Spotted this great SaaS article on Computerworld i thought was worth a mention. It reinforces my view that the SaaS (Software As A Service) market in New Zealand is on a path to maturity with high projected growth over the coming years.
SaaS is definitely here to stay. However, there were some comments about the smaller profit in the SMB SaaS market.
“On the downside, profit margins in this segment are obviously smaller than in the enterprise market, due to smaller-sized deals, he adds.”
This is true, but will also server to weed out the software companies without sustainable models. In the SMB SaaS space, you tend to make a little money from a lot of people, rather than traditional software selling. The profit comes over time, not upfront, so software companies have a greater need for long term relationship building skills.
Benjamin Franklin said insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results,” and that’s what many business have been lured into by using traditional marketing methods in the online world.
There are two general choices for marketing online, static marketing (traditional) and organic marketing (where users decide what information is worth spreading), both are effective however the static marketing campaign is far more costly and losing it’s effectiveness as the number of business using static campaigns continues to grow.
“Old marketing methods are failing because users are beginning to wise up Rise Up against the old brute force advertising that tries to win users over through sheer volume, using abrasive web-page banners, unrelated Adwords displayed on the page, or repeated newsletters, most being restricted by anti-spam laws,” says ProActive Software Ltd’s CEO Julian Stone who’s company has been researching online marketing methods in the hope of finding a better way to promote their product.
ProActive Software Ltd, the flagship company for project management software ProWorkflow.com, has been using various forms of online marketing for the past five years and has recently changed their approach to online marketing, rejecting traditional static marketing, to organic marketing with solid results.
One of the most commonly used terms on the world wide web (WWW) today is the phrase “Web 2.0″ and in a recent article by ProActive Software Ltd, the flagship company for project management software ProWorkflow, has brought a lot of attention to the term and the misrepresentation it construes. The article outlined the history of the internet’s growth and the evolution which has brought so many to market their online products using ‘Web 2.0′ as a key point.
Using Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia, as a reference the article highlighted the term ‘Web 2.0′ as merely a shift in usability for users of the internet’s functions.
“Although the term suggests a new version of the World Wide Web (WWW), it does not refer to an update to Web technical specifications, but to changes in the ways software developers and end-users use and interact with the web as a platform.”
According to Tim O’Reilly, “Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform.”
Some technology experts, notably Tim Berners-Lee, have questioned whether one can use the term in a meaningful way, since many of the Technology components of “Web 2.0″ have existed since the early days of the Web.”-
Wikipedia
While the WWW has advanced significantly since inception and it seems every year the advancements outstrip the sum total of all the previous years put together, the point noted was there really is no new version of the WWW.
Isn’t online marketing by definition, expensive? Not necessarily.
Online businesses are coming to the realization that in an organic environment like the Internet, organic marketing is required; paying for traditional or static marketing only gets you so far before it becomes ineffective. The consumer now controls your marketing.
What is wrong with the old methods?
Old marketing methods are failing because users are beginning to wise up (Rise Up) against the old brute force advertising that tries to win users over through sheer volume, using abrasive web-page banners, unrelated Adwords displayed on the page, or repeated newsletters (most being restricted by anti-spam laws).
The old methods no longer work effectively for two key reasons. One is the fact that they are a ‘flash in the pan’, directing users to websites only so long as you continue to pay for the campaign, the second reason is consumers are now at the stage where they either ignore them or go out of their way to block them (with plug-in based browser or email filtering).
Whilst doing some Web 2.0 marketing research, I came across the following slideshow. I wanted to share it as I agree with virtually all of the points raised and they back up another article we’ll be releasing this week… This was presented at the InnoTech eMarketing Summit at the Austin Convention Center.
Over the coming weeks I’ll be sharing some tips and advice (and resources) about the changing face of marketing and how to wisely spend your company’s time (not money). Check out the slideshow.
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Republishing Note:
Anyone is welcome to republish this article as free online content, provided that the paragraph below is included in the full form as shown.
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About the author:
Julian Stone, CEO – Project, Task & Time Management specialist for: ProActiveSoftware.com, ProWorkflow.com & Julian101.com
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