Looking for new ideas for how to market your Software as a Service (SaaS) business? Refocus and restructure your marketing with the RACE Framework
RACE focuses on how to improve your marketing across the full customer lifecycle from creating awareness to build an audience, encouraging interaction and lead generation, to purchase, and then customer loyalty.
When looking at how to market Software as a Service (SaaS), it’s important to use the most up-to-date marketing methods to reach your key demographic and generate maximum revenue at each stage of the customer journey.
REACH > ACT > CONVERT > ENGAGE
The RACE Framework is used in SaaS marketing as a structure to cover the paid, owned, and earned inbound marketing activities to encourage purchase. The initial plan for how to market SaaS should:
Create an integrated digital strategy as a roadmap for future growth
Define the resources…
First my wallet, now my phone, are stacked with customer loyalty cards, emails, and apps. But what do customers want in loyalty schemes?
The customer loyalty market is in a state of flux. While physical cards decline amidst low-contact social distancing, notifications and emails from my favourite brands are more targeted (and appealing!) than ever.
With marketing budgets tightening, customer engagement is a wise area to defend. Recent studies show it can cost up to 5x more to acquire a new customer than to retain an existing one.
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Loyalty schemes are expensive to implement, promote and very costly to manage, both online and offline. But are they making a difference? Do they increase customer engagement, and what can we learn from the best examples?
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Managing customer loyalty schemes
Whether it's an in-house managed scheme or being part of an external…
Five steps that you can take to gain insight from your customer feedback and prepare for your recovery
Just as no one could have predicted this year’s events, no one knows exactly what a post-Covid world is going to look like. One thing we can be sure of, however, is that some change is on the cards. The longer this situation plays out, the more we’re all seeing shifts in consumer behaviour, product demand, customer relationships, and priorities – even the term ‘essential’ has taken on a different meaning for many of us over the past few months.
Changes in your business are happening right now. It’s time to react to your consumer’s behaviour, gather all of data that will help you take the steps to recovery, and make sure your customer experience (CX) is ready and suited to this new post-Covid customer base.
1. Evolve with your customers – find out what’s…
Good service once earns one happy customer. Consistently good service builds a satisfied, loyal customer base.
Unfortunately, unless you’re a sole proprietor doing everything in your business, you can’t control how your customer service teams work at every moment. How do you make sure customers get a consistent, positive experience every time they interact with you?
Customer service needs to be at the heart of your business. It’s not something that’s limited only to the customer service team. Your company culture and the heart of everything you do need to revolve around serving your customers as well as possible.
This blog post explores 2 case studies - which highlight the dos and don'ts of customer service in 2020. But first, how can you lay the groundwork that makes it simple and rewarding for your employees to provide good service every time?
Building strong customer relationships
Before you can develop…
... and what they might mean for 2020
Seasoned visitors to the Smart Insights blog will no doubt agree that there’s an abundance of, well, smart insights to take in on a daily basis. With digital and marketing constantly evolving, marketers have to work hard to keep up with the rapid pace of change and Smart Insights plays this role perfectly, providing up-to-date guidance, tips and advice on a huge range of topics.
There’s a handy function on the Smart Insights blog that lets visitors sort posts by both recency and popularity. But rather than talk about what others have found most interesting in 2019, I thought I’d outline some of the insights that have educated and inspired me this year and how they’re likely to influence my thinking further in 2020.
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Stories and stats that stood out in 2019
Looking back over the last twelve months, I was surprised by the breadth of…
Take a look at what we believe are the key social media marketing trends for 2020 that marketers need to be aware of in order to ensure their marketing strategy is up-to-date and as effective as possible.
Social media has now become synonymous with digital marketing, going hand-in-hand with most – if not all – digital campaigns. However, social media is far from static and what worked a few months ago may not get you the same good results now.
Habits change, platforms evolve, and new platforms come into existence. All of this influences how people use and react to social media marketing, as well as how marketers are able to reach their audience.
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It is more important than ever before for marketers to understand and stay ahead of the curve when it comes to social media. Doing so ensures you have the right tools at your disposal, an up-to-date strategy,…
You should strive to add concierge-level service to your e-commerce website’s user experience
We all want to be cared for.
On a business trip to Winnipeg, Canada, Michael Scott’s character in the popular sitcom ‘The Office’ is over-the-moon excited to learn that his hotel has a concierge (a concierge is a hotel employee whose job it is to assist guests with their every need). If you’ve seen the episode, you know that later that evening the concierge’s services far exceed his logistical support needs.
It’s human nature to want to be cared for, especially in this often impersonal world. So you should strive to add concierge-level service to your e-commerce website’s user experience. To make your service ubiquitous and consistent, you should extend this higher level of service to your other customer contact channels.
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You can beat your competition quite easily if you know the tactics of niche product optimization with respect to the e-commerce space
Niche marketing is not a new concept. Marketers, as well as product manufacturers, have leveraged the power of niche audiences to gain better control over their sales.
It’s no surprise then that there is cutthroat competition in the e-commerce space and marketers are finding it hard to attract new customers. This is happening because people have become more informed than before. Consumers can now compare and research the product before they buy it easy than ever.
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As an e-commerce store owner or a marketer, you are constantly looking for new ways…
Chart of the day: Most customers have to contact companies twice to get a resolution to a customer service problem
Research by maru/edr has found that almost 8 in 10 customers contact companies by one method (such as online chat) and then by another (such as by phone) - customers feel they need to use multiple channels to get a resolution.
The research also found that (as expected) email is the easiest method of contact, but phone contact led to a more immediate resolution. Live chat also led to a slightly higher number of resolutions than email. Social media was found to resolve issues the least and the most difficult method for contact, which is surprising - especially with the wider use of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. We have seen that more and more companies are investing time to integrate social media into their…
9 tips and good practice examples to improve customer service quality through the big five social networks and other tools
Many savvy marketers have known for a long time that social media is more than just facebook pages and YouTube channels and that these channels have far more to offer than mere ‘brand awareness’.
Engaging a brand’s customers (and developing a stronger relationship with them as a result) has been one of the main justifications for brand’s investing in social media despite it remaining difficult to demonstrate an accurate ROI for social media activities.
I believe this is missing the point.
Integrate social media across the whole business
Social media should be viewed more broadly across a business and form part of an organisation's structure. And, as brands and businesses start to recognise the importance of integrating social media beyond the marketing or PR teams,…
