Is your software any good? And is it right for us?

When selling enterprise software, such as SaaS-products, customers are looking for social proof that the product is any good and fits their needs. They want to know what others are saying about it, and whether the others are similar and are using the product to solve similar needs.

The same buyers and decision makers have accustomed to look for ratings and reviews when online shopping and are expecting the same also in business context.

Ratings and Reviews are thus essential for showing social proof: that you have customers, that your product is any good, and that the customers are using it in similar cases.

How to get and use reviews for your SaaS-product, a podcast with Dylan Woodham, Gartner Digital Markets

In this podcast episode, I have the honor to get Dylan Woodham from Gartner Digital Markets to discuss with me about customer reviews: how to get them, what to ask and e.g. should you fear bad reviews.

Loyal customers buy more, buy premium (with higher margins), cost less to serve, and bring new customers by referring to friends, so it really pays to invest into retaining clients. However, most ways you see companies using are ineffective and/or expensive, thus not providing any true and long-lasting competitive advantage. 

#1: Provide unique value (they can't get elsewhere) 

The most important thing has nothing to do with marketing, loyalty, or any sort of tricks. The companies with the most loyal customers don’t actually shine on any of these fronts. They don’t need loyalty programs, great customer experiences (on all fronts), long guarantees, high reliability… But oh boy do they build products that their customers love.

B2B Marketing is not just about generating lead, nor is it something you need a marketer for. 

In this article, you’ll find where marketing can help sales and why it is often better not to leave it for marketing professionals.

Your Marketing is not a Funnel

You have probably seen your fair share of marketing funnels like below (or google  “B2B marketing funnel” and switch to image search).

B2B sales funnel is not much different.

In it's simplest form, it can be divided into 3 segments:

1. Top of Funnel (TOFU)
2. Middle of Funnel (MOFU) and
3. Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) activities.

Top of funnel to attract prospects, middle of funnel to educate them and bottom of funnel to make you trustworthy, to put it simply. The marketing funnel is mostly about generating leads.

This is ok, if you focus heavily on new customer acquisition. In that scenario, your marketing (and sales) won't be that far from the funnel model.

But focusing too much on new customer acquisition is usually bad business.

However for most B2Bs the money really comes from repeat sales to existing customers, not from acquiring disposable customers (which is often bad business). 

For many businesses going abroad is a challenge. Antti Pietilä, CEO of marketing automation software company Loyalistic, and his guest Jos Schuurmans, founder of digital marketing consultancy company Cluetail, talk about how reaching the international audience can be made easier by using content marketing.

This blog is based on my answer on Quora.

For small and medium-sized businesses, typical pitfalls are often quite different than those of larger businesses, especially in business-to-business operations.

In such SMB B2B context, content is often produced by substance experts, not professional content writers, as such a content requires deep expertise. At the same time, smaller organisations seldom have budget for a full time content creator who is both professional in the subject as well as in content production, and such skills are almost impossible to find from freelancers or agencies. Sure, not all B2B content requires an expert, but most do. As experts are often well educated, learning to write is a lot easier than turning a writer into an expert.

If your content team consists of substance experts, not professional content writers, the pitfalls are as follows.