7 Things To Consider When Marketing to the Enterprise
From Pricing Your Product to Targeting Your Audience
Last Wednesday, Taylor Gould, Director of Marketing at BetterCloud, presented a Work-Bench Workshop on how to market your startup to the enterprise. BetterCloud is the leading provider of management and security for Google Apps enabled organizations around the world. Their flagship product, FlashPanel, is a cloud-based directory management and enterprise security application that empowers IT and Google Apps Administrators by providing added controls, visibility, automation, and more.
Chronicling FlashPanel’s remarkable growth to over 30,000 customers and 18 million end-users worldwide, Taylor gave insights into their launch strategy, their growth tactics, and how they market to large organizations. Sharing tips for fellow startups marketing to the enterprise, here were Taylor’s most salient points:
1. Research before you build
Products and services tend to fall into three general categories: painkillers, vitamins, and pieces of candy. While vitamins and candy may do well in the consumer world, they don’t tend to fare so well in the enterprise. In enterprise technology, you need to “make sure you’re solving real problems, not just providing a cool feature or tool.”
2. Building hype before you launch
Part of the reason BetterCloud was able to launch FlashPanel so successfully was their private alpha test group. Dubbed the FlashPanel 50, these fifty users served as advocates, case studies, and customer referrals. By the time they were ready to launch the beta product, they already had a list of about 500 Google Apps administrators interested in trying FlashPlanel. Bundling releases like this let them jump to #1 in the Google Apps marketplace for their beta release and work out kinks before they had paying customers.
3. How to price your product
Although BetterCloud launched FlashPanel as a free version, they repeatedly made beta users aware that it would eventually be a paid freemium product. To find this price point, BetterCloud surveyed their entire customer base with randomized price points to ask what they would pay. While you do not necessarily have to follow their feedback, in the very least you have those data points on hand. A lot of people who say they will pay won’t, so you should probably cut the number of potential paying customers by 50%.
4. Search engine optimization
SEO is the foundation of BetterCloud’s marketing tactics. By running a network of 9 sites, including the #1 most visited Google App Admins resource on the Internet — googlegooru.com — BetterCloud is able to target their customers through content related to Google Apps Administrators. By focusing on SEO for their entire funnel — rather than just key conversion or “purchase” keywords — and consistently delivering fresh content, BetterCloud is able to successfully engage their core demographic: Google Apps Administrators.
5. User vs. purchaser
With enterprise level products, there are usually two different demographics of consumers: the user and the purchaser. The purchaser is generally not the end-user of the product, and the end-user is generally not the one with the purchasing power (especially in larger organizations). While you will eventually need to market to both, you must tailor your approach to target the different audiences below and above the decision line.
6. The decision line
The end-users below the decision making line are those who work on the “front lines” of IT such as IT directors, System Admins, and Help Desk; and the purchasers are generally above the decision line. Since FlashPanel is a freemium product, BetterCloud leads with the users by generating helpful content and offering a free trial, and then equipping them with collateral to convince the purchaser. Content focusing on users solves problems first, and mentions their product only when relevant. Content focusing on the purchasers is almost exclusively about ROI and the long-term benefits of using FlashPanel.
7. See, think, do
BetterCloud uses Avinash Kaushik’s framework to consider the typical consumer experience. The easiest way to think about this is people see something (website traffic, % new visits, social interactions), people think they might need it at some point (subscribed audience, visit quality, non-customer visits), and then people eventually do buy it (marketplace traffic, conversion to install, key page visits). The tactics, content, and metrics all change and are targeted differently throughout these three stages of the purchaser lifecycle.
Interested in learning more? Follow up with Taylor for more information. Make sure to sign up for our newsletter, or check out our upcoming events page.
