Why Don’t Software Enterprises Get Their Clients Online?

Recently I talked with a 40-year-old woman who had her breast removed because of cancer.

“I now regret that I opted for a total mastectomy,” she told me. “I had a 0.5-inch lump and other disease attributes proving this was stage l cancer.

Nobody told me I could have a breast-conserving surgery instead of a traumatic (and psychologically devastating!) one. I just went to my doctor and asked him to cut it off. He did. And here I am.”

Would you recommend to that woman that she has traditional surgery — the only choice available in the 1960s — over a newer, less invasive one with equal rates of recurrence and survival?

Now, you feel sorry for that woman. You think she would have it done differently had she known her options.

Unfortunately, ignorance plays a big role in health-related decisions. And in many others.

As a marketer, I see the same pattern of ill-informed decision-making in marketing.

Surprisingly, a lot of big (based on size and revenue) software houses avoid going digital when it comes to attracting clients.

They have thousands of people working for them, they have skyrocketing ambitions, they have money to invest.

But they stick to old-fashioned ways of getting clients, through referrals and onsite consultants, and neglect other methods that are mainstream for smaller companies today.

You’ll find that some 10k+ employee software enterprises — Epam and Globant, to name just a couple — don’t use inbound marketing.

Their PPC advertising budget is almost nonexistent.

They are barely represented in popular software listings (someone from their team has just created a company profile, no client reviews yet).

They grow and find clients another way, they say.

This at the same time that 50+, 100+, and 1,000+ employee software firms are competing like crazy for Google search queries.

Accenture and Cognizant — the biggest of the big — are among the exceptions.

Accenture invests over $200k in search ads monthly.

Actually, they have been doing it for more than five years, which suggests the company has a good reason for doing so.

It looks like nobody told digital transformation tycoons they could use digital means to speak to their million-dollar prospects.

If so, how different is their decision-making — despite all their money and extended staff — from that of the unhappy woman?

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If you are a Midsize or an Enterprise Software Company and you need help with a digital strategy, contact me at irina@kraftblick.com.