improve strategies for customers and target markets, products and solutions, and future direction. Julie has expertise in several solution spaces including: data integration and data quality; analytics and BI; business process, workflow and collaboration; digital marketing, WCM and social media; and the pivotal importance of user and customer experiences. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Content Marketing for Midsized Companies: Who to Target, What to Create

 

An integral part of creating a strategy for content marketing initiatives is to identify which of your customers are the targets of your content: what are their roles in their companies, what part do they play in the buying process, what are their preferred channels for different kinds of content. Then decisions must be made for the types of content that will be created, based on the preferences of target customers and different phases of the customer or buying journey. Just as companies should be segmenting target markets and target customer roles to better connect their products to customer needs, the same segmentation should be used for content.

 

Software solutions are important tools for learning more about customers and their buying behaviors, to provide the continuous intelligence needed for effective content marketing. Advanced analytics can process data from many disparate sources, such as social media, master data and CRM systems, and provide customer insight that helps with customer segmentation, mapping customer journeys, and relating customer content preferences to specific channels for publication. Content management and marketing automation solutions enable dynamic management of the customer / content matrix as it relates to buying processes and customer desires. Various software solutions also nurture consistent customer experiences across channels, to enhance positive perceptions. Most of the above technologies provide capabilities for tracking activities and outcomes, to be able to repeatedly measure effectiveness, and fine tune approaches and processes.

 

 

What Kind of Content Should You Create?

Forcontent to provide superior customer engagement, the focus is no longer on vendor offerings and product features. It's about content that helps prospects and customers solve their problems and improve the performance of their organizations. The kind of content that attracts your customers will change on a regular basis, as media options evolve along with customer interests and needs. Companies must keep on top of these changes through different industry reports, analytics on the effectiveness of current content marketing activities, direct feedback from customers, and continuously tracking changes to buying / customer journeys.

 

Content categories that currently catch the attention of different kinds of customers include:

à Content Optimized for Mobile Consumption

Mobile is rapidly becoming a top channel for connecting to customers. To engage customers, content must be specifically optimized for the device, particularly smartphones where display real estate is at a premium. Content has to make sense for how customers use mobile devices and generally should be simple, very interesting and to the point.

à Video

Customers like video content when it covers topics relevant to their needs. High quality, sophisticated video is greatly preferred over amateurish efforts. Customer expectations for engagement look for entertainment combined with information.

à White papers and Product Information Sheets

These types of content are primarily of interest for B2B customers. White papers will only be useful if they cover topics and issues that matter to customers. Customers are strongly turned off by marketing "brochureware" masquerading as a white paper, and may well reject the vendor that created it.

à Customer Stories and Case Studies

Customers still find great value in customer stories with useful details around the customer problem and how it was solved. Include the value and benefits that were gained by the customer after solving the problem – and keep the focus on the customer, not your company.

à Interactive Elements

Engaging customers with interactive elements, such as embedded video or hyperlinks, frequently builds customer interest in your content, and can take customers further into the buying process. Be sure to overtly identify what each interactive element will do. For example, you may be losing customer follow-through on links if it's not clear what will happen when the link is clicked.

 

Content Marketing Doesn't Stop at Purchases

The bonus value of content marketing is to nurture and build positive customer experiences beyond the purchase, throughout the lifecycle of a customer. Customers and markets can change very quickly; agile and sophisticated software technologies, processes and creative practices are needed to grow and sustain positive customer relationships. Content marketing is an integral part of what it takes to positively engage customers on any channel at any time.

 

 

Image source: ironpaper.com

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Timely, Relevant and Wanted: How to Succeed with Mobile Push Marketing

 

 

Not only are people spending more time on mobile devices, much of it is dedicated to using apps. Because of the intimate nature of mobile, marketers have to take on new ways to effectively target consumers both for in-app and mobile website engagement.

Push notifications or messages only happen if mobile users opt in to activate them. These notifications focus on very specific purposes: relevant / requested vendor offers, customer service alerts, new content availability, social updates, various reminders, or notifications tied to current consumer location. Push messages require an immediate action, which has compelling value to vendors:

• In-the-moment marketing that is simple but with lots of room for creativity
• A new way for delivering memorable customer experiences
• An inexpensive way to keep in touch with already interested customers
• A highly detailed targeting and metrics tool

But marketing through push notifications comes with a serious warning. Marketers must be very respectful of the trust mobile users are extending by giving vendors access to their mobile devices – and their attention. Similar to marketing automation and content marketing, mobile users expect highly personalized relevant content. The difference is that push notifications are extremely targeted to very specific interests and actions of individual consumers, often related to the exact moment or current location. If marketers fail to deliver what consumers want in push messages, the messages are ignored and deleted – and the consumer is likely opt out of future push notifications as a waste of their time.

 

A recent JiWire study found that 75 percent of shoppers act after receiving a location-based message.

 

Consumers who are heavy app users are also the most interested in push notifications:

According to a report from Maz, consumers spend 40 percent more time reading content in apps than on Web sites, but marketers are still hesitant to ramp up in-app ad spend. At the same time, Juniper Research just put out a report that predicts that in-app advertising spend will grow to almost $17 billion by 2018, so that reality may be changing in the near future.

    

While in-app marketing is growing in importance, not all customers want to interact with a vendor through apps. Mobile websites continue to draw customers. Consumer actions on mobile websites can dynamically set off the display of personalized content, as a "push" response. And push notifications can be used to drive consumers to specific web pages.

 

Push Notification Relevance Depends on Continuous Analytics

As with marketing automation, a robotic one-size-fits-all won't cut it for consumer-personalized push messages. And as with content marketing, marketers must avoid anything that smacks of blatant sales propaganda. The focus has to be on the consumer perspective, what they need and want.

This is an interesting new direction for effective marketing. Push notifications require personalization on steroids to generate the right timely targeted offerings. This calls for continuous advanced analytics, detailed segmentation, and location-based services. Vendors should already be constructing well-informed segmentation and profiles of customers for marketing automation, content marketing and product development. Push notifications now take it deeper and add new dimensions to customer behavioral data.

Push notification processes introduce the opportunity for very detailed metrics to determine the engagement quality of the communications: what specific actions were taken, which messages were opened immediately, how many app opens occurred, the amount of time spent in the app. The preferences set by mobile users also generate useful data, particularly if the options are quite granular.Marketers have immediate intelligence about what works and what doesn't, and can make quick changes to approaches.

Beyond the specific needs of continuous improvement of push messages, this new customer intelligence should be shared with all other customer-related functions in the company. Push notifications should never exist in a vacuum, but must be part of an integrated cross-channel strategy for customer engagement.

 

The Omnichannel Customer Experience

While mobile is a unique world, mobile marketing still needs tight integration with all multichannel strategies such as a direct marketing. Push marketing must exist as a consistent component of the omnichannel experience for each customer. It should complement messaging tactics on all digital devices for orchestrated actions and engagement across channels.

The consumer intelligence gained from understanding how mobile users react to push notifications should strive to relate the impact of such messages to subsequent cross-channel behavior. As the sophistication of push notification analytics grows, many possibilities should emerge for highly engaging and creative push interactions anywhere anytime.

 

Image source: 99mobileapps.com

 

 

This post was brought to you by IBM for Midsize Business and opinions are my own. To read more on this topic, visit  IBM's Midsize Insider. Dedicated to providing businesses with expertise, solutions and tools that are specific to small and midsized companies, the Midsize Business program provides businesses with the materials and knowledge they need to become engines of a smarter planet.

 

About the author: Julie Hunt understands the overlap and convergence of many business processes and software solutions that once were thought of as "separate" – and how this impacts software Vendors and Buyers, as well as the strategies that enterprises implement for how technology supports the business and its customers. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitiveand on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategies for B2B Software Solutions: Working from the Customer Perspective

 

Strategies from Top to Bottom - Content Marketing for B2B Software Vendors

 

I last wrote about content marketing for B2B software vendors in 2010 – since then some enterprises have made good progress with strategic use of content marketing. Unfortunately, many enterprises still don't understand why content marketing has value, and haven't figured out what to do.

The story still is this:

• B2B software Customers are becoming more proactive Buyers and have taken the driver's seat in buying decisions
• These customers want relevant, quality content to learn more about problems that matter to their companies and potential solutions to those problems, which may include the offerings of a particular B2B software company
• And they'd like to learn about vendor solutions through honest, well-written content – instead of brochure-ware filled with "marketing" hype  
• But many B2B software companies are not providing the content that customers want

 A lot of data points show that for all types of companies there is tremendous content marketing activity going on now, as well as strong future growth potential:

• A recent report notes that U.S. content marketing now comprises a $40 billion industry
• About a quarter of worldwide marketing budgets are committed to content marketing efforts
• 60% of companies forecast increases for content marketing budgets by mid-2012
• According to Outsell, companies spend $67 billion annually on their websites, where a lot of B2B content marketing takes place right now
• A HiveFire study found that 82% of B2B companies were using content marketing – and the longer the sales cycle, the more use of content marketing

So why do so many B2B software companies struggle with execution and achieving beneficial results?

 

Symptoms, Root Causes and Steps in the Right Direction

There are many marketing-oriented posts about how B2B vendors are going wrong when it comes to content marketing. Most of what's called out is not surprising: failure to write properly on topics that customers prefer - added to failure to even find out what customers want to read; poor writing quality; non-engaging material; promoting brochure-ware instead of useful, thought-provoking material. There is also failure to understand how to match the right content to the right channel, and lack of knowledge regarding the channels that customer segments prefer for various kinds of content.

But these are mostly symptoms -- not root causes for the disconnect between B2B companies and the execution of a content marketing strategy for successful outcomes. One root cause: many companies have no cohesive long-term strategy for content marketing.

First, let's take a couple of steps back: if there's no strategy for content marketing, then it's likely that marketing is not positioned strategically in the enterprise with upper management backing. So it's not just content marketing that may be lacking executive buy-in at the top, but the overall marketing function. Unfortunately many technology companies continue to treat Marketing as an add-on silo'd function, or worse, as voodoo magic that can miraculously fix whatever is lacking from company offerings or hoodwink potential customers into buying the product, whether it's any good or not. In this ridiculous second situation (it happens more than we'd like to think), Marketing is of course the culprit to be punished if the "voodoo magic" fails to save the day.

Marketers were asked to explain what particular challenges they face within their own organizations. We noticed a number of themes running throughout their comments:

 Getting buy-in: "Management patience - mgt needs to understand that in today's B2B environment it takes time to engage prospects. The prospect has a lot more power than they did in the 90's and 2000's."

Now, a couple more steps back and we're looking at: enterprises that are also lacking in integrated systems and processes for internal and external customer interactions; employees who have not been empowered/enabled to interact with customers; poor understanding of target markets and target customer roles; silo'd business functions; poor use of data assets. So before we can make the journey to a well-crafted content marketing strategy, upper management must make the commitment to the integrated enterprise that is customer-focused, market-driven, and process and data savvy. Overall strategies must reflect these tenets. Marketing must be included as part of overall strategy, and the value of content marketing to reach the customer-as-buyer must be given credence, support and enablement. Now we can set about creating an excellent content marketing strategy.

Bottom line: content marketing is not a short term campaign or project; it is a strategic commitment that impacts most of the enterprise.

 

 Content Marketing: What It Takes to Execute Well

Why does it matter that technology companies implement content marketing? Software vendors should be neck-deep in content marketing if they are willing to take the right steps forward with the right strategic decisions in place. Content marketing (if done well) keeps the company focused on understanding and meeting the needs of customers – something these companies should be doing anyway, in every aspect of business. Align the business with Customer, align content with Customer. Content marketing is a natural progression from the recognition that the customer-as-buyer is more and more driving how and if sales happen; content marketing provides a dynamic way to connect to those customers. At a higher level, strategic content marketing is an affect of the enterprise becoming integrated and agile – hopefully of the enterprise becoming a "social business".

It strikes me that a strategic commitment to content marketing parallels the kind of strategy required to successfully implement and sustain good community management: dedicated team and participation of other enterprise teams, strategic backing from the top down, long-term commitment to the success of the community, allocation of healthy resources to ensure community success, strong integration with multi-channel customer service, and dynamic business processes. A vibrant community can also be seen as a stellar artifact of healthy content marketing.

An integrated content marketing strategy provides a single home base for all content so that real sense is made of how an enterprise is connecting with prospects and customers. The strategy for content marketing pulls together individual marketing programs and initiatives so there is potentially seamless transition for the customer from channel to channel. Connecting the tactics of marketing to a content strategy also makes it more possible to construct metrics that track the effectiveness of insightful content that can be tied to functions such as lead gen and sales funnel.

Customers know that B2B software vendors are in the business to sell products – customers want resources to figure out if a vendor's offering will answer their needs. And customers want to know if vendors understand their business problems, if vendors are thinking into the future. But the bottom line still is: the software vendor better have products worth buying and using.

 All marketers have the opportunity to increase effectiveness, and they all can learn from the "best in class." Just as was the case last year, effective marketers spend more and are more strategic in their approach:

• They allocate 31% of their budget to content marketing, compared to less effective marketers who invest 18%
• They are 50% more likely to consider the "stage in the buying cycle" when developing content, whereas less effective marketers are less likely to tailor content in any way.
• They benefit from substantially more buy-in from senior members of the organization. Only 8% of effective marketers complain about lack of buy-in from higher-ups, versus 17% of those who rate themselves as less effective (though, on a positive note, this number has declined, dropping down from last year's rate of 24% for less effective marketers).

 

 

                                          Source: Greg De Tisi (with my "strategic" addition)  

 

Content for the Customer-as-Buyer

 è Content Value is strictly from the Customer POV

Just as the customer alone owns the customer experience, the perceived value of content solely rests with the customer. Learning customer desires for content is where a lot of time should be spent. Just like software solutions must be right-fit for customers needs, the same goes for content. Just as vendors should be segmenting target markets and target customer roles for being able to connect their solutions to customer needs, the same segmentation should be used for content. Decisions are then made: who are the key customer roles that are most interested in content at different stages of the buying cycle, what topics matter to them, what kind of content, where do they prefer to consume it.

 è Insights, critical thinking and expert knowledge-sharing

Software vendors need to provide content about current problems and future directions for topics that matter to customers. With so much content available on the internet, writing about yesterday's issues is not engaging to most customers, unless yesterday's issues address problems still plaguing customers. Then the content should look at what might be done to solve those problems. Customers realize that technology is in constant flux, in good and bad ways. Helping customers to see into future trends that could benefit their businesses, and the potential gotchas of new technology, is likely to provide valuable content from the customer POV.

 è Diversity of content

Content can be expressed in many forms, multiplied by many channels – which means companies really must understand for each target customer role what are the preferred content types and preferred channel for each content type. A matrix is now coming together for understanding and managing optimal communication with different customer roles. Mobile platforms present good but difficult channels that must be understood and handled well. Opportunities are increasing for more interactive components related to content. Creative, sophisticated approaches to most content should be considered – simplicity and clarity are other constructs to consider.

 è Quality over quantity – and reliable continuity of quality content is vital

Customers and prospects don't want to waste their time on junk content or thinly disguised brochure-ware. Imperatives for effective content marketing artifacts are quality, creativity, hot topics, deep insights – essentially respecting the target audience by producing excellent work. Constant and reliable content creation is important, but what this means will vary by content type and channel.

There are a lot of reasons why content marketing doesn't work for some companies…But the biggest culprit (and it's not even close) is a lack of consistency, and, in some cases, a content stoppage. Research from IBM in 2010 stated that about 80 percent of corporate blogs never post more than five entries (hat tip to Rebecca Lieb). That is a truly unbelievable stat…

è People, money, time

Content marketing is sustained only by realistic allocations of resources: people, money and time in particular. B2B software companies should be tapping internal subject matter experts (SMEs), as well as external ones, to deliver the kind of content that customers want. Internal tech experts are also needed as reviewers and editors to ensure that content is accurate. Strategic-thinking enterprises cannot expect their employees to participate in content marketing on their own time or to work it into already busy work schedules, as a "sideline". Upper management has to make sure that content marketing participation for an employee is a recognized part of regular compensated responsibilities.

 Strategy and planning to execute, and the responsibilities of creating relevant content must come from company staff:

 Content marketing is brand marketing, cubed, and as such requires the full attention and supervision of your team. Prospects and customers now expect to engage with you— and by engage with you we mean get to know your brand—through your content. Creating content assets to support content marketing is a centralized strategy that relies on a consistent brand voice and vision to work. It's a bad habit left over from legacy thinking to allow your marketing organization to create content as one-off campaign or program assets without thinking of the broader implications.

 

Content for the Customer Journey

The customer journey consists of multiple touchpoints, which are all interactions with any and all enterprise functions, employees, and marketing / digital channels. They all matter – they are the milestones of the customer journey. Touchpoints are also components of multi-channel marketing, including content marketing, which has the challenge of nurturing and sustaining a unified customer experience across all channels, during the customer journey.

The hard work is taking what frequently is a collective of separate touchpoints and harmonizing the collective to enable excellent customer experiences. Orchestration and integration are key aspects of approaching a seamless experience across touchpoints – again this only works if the customer truly perceives such a unified experience.

The buying process for B2B software can be complex and involves multiple steps for the customer, both for arriving at a decision and for making the purchase itself. The "customer" frequently consists of multiple roles: techies (IT), line-of-business decision-makers, financial and budget managers, executives, and sometimes the actual users of the technology. (One of the flaws on the buyer side of the equation is too often the "end" user is left out of the decision-making process.) Content marketing has a fantastic opportunity to help potential buyer roles with the decision steps and foster positive experiences as part of the customer journey.

Work done for target customer segmentation and for mapping the customer journey is very useful for organizing types of content, and how and when content is made available to various customer roles and needs. Some content will be tagged to certain steps in the buying process. Some content will help existing customers use technology solutions for greater benefit and find out more that the vendor can do to help with business success. Some content is meant to pique interest for anyone unfamiliar with the vendor.

Developing several related pieces of content for a particular topic can enrich how content marketing aligns with the customer journey. People come back for the next installments, and the vendor can develop more in-depth coverage via different media and different channels.

 

  

 

 Source: Content Marketing Institute

 

  

Delivering What Customers Need

The work to be done to understand how to deliver the right content to customers and prospects is the same work that B2B software vendors should be doing to deliver the products and services that customers and prospects want and need. The work being done to identify optimal target markets and customer roles for products should be extended to segmentation for content marketing purposes. In all of these cases the ultimate "product" for the customer should be high quality, reliable, useful, easy to put to work.

Content marketing cannot survive as a strategy in a vacuum. Nor can it have any impact if it is treated as a short-term project or campaign. Strategic content marketing is long-term, with continual development and evolution that parallels the changes that occur for the company, its target markets and customers, and other factors that impact software vendors. Orchestration and implementation of content marketing impact many groups in the enterprise, not just Marketing. The strategies for content marketing should be part of overall corporate and marketing strategies. Similarly metrics for content marketing should fold back into hierarchies of metrics for marketing and overall corporate measurements for achieving goals.

  

Related Links:

Content Marketing Strategy for B2B Software Vendors: Starring the 'New' White Paper

Perception: The Customer Journey and Business Success

Symbiosis: Customer Experience and Business Process

In Pursuit of Customer Experience Excellence

Goals and Metrics – Measuring Customer Engagement on the Web

Achieving the Social Business, Inside and Out

I have a confession to make: I am a Hybrid -- Hybrid Roles for Business Technology

Internal Disruption–No Longer Business As Usual

Customer Buying Criteria - Applying customer & competitive intelligence to selling tools leads to strategic internal benefits

SMB / Mid-Market B2B Software vendors - Findability + web presence + social: attracting the "customer as buyer"

 

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished software industry analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights. Her 25+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing. Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Strategic Product & Market Intelligence Services

 

 

 

 

B2B WEM/WCM Software Vendors Targeting Mid-Market customers: stay where you are!

 

Here’s a piece of advice that very few B2B software vendors of any sort ever follow: 

Vendors: If you have been targeting Mid-Market customers – then stay where you are!

Ignore the siren song of the high-end Enterprise.

 

This advice is especially meaningful for B2B vendors for Web Content Management (WCM) and Web Engagement Management (WEM).

 

From my experience, many of the WCM / WEM / CMS vendors seem to do very little market intelligence research and analysis to understand what exactly they are selling and to which customers/markets. Most WCM/WEM/CMS vendors seem to be milling around with no clear indication of how each vendor aligns to clearly defined solution, customer and market segments within a go-to-market matrix.  The main focus of most of these vendors is on feature sets, and not on delivering authentic solutions for specific industry scenarios and business problems.  When any sort of Mid-Market B2B software vendor persists with very horizontal solutions, it is in danger of “disappearing”.

 

The mid to upper tiers of the Mid-Market provide a fertile market for B2B vendors who are themselves SMB or Mid-Market companies. For the mid to upper tiers of the Mid-Market, annual revenue runs from $250M to just under $1B. Vendors will do better if they segregate this range into two segments ($250M-$499M and $500M-$999M respectively).  Within those two segments, vendors should then select and learn a lot about specific customers and various solution scenarios that matter to those customers.

 

I’m specifically calling out Mid-Market customers for WEM (rather than “classic SMB”), due to the higher cost of implementing digital marketing solutions based on WEM platforms, which are likely out of reach for classic SMB companies. Once a vendor is committed to targeting Mid-Market companies, the next phase is to very specifically target segments of customers for mid-market offerings. 

 

 

Drifting into the High-End Enterprise Usually Ends Badly for Smaller Vendors

I’ve seen too many SMB / Mid-Market software vendors lured by potential big money and big deals in the high-end enterprise; after taking the plunge, very few of these vendors do well or even survive. It is near-to-impossible for smaller software vendors to compete against large vendors when providing high-end solutions. When trying to compete with the “big boys”, sales engagements frequently deteriorate into pricing wars that can destroy the well-being and income of the smaller vendor. After crossing over, the smaller vendor spends all the time on “me too” development for what the high-end vendors are already doing. The smaller vendor becomes snarled up in feature bloat that leads to the bastardization of its original offering. And worse, the smaller vendor ends up alienating its original target markets of mid-market companies and loses their business.

 

The high-end enterprise is a very tough place for smaller software vendors: there is a much smaller field of potential customers, fierce competition for those customers, plus larger software vendors already have established extensive relationships in these enterprises. Large enterprise customers are also harder to please, bring on longer sales cycles that include more chances to fail. Even when a smaller vendor wins an initial deal with a large enterprise company, it is usually displaced by a larger vendor very quickly.

 

Conversely, when targeting the Mid-Market, very few high-end vendors go very deep into this overall segment (and rarely into SMB). For the most part, large enterprise software vendors still don’t really know how to win Mid-Market business or provide the right-fit solutions. And it’s not just about price but about understanding how Mid-Market buys software solutions . On the other hand, a Mid-Market vendor already has decent affinity for some of the concerns of its potential Mid-Market customers, simply by reflecting on what matters to the vendor’s own success.

 

 

Vendor-performed Segmentation Is Essential to Build WEM/WCM Solutions for Mid-Market

Mid-Market (and SMB) customers are overwhelmed by the large number of CMS offerings of all kinds and are not well prepared to figure out which ones are appropriate for WEM or even just WCM. WEM vendors targeting the Mid-Market have to do a much better job of marketing and engaging specific segments.

 

Vendors must take action to properly position themselves in segmentation to differentiate their solutions form the mass of WCM/WEM offerings. They must put focused thought and time into identifying and understanding specific customer segments in the Mid-Market. Then vendors must undertake further understanding of what the vendor solutions need to provide the best support for target customers. Vendors need to be clear on what the solutions are not, to avoid “market sprawl”. It will make a huge difference if vendors put good time into a conscious and rigorous go-to-market strategy that is continually fine-tuned. 

 

Take time to properly segment target customers and markets for solutions:

· Know the target customer size – usually based on revenue ranges

· Identify who should use your solution and why – what problem(s) does it address (be very specific) – stay far away from the massive horizontal pack of “CMS” offerings

· Research and select one or two industries you’d like to work with; then select a segment in the industry that is a good bet for WCM/WEM solutions

· Analyze and build out specific industry scenario solutions that really work – again focus on real target customers and real customer problems/needs

· Keep in touch with the customers who are using the scenario solutions: fine-tune, improve, evolve into other focused solutions

· Assess the success of the above to make decisions about new go-to-market strategies that will add growth to the company

· Truly support customers throughout the lifecycle of the customer experience

 

 

No Illusions – Price is #1 Criterion for Selling to Mid-Market

I’m just calling this out plain and simple:  for most Mid-Market customers, price is the first requirement to be met by prospective vendors. Most Mid-Market companies have very clear parameters for what they are willing to spend on software. But the Mid-Market also wants value for price. When I say price, I mean the total cost of the end-to-end solution that will be up and running and working properly – so price includes money, time and people.

 

Many Mid-Market companies have small IT groups, so the following capabilities are essential: ease of implementation, low maintenance, ease of use for non-techies, good to great performance, delivery on vendor promises. When selling to Mid-Market companies, publish honest prices on your corporate website. Revealing pricing is a part of marketing to and engaging the customer-as-buyer when dealing with the mid-market. Remember: Mid-market companies have no time or patience for long sales cycles and complicated pricing schemes.

 

 

Strategy for Providing and Selling WEM to Mid-Market Companies: keep it simple

Vendors must take the time to research, analyze and understand what comprises a WEM solution for target mid-market companies. They have to take a look at the overall WEM capabilities of their solutions, and then reconcile which capabilities matter to their Mid-Market target segments. CMSWire has had a recent series on WEM solutions that is a good starting point to help vendors with mapping a solution to the needs and requirements of desired customers.

 

Where WEM is heading for the Mid-Market:

· Product/solution capabilities that meet Mid-Market requirements

· Capabilities that support marketing strategies of most Mid-Market companies

· Inclusion of social media capabilities and/or integrations with social media and Social CRM apps

· Monitoring trends related to desires/needs of target markets and specific industry scenarios (identifying what Mid-Market segments need, not what big enterprise companies need)

· But continue to monitor Enterprise trends to watch for trickle-down effects – this is where vendor smarts and market intelligence must come into play

 

 

Innovate With Real Solutions for Real Markets

Smaller vendors for Mid-Market WEM solutions are frequently more agile (carrying less legacy and expensive baggage) when it comes to pursuing innovation that will benefit target customers. These vendors are better positioned to move quickly to embrace future trends that define where solution markets are heading.

 

Vendor success comes from continuous innovation that makes sense for its Mid-Market customers:

· Engage in continuous market intelligence processes to monitor target markets / customers, and what they want for future success – many sources for this information

· Innovate specifically for Mid-Market target customers – perform excellent research/analysis to understand which are the best markets/customers/solution scenarios

· Conduct continuous conversations with current customers, and with companies wanted as new customers – embrace Social CRM practices for better conversations, listening

· Keep an eye on what the marketing teams of Mid-Market companies’ will need from WEM solutions

· Monitor enterprise-level trends for WEM to determine if the trends are meaningful for Mid-Market companies; also follow WEM trends for consumer marketing for new ideas – but choose wisely for real market strengths

· Don’t follow in the footsteps of big WEM solutions just to land where they are now

o    Jump ahead to new trends that make sense for target Mid-Market segments

o    Pick innovation that is right for target customers and for the vendor: real differentiation will result

 

 

Jeremiah Owyang on Future of the Corporate Website

Recently at the Gilbane Conference 2010 in San Francisco, and on his blog, Jeremiah Owyang has set out some compelling predictions for the evolution of company websites and the potential new world of distributed web presence. He sees social sites driving far more customer connections and brand awareness than the traditional corporate website of past years.  This is the sort of innovative thinking that vendors for Mid-Market WEM/WCM solutions should be monitoring. 

 

 

A couple of Jeremiah’s slides from Gilbane Conference 2010 San Francisco:

 

http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/05/19/slides-roadmap-for-integration-of-social-into-your-corporate-website/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Related Posts:

Goodbye Corporate Website – Hello Web Presence Management Framework?

 

SMB / Mid-Market B2B Software vendors - Findability + web presence + social: attracting the “customer as buyer”

 

B2B Social CRM for Software Vendors and the Lifecycle of Customer Experience

 

Moving beyond WCM - Web Experience Management software solutions and markets

 

Selling Software Solutions to SMB Markets – Who and How To Target

 

 

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished market intelligence analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights for the software industry. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side  to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Market & Competitive Intelligence Services

 

 

Disclosure:  From time to time, I contribute articles to CMSWire.

 

 

Custom Code or Data Integration software tools: Strategic Use of Technology for Company Competitiveness

 

 

Data Integration software solutions have been in the spotlight these past few years as the explosion of BI and data-driven businesses processes push through companies of all sorts.  It has become clearer how essential trustworthy and timely data is to business, and how important it is for Business users as well as IT teams to participate in decisions regarding data-driven processes, data access, data integration, and overall data quality. Equally important is the collaboration between IT and Business teams as part of the process to select the right data integration software solutions. Business users of applications, and the underlying data, understand the business context and utilization for that data in different systems, and can help decide advantageous ways to manage access and integration strategies.

 

Until very recently, data integration activities belonged almost exclusively to the IT domain. And for some time, data integration has become much more than moving data between disparate systems. While there are many DI software offerings for many different kinds of projects, IT groups have frequently used custom code instead of purchasing DI tools.

 

When focusing on DI software offerings versus custom code, a deeper, important issue for many enterprises comes forward: the need to align IT and Business teams to work on data initiatives from strategic business perspectives, not just from technology infrastructure perspectives. Many line-of-business (LOB) managers are taking on more responsibility for IT projects, setting goals, outlining requirements, providing insight from the business POV, and providing cost justification for projects. These recent changes add momentum to using technology more strategically -- but must involve IT as the key partner in running business processes. Data integration projects can benefit greatly from this sort of dynamic shared ownership.

 

Strategic collaborations between Business and IT for DI initiatives tie directly to the 80/20 IT spend “paradigm”: companies continue to report a problematic metric where 80% of annual IT spend/resources are dedicated to the maintenance of the status quo, while only 20% has been ponied up to drive tech innovations that would likely benefit the competitiveness of the business. With the fast pace of business change and disruption, agility and efficiency in tech utilization are key to building long term success and sustainability. 

 

Transitioning data integration projects from custom code to implementing more DI software tools that provide the majority of the solution - with much less coding – lends significant momentum to help swing IT resource allocation towards innovation rather than maintenance. The reusability aspects and other value points of DI tools add weight to this shift.

 

IT Culture of Custom Code for DI Projects – Tactical status quo?

In a 2008 interview with Philip Russom, TDWI, Lorraine Lawson for IT Business Edge, Russom indicated that at least 50% of DI projects are still hand coded, even though IT managers understand the clear, and frequently significant, savings that usually result from implementing DI software solutions:

“Whenever he explains his case, people tell him: Wow, I get the economics. Wow, thank you for enlightening me. BUT we still have this culture of hand-coding.”

 

Lorraine Lawson followed with additional posts in 2009 – here summarizing the comments generated by the discussion of custom code for data integration projects:

“Last week, I wrote a post on Why Companies Still Hand Code, But Don't Have To, despite the numerous data-integration tools of all price ranges available on the market. In the piece, I summed up the reasons cited by Rick Sherman, founder of Athena IT Solutions, which included ignorance of market costs, a lack of resources and a misplaced adherence to corporate standards.

“Several readers commented on the post, adding that Sherman overlooked one critical reason why so many data-integration projects are hand coded: The human factor.

“When it comes to data integration, the missing human factor is simply that developers like to code. They're comfortable with the tools and, in that moment, it's easier to hand code than evaluate, choose, buy, install, learn and use a new tool – even if that tool might shave months off projects on down the line.”

 

The seeming preference for custom code does point to a weakness in the differentiation of certain DI software offerings:  these tools are still designed to be used as “developer tools”, and indeed involve an amount (sometimes a lot) of coding themselves. Why would developers adopt a DI solution platform that on the surface looks quite a bit like something else that they are already using? Obviously most DI software tools offer a lot more than a “code platform” -- but to have clear differentiation, DI software vendors need to offer more focused solutions that solve specific business problems for specific customer scenarios.  DI tools need to become faster to learn, easier to use, with ready-to-go components, instead of providing general platforms. For better adoption, DI software offerings should be tools that any team will want to use over and over. 

 

The very important functions of data profiling and data quality are significant components of data integration software solutions that cannot be emulated very well by custom code.  DP and DQ processes help derive more value from data and to help render data more trustworthy and usable. Data profiling tools in particular provide a platform for both Business and IT usage and collaboration. DP and DQ capabilities have become important differentiators for DI software offerings, provided they are cost-effective and lean towards ease-of-use.

 

Vendors: Market DI software offerings to be “more findable”

There are DI software tools aplenty for any sort of company initiative – and any sort of company.  They can be on-premise licensed, SaaS subscription, cloud-based metering, open source.  They may manifest as platforms, appliances, mashups, dashboards, APIs, templates, pre-packaged industry-specific solutions, and so on.

 

Since major analyst publications primarily cover only a select group of high-end DI / ETL tools, the notion that companies and their IT and Business teams are not aware of the many options available has validity. However this is really an opportunity for DI software vendors to do more to make their solutions much more “findable” for their target markets and customers. With the upsurge of interactive marketing and social media for B2B selling, “findability” provides software vendors methods to improve the ability of the right customers to connect with the vendor.

 

Competitive advantage can be gained for vendors who do a better job of marketing and connecting what the tools offer to customer business problems. So it’s not just a matter of being findable as a “brand” or category of DI software, but findable as the right fit for a specific DI / business problem, and for a specific customer segment (a segment that could be Business and/or IT). DI software vendors also own the ability to do a better job of providing good solutions that are ready-to-go, to handle specific industry scenarios. No more one-size fits all type of DI platforms – instead, differentiate from developer code platforms by offering focused tools that solve pre-defined problems, solutions that target specific markets/industries/scenarios.

 

When DI software vendors have done a good job of revealing solutions that matter to their markets while showing that these solutions truly solve important problems, the intrinsic value of those DI software offerings should be a “slap in the face” for targeted Business and IT users. The value should be so apparent that IT will rarely want to hand code DI projects again – at least not the important ones.

 

Clear strategic purpose, distinct solution context, and a customer-centric orientation can take DI software further into helping IT change the usual 80% allocation for the tactical-for-status-quo – on to achieving the goal of a larger chunk of resources dedicated to competitive innovation. For DI projects, connecting IT to Business users of company data empowers everyone to work smarter. Savvy companies want to get more from their IT investments and want to rely on their data assets for competitive advantage. Through collaboration the company benefits: Business users know what they need from data and understand the context for data; IT provides the know-how to implement the DI processes to make it all happen. 

 

 

 

Flipping the 80/20 IT spend paradigm – understanding the TCO of custom code for DI

  

Talend Open Source DI Looks at ROI of Custom Code

Whether you agree with all of the Talend conclusions, this study introduces concrete parameters and data about the real cost of custom-coded DI projects.  One valuable takeaway is that this study shows the need to evaluate custom code on the same basis as any software offerings – and why. I find the Talend data believable, since most IT groups overlook lots of hidden costs related to custom coded projects when conducting comparisons to acquiring DI software tools.  Talend is at least opening the door on points that should be considered when selecting the right DI solution. 

 

Further details can be found in the complete report, The Return on Investment of Open Source Data Integration, 2008.

 

Talend ROI Project Category:  Large project: real-time enterprise data integration

· The "Large" project is a complete (large) enterprise data integration project.

· Twelve different databases, two packaged applications (one ERP and one SCM), an application from a partner (accessed through Web Services), a LDAP directory, and a Software-as-a-service CRM all need to be kept synchronized in real-time.

· This project involves 200 complex data flows.

  

Cost to complete this project using custom code:

 

 

Summary of 3 approaches to completing the “large DI project”

 

 

And finally:

 

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished market intelligence analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights for the software industry. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side  to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Market & Competitive Intelligence Services  

 

Moving beyond WCM - Web Experience Management software solutions and markets

When it comes to how to select the best-fit Web Content Management (WCM) software, a great deal of confusion continues to haunt vendors and customers alike.  Industry analysts have done little to make this any easier by perpetuating these mistakes:

·Frequently lumping together disparate offerings that target clearly separate customer segments and customer needs

·Failing to segment WCM offerings into solution categories, such as Web Experience Management (WEM) for Enterprise, basic web publishing for internal business processes/intranet, mid-market solutions for e-commerce, and so on

·Persisting with the pointless notion that WCM is a functional subset of Enterprise Content Management (ECM), especially in light of the speciousness of the ECM platform; such a notion is even more off-target when considering WEM solutions

·While understanding that WEM solutions are directly tied to interactive/digital marketing initiatives, analyst reports and benchmarks fail to use this understanding as an essential tenet of such reports

 

Analysts, writers, and bloggers have continued to produce a large body of work on various aspects of the “ECM platform”, as well as covering the questionable meaning of the term ECM and the many limitations of trying to shove a lot of capabilities into an “ECM container”.  There are a fair number of industry writers who agree that there is no such thing as a comprehensive single ECM platform. Within the debate of what belongs to ECM, WCM has been clumsily tacked on as a sub-component of ECM, with very little credible basis for doing so, especially in light of the evolution of WCM offerings in recent years.

 

 

Meanwhile it has been mainly customers who have helped to propel the WCM industry into providing the sorts of capabilities that are really needed for external-facing websites that are central to strategic business objectives.  So a significant segment of the overall WCM market has evolved into Web Experience Management (WEM), for which a much larger solution ecosystem has come together.  Most Web Experience Management platforms have little to do with basic content management or basic web publishing (à la WordPress and TypePad), and even less to do with the so-called ECM platform.  Understanding how to provide a platform for excellent web marketing initiatives has very little in common with understanding how to set up internal business processes for audit and governance requirements.  Metrics for successful web marketing initiatives have no meaning for ECM initiatives but are essential for determining best approaches to engaging and converting visitors into customers.

 

 

Social media / Web 2.0 have become important partners for WEM websites, for the purposes of drawing, engaging and re-calling customers. Inbound marketing is highly dependent on quality and interesting content that is provided through a variety of social media that lead back to a particular website.

 

 

A more complete WEM solution description includes:

·Understanding of solutions for B2B, B2C web/marketing initiatives

·Sophisticated digital / interactive marketing strategies

·External-facing web presence

·Website essential to corporate business strategy

·Ecosystem of ancillary tools to complete end-to-end solution for customer objectives

·Savvy use of social media, well-integrated into website and marketing plans

·Alignment with interactive/digital agencies

 

 

 

 

WEM Solution Ecosystem and Market Sizing

Another problem that has arisen is the seeming inability of major industry analysts to properly size the WCM, or WEM, market.  There is little evidence of analysts attempting to size the WEM ecosystem market potential in any tangible manner. To be able to compare and assess WEM vendors, it is essential to define the ecosystem with its corresponding market size composite.  Better market definition will result in better vendor benchmarks, instead of assessing a jumble of disparate vendors leading to disjointed “comparisons”.  More and more single vendors are offering most, if not all, of the components of the WEM ecosystem as the end-to-end solution.  Again, this solution segment has gone well beyond “web content management”.

 

 

So a Web Experience Management solution is really a composite of several “markets”: 

·WCM solution suite, with usability both for business users and IT personnel (includes behind-the-scenes “content management”, workflow, design tools, and so on)

·Enterprise-quality portal / presentation management

·Recommendations-like technology for social search and personalization

·Web analytics / testing / content monetizing tools

·Rich media and video content management (monetizing components as appropriate)

·Social collaboration / social marketing capabilities

·Extensive integration / interoperability capabilities at several levels of the enterprise infrastructure

 

 

When we consider WEM as a composite of the overall solution ecosystem, then we could arrive at a better understanding of the overall market size by tallying up the market forecasts for all or most of the components listed above to derive the comprehensive market potential. It’s not unreasonable to look at the overall ecosystem market size, since many WEM vendors supply most of the solution components, and have active partnerships with vendors that supply the remaining components.  The overall solution ecosystem becomes compellingly relevant when taking the customer’s point-of-view for the desired end-to-end solution.

 

 

Other approaches could be from the point of view of Interactive Marketing spend, or from looking at web site spend budgeted by companies with Global web presences: we could estimate the slice that the WEM ecosystem can command from these markets. For instance, Forrester data on web site spend for 2009 shows some very substantial budget forecasts for large companies with global web presences.

 

 

 

Interactive Marketing Spend

WCM seen as online marketing (WEM): by 2012, Forrester expects the US interactive market to grow to $59 billion with a recession, or $61 billion if there is no recession. 

Forrester, “US Interactive Marketing Forecast, 2007 To 2012”

 

 

 

Website spend

Of the overall budget for website spend in 2009:

·U.S. Large companies – domestic-only website average spend $2.2M  

·Global companies average $3.5M for international sites

Forrester, “2009 Web Site Spending Trends”, Feb. 2009

 

 

 

Passing Glances at WEM market recognition by Industry Analysts

Two industry analysts expressed clearer views of the transformation of WCM to WEM for external-facing websites:  Kathleen Reidy of 451 Group, and Mick MacComascaigh of Gartner.  Oddly, neither analyst has followed through on these better definitions in subsequent reports or benchmarks, and generally continue to perpetuate the misleading usage of WCM as a subset of ECM.

 

 

Kathleen Reidy, January 2009: ECM deconstructs to TCM, IG and WCM?

 “I think the “ECM” moniker may be nearing the end of its usefulness now (if it was ever apt or useful in the first place). 

“WCM has already splintered off as it became clear that web content is really not just another type of content to be managed by a central repository.  Today WCM is more about online marketing….

 

 

 

 

Gartner’s Mick MacComascaigh, Marketscope for “Web Content Management 2008”:

The WCM market commands revenue of approximately $750 million (for 2007/2008).

But with analytics, social community and interactivity, personalization, media and digital asset management (DAM), and in some cases e-forms and localization, to be counted as part of the new "marketing machines," the worldwide WCM market is poised to grow substantially as customer engagement becomes an even greater priority.

 

 

 

 

Viewing WEM (WCM) as subset of ECM Market produces questionable benchmark reports

Gartner views WCM as a subset of the ECM market. In one of its most non-focused Magic Quadrants, the Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management 2009, the over-large team of analysts involved with creating this “benchmark” chose not to recognize that WCM is now mostly Web Experience Management as it relates to real world customer needs and use.  Instead the Gartner team chose to continue an agenda for maintaining ECM as the over-arching parent for WCM, relegating WCM to a minor role, while totally ignoring the WCM morph into WEM.

 

 

 

 

In terms of market size, Gartner persists in looking at a very limited definition of WCM to perform the calculation:

The WCM market commands revenue of approximately $750 million. With an estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15% between 2007 and 2012, it is growing faster than the overall ECM market. As a result, worldwide expenditure on WCM accounted for over a quarter of the ECM market in 2007 (it represented just over a fifth in 2004).

 

 

 

The Gartner Magic Quadrant for 2009 comes up with the dubious positioning of Oracle as the Leader of web content management – a company that does little in support of external-facing customer-oriented business websites, digital/interactive marketing, customer-facing social capabilities, and the conversion of visitors to customers.  If WEM had been used as the proper market segment, a more realistic and useful benchmark would have been produced (of which Oracle would not have been the Leader).

 

 

Comparing the Gartner WCM benchmark to the Forrester Wave of 2009, an even greater confusion arises:  Gartner’s Oracle Leader-designate is 6^th in line to the “throne” in the Forrester benchmark.  To make things even muddier, the top 3 leaders in the Gartner Magic Quadrant are big traditional ECM players, and are not leaders for WCM, and especially not for WEM.

 

 

 The Forrester Wave for WCM for External Websites 2009 gets top props for coming the closest to characterizing WCM as Web Experience Management for “online marketing”. Forrester’s better understanding of the WCM / WEM market undoubtedly derives from its practices for interactive/digital marketing and customer experience.  Forrester does not try to take a heavy-weight ECM vendor who is actually weak in WCM and fob off that vendor as a Leader in WCM/WEM. 

 

 

 

In general, IDC market reports (non-commissioned) stay very high level when considering web content management.  For instance, IDC produces an annual “content management” market report with sizing, vendor shares, and market forecasts, but it is a big container of “everything content management”. However, IDC is beginning to understand the importance of interactive marketing to corporate web presences, with added coverage of social media and digital marketing, although separate from coverage of content management and rich media management.

 

 

CMS Watch (Web CMS Report 2010) is at least segmenting WCM solutions relative to potential customer needs:

·Complex Enterprise Platforms

·Upper-Range Platforms

·Mid-Range Platforms

·Mid-Range Products

·Simpler Products

But even this segmentation can present ambiguities and overlaps, relative to the capabilities and requirements under consideration in the report.

  

The whole point is to take a real world approach to what is actually going on with WEM solutions to better help customers make purchase decisions and to better understand the total revenue potential for vendors with WEM offerings via an ecosystem perspective.  Most analysts have failed, to date, to do a better job for WEM definitions, market sizing, and more importantly, to produce meaningful benchmark reports with useful “apples to apples” comparisons, instead of the current comparisons of apples, oranges, walnuts, and elephants.  It is well past due for analysts to take WEM out of the “ECM platform” and recognize WEM as a separate and very different solution set that has little to do with the constructs of ECM.

 

 

 

Final Comment

Another questionable parameter of Gartner and Forrester in their respective benchmark reports is using a vendor’s overall market presence for all of the products that it sells (not just its market presence as related to the WCM segment) as a weighting factor.  This skews results against pure play vendors and inflates the actual success of larger corporate vendors regarding the specific market covered by the benchmark report.  None of the large vendors like Oracle or Microsoft sell tons of focused WCM/WEM solutions as suggested by the market presence shown by the Gartner and Forrester WCM benchmarks.  As such, the current offerings of Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Open Text (pre-acquisition of Vignette) are not the stuff of Leader-quality solutions for WCM / WEM.

 

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished market intelligence analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights for the software industry. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side  to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Market & Competitive Intelligence Services  

 

  

 

Selling Software Solutions to SMB Markets – Who and How To Target

A recent article summarizing a report published by AMI-Partners predicted that software /services markets for small and mid-sized businesses in North America would grow to $35B by 2013.  What then caught my eye was the AMI-Partners definition for the SMB markets:  small businesses have fewer than 100 employees; mid-sized companies have between 100 and 999 employees.

Back to the continual conundrum:  what the heck is “SMB”? 

When talking about target markets for software offerings, the great divide seems to be “enterprise” and “SMB”.  Enterprise registers consistently as any company with revenue of $1B or greater.  For all of the other “non-enterprise” companies (estimated anywhere from tens of millions to 200-300 million globally), people toss around the terms “SMB” / “SME”, with no idea what they mean in relation to actual companies and target markets. Some explanations say that SMB was the North American term, and SME was the EMEA term; others say that SMB is the low-end and the SME is the upper tier of the mid-market.  But these high level explanations still do not clearly define, or usefully segment, the true composition of companies in the vast sea of SMB  (except that revenue will be less than $1B….)

 

Enterprise software vendors don’t know who they are aiming at or how to hit the target

In the past 5 years, more and more large enterprise software vendors claim interest in so-called SMB markets; with the current recession, the noise from these vendors has increased. But most of these vendors really don’t seem to understand how to connect with the actual companies that comprise the vast SMB landscape.  These vendors expound the “right” marketing words, including claims for providing niche and industry-specific solutions for “SMB” companies, but most of these same vendors continue to miss the mark widely.

 

In reality, enterprise software vendors tend to treat the SMB as one market, failing to create in-depth segmentation that will then provide better definition of their offerings and sales approach. The constituents of the SMB landscape have clear differentiation in company size, industry/geographic focus, strategic goals, business needs – really a disparate array of sub-markets. If a vendor pursues this market as a single entity, fragmentation will smack the vendor in the face, resulting in little success and very little learned from the experience.

 

When most large enterprise vendors say “SMB” they really mean “M” – the Mid-Market – and then they usually mean the upper tiers of the mid-market, companies with revenues of $200M - $999M.  And most times the real target group falls in the $500M - $999M revenue range. It is rare for these large vendors to ever reach down to the “S” of SMB.  Even Microsoft frequently misses opportunities with truly small businesses, other than for selling seats for Office or Windows, through its over-complicated licensing and partner relationships.

 

And it’s not just software vendors who can’t seem to get it right. Most software industry writers and analysts wear the same blinders when it comes to discussing SMB market – these writers and analysts usually look at SMB with the bias of “enterprise eyes”, and in doing so, miss salient points frequently.

 

  

Who is the SMB / Mid-Market Company? Understanding more through meaningful segmentation

The biggest mistake many software companies make is to generalize the needs of SMB or Mid-Market companies as one entity, instead of realizing that performing the segmentation and then the analysis of each segment will yield very diverse profiles. These diverse profiles are the keys to software vendors more correctly understanding each segment and then building better solution and sales approaches customized for each segment. Vendors must understand the particular needs of each segment and their sophistication levels, when it comes to software applications. It is also essential to understand that there is even further diversity within each segment of the SMB / Mid-Market. Broad generalizations at any level of the SMB landscape will simply lead to trouble, and limited sales, for the vendor.

 

 

 

What the SMB / Mid-Market Want in Software

SMB / Mid-Market companies use technology to stay competitive and achieve economic success. These companies are not interested in “technology for technology’s sake”.

 

The Upper Tier of the Mid-Market is similar to larger enterprise companies, but there are also differences.

· Software solutions as part of corporate strategy and to drive growth

· Technology as means for achieving core business goals

· Fewer IT resources for implementation, support, maintenance

· Prefer packaged software/services offerings; and offerings from VARs who provide services and support

· Upper Tier contributes most of SMB/Mid-Market spend for software

 

The Mid and Lower tiers have definite challenges when taking on new software solutions:

· Very limited, sometimes no IT resources

· See value of new solutions to optimize productivity but lack resources needed to deploy 

· Opt for less costly options or point solutions; SaaS offerings are growing here

· Prefer out-of-the-box solution sell

· Look to VAR’s, SI’s, solution providers to make sales in these tiers

· Mid-tiers: also purchase from regional or national retail chains

· Lower tier:  more likely to purchase from regional or national retail chains

 

Finding the Right Targets – Segmentation by Revenue

Target market segmentation is frequently handled either using revenue or employee head count, to help determine the size of a company.  In most cases, revenue is the better gauge to determine whether a particular company is a fit (or not) for a particular software offering.  Obviously, revenue indicates a factor of the fiscal health of a company.

 

An important advantage of using revenue for segmentation is that good estimates of available spend for technology purchases can be calculated.  In North America, the SMB / Mid-Market IT average spend is 2-4% of annual revenue (in non-recessionary times). Potential spend will be very helpful in determining which SMB segments are the right ones for a software offering.  Then marketing and sales groups can further refine knowledge of select segments to better connect with software offerings and marketing/sales approaches.

 

The “Microsoft mentality” of focusing on number of seats (head count) as a means of segmenting target markets (rather than revenue) can cost software vendors good customers, especially for business applications.  The ability to pay for more expensive and more complex applications (whether used by a few or many people) is an important qualification for any vendor.  There are many SMB / Mid-Market companies with lower head counts, but substantial capital for purchasing software, and who gain competitive advantage by implementing the right software solutions.

 

A “reconciled” matrix of how to segment “SMB” / Mid-Market companies – based on analysis of multiple sources (industry analysts, software vendors, industry writers -- segmentation definitions from analysts, writers and software vendors are all over the place and do not align cleanly with each other)

 

 

 

 

Target Refinement: Existing software solution ecosystems for each segment

Another definitive method to further understand a particular SMB / Mid-Market segment, and target prospect, is to do an inventory of the software applications currently used by a prospective customer.  A quick analysis of the ecosystem of applications for accounting/ERP, CRM/SFA, databases/servers, network management, will reveal additional factors that will help align software offerings and marketing/sales approaches for target companies.

Discussion with mid-market customers on preferred solution delivery options will reveal strategic direction and will further refine what software offerings to pitch.  More SMB / Mid-Market customers are taking on SaaS-based solutions and are interested in the savings from cloud-based applications.  However, these same companies will still have interest in applications with on-premise licensing.  Differentiating the kinds of software solutions with the preferred delivery options is a necessary exercise to sell into different segments.

 

 

About the author: Julie Hunt is an accomplished market intelligence analyst, providing strategic market and competitive insights for the software industry. Her 20+ years as a software professional range from the very technical side  to customer-centric work in solutions consulting, sales and marketing.  Julie shares her takes on the software industry via her blog Highly Competitive and on Twitter: @juliebhunt   For more information: Julie Hunt Consulting – Market & Competitive Intelligence Services