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I get it. You’ve
finally built a working product and now you’re ready to get it out into the
market.
You want to crank out a press release, put up a website,
offer a free trial, execute an email
Don’t do it. Or at
least don’t do it yet.
If you rush headlong into programs and deliverables, you’ll end
up spending a lot of time and maybe a lot of money… but not necessarily winning
a lot of paying customers.
And finding and keeping paying customers -either directly or
indirectly – is what marketing is usually all about.
But getting that done requires two essentials: a story and a plan. To be effective, you need both in place before you launch into any programs or create
any deliverables.
You need a story
Your audience needs to know:
1. who your solution
is for
2. what problem it
solves, and
3. why they should
buy it from you.
You need to be able to concisely and consistently convey
this in every communication you have with prospective customers.
Without a compelling story (or “value proposition” if you
want to get formal about it), everything you say about your solution on the
website, in sales presentations, in emails, in papers and videos, or wherever
else you’re pushing out your message will have little impact.
You need a roadmap
You need to have a roadmap to lead prospects through the
entire evaluation and purchase process.
For many B2B solutions, the process will involve multiple
steps and multiple decision-makers. And
it will probably be interrupted along the way and may not always go into a
straight-line.
You’ll need a roadmap that provides deliverables and
programs at each step of the process from attracting initial visibility and
leads through to winning paying customers.
And don’t forget the “keeping customers” part of the process. It’s vital to SaaS success. (See "Your Existing Customers are Prospects Too.")
Without a well-structured plan, you’ll probably end up with
gaps and bottlenecks where prospects get stuck and you end up generating lots
of visibility, but not collecting many qualified leads, or you collect lots of
leads but don’t convert them into paying customers.
Slow down
I know you’re eager to get out there and do stuff.
But before you launch headlong with a bunch of marketing tactics,
first put two essentials in place: a
story and a roadmap.
