Matthews on Marketing

Matthews on Marketing

SaaS Tactics: Do You Mean “Freemium” or “Free Trial”?

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I work in the software industry - SaaS specifically - and online customer acquisition is a hot topic these days. Getting prospective customers to use your software before talking to a sales person benefits both sides. Customers get to try out a product on their own terms and schedule. Salespeople can work more efficiently by talking only to those customers who are ready to buy. There are two models for acquiring customers this way: freemium and free trial. Freemium is a model where customers … [Read more...]

SaaS and the Buyer Persona Imperative

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I came across something recently that really struck me. In reading Peter Levine's "SaaS Manifesto,"  I was surprised to learn that half of all SaaS purchasing decisions are now made or influenced by operating departments, like Sales, HR and Marketing. Now, I know Sales VPs have always had a say in which CRM to buy, and I read IBM's study from a few years back on CMOs on track to spend more than CIOs on technology. I am also well aware of (and complicit in) the "consumerization of IT" trend. But … [Read more...]

Keeping the Audience Engaged with Presentation “Spikes”

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Humans are prone to distraction. In today’s world, smartphones are addictive little distractions that sit temptingly right in our pockets or purses. So, even if you are a good presenter and your topic is interesting, you should always check in with the audience, to keep them with you. In their book Conversations That Win the Complex Sale, messaging gurus Erik Peterson and Tim Riesterer call the pattern of people’s attention “the hammock.”  Why? Because, as shown below, it peaks at the … [Read more...]

Marketingspeak: Why Are They Called ‘White Papers’ Anyway?

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White papers are a staple of B2B marketing. We write them to explain complicated topics or products to our customers. We read them to try and glean what our competitors are really doing. Did you even wonder why they are called white papers at all? Since most documents are printed on white paper, the modifier “white” would seem redundant, and too generic to differentiate from other documents. The term was coined by the British Government to distinguish shorter informational documents with … [Read more...]

Smirnoff and WOM Marketing Vodka

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One of the best examples of WOM marketing comes not from this century or the last century, but from the 19th century. And, it happened in neither the United States nor Western Europe, but in Russia. As retold in Linda Himelstein's fascinating The King of Vodka, Pyotr Smirnov, father of the now-worldwide Smirnoff vodka brand (rebranded using the more popular French spelling), faced the imposing challenge of making his product stand out among the competition. At the time, Moscow had hundreds of … [Read more...]