Saturday, April 4, 2015

SaaS Marketing is About Promises, Not Products


If you’re a software-as-a-service (SaaS) marketer and you think you’re marketing a product, think again.

What you’re really marketing are promises.  You’re promising to customers that you’ll deliver value over the life of the subscription. 

Though part of that value includes making available a certain set of functionality on day one - features to track a sales pipeline, manage inventory, handle HR, etc. - it goes way beyond that. 

You are also promising that you’ll deliver:
  • Hassle-free deployment
  • Reliable performance and instant access
  • Security for the customer’s data
  • Expert customer support
  • An ongoing stream of enhancements

Earning trust means more than showing features

That’s a lot of promises, and marketing them requires that you win the prospective customer’s trust.  They need to believe that you'll make good on them.  There's a lot more to it than just showing that the features work.

You need to show customers that you’re committed to a long term relationship… something that extends beyond a one-time transaction.

You need to show them other customers that you’ve kept satisfied over a long period. 

You need to show proof of reliability and security, and a track record of enhancements.   

In short,  you need to show them you’re a company they can trust.

There are several critical differences between marketing SaaS and traditional on-premises software:  different buyers, different messages, and different processes.  Marketing SaaS requires a different strategy, something fit for selling promises, not just a product.