Quantcast
Channel: evolution – Enterprise Irregulars
Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 6

The Evolution of Marketing Thanks to SaaS

0
0

I was talking with my friend Tracy Eiler, author of Aligned to Achieve, the other day and she showed me a chart that they were using at InsideView to segment customers.  The chart was a quadrant that mapped customers on two dimensions:  renewal rate and retention rate.  The idea was to use the chart to plot customers and then identify patterns (e.g., industries) so marketing could identify the best overall customers in terms of lifetime value as the mechanism for deciding marketing segmentation and targeting.

Here’s what it looked like:

saas-strategic-value

While I think it’s a great chart, what really struck me was the thinking behind it and how that thinking reflects a dramatic evolution in the role of marketing across my career.

  • Back two decades ago when marketing was measured by leads, they focused on how to cost-effectively generate leads, looking at response rates for various campaigns.
  • Back a decade ago when marketing was measured by opportunities (or pipeline), they focused on how to cost-effectively generate opportunities, looking at response and opportunity conversion rates.
  • Today, as more and more marketers are measured by marketing-sourced New ARR, they are focused on cost-effectively generating not just opportunities, but opportunities-that-close, looking all the way through the funnel to close rates.
  • Tomorrow, as more marketers will be measured on the health of the overall ARR pool, they will be focused on cost-effectively generating not just opportunities-that-close but opportunities that turn into the best long-term customers. (This quadrant helps you do just that.)

As a company makes this progression, marketing becomes increasingly strategic, evolving in mentality with each step.

  • Starting with, “what sign will attract the most people?” (Including “Free Beer Here” which has been used at more than one conference.)
  • To “what messages aimed at which targets will attract the kind of people who end up evaluating?”
  • To “who are we really looking to sell to — which people end up buying the most and the most easily – and what messages aimed at which targets will attract them?”
  • To “what are the characteristics of our most successful customers and how can we find more people like them?”

The whole pattern reminds me of the famous Hubspot story where the marketing team was a key part forcing the company to focus on either “Owner Ollie” (the owner of a <10 person business) or “Manager Mary” (a marketer at a 10 to 1000 person business).  For years they had been serving both masters poorly and by focusing on Manager Mary they were able to drive a huge increase in their numbers that enabled cost-effectively scaling the business and propelling them onto a successful IPO.

hubspot

What kind of CMO does any CEO want on their team?  That kind.  The kind worried about the whole business and looking at it holistically and analytically.

 

(Cross-posted @ Kellblog)

The Evolution of Marketing Thanks to SaaS is copyrighted by Dave Kellogg. If you are reading this outside your feed reader or email, you are likely witnessing illegal content theft.

Enterprise Irregulars is sponsored by Salesforce.com and Workday.


Viewing all articles
Browse latest Browse all 6

Latest Images

Trending Articles





Latest Images