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Software + Services Marketing Best PracticesWhat is your hosting fitness level?Consider how you compare to your industry peers across the key success factors - business and technical - that influence your Hosting fitness level. A Closer LookSee clear examples of things that you can do to increase Competitive Differentiation. Packaging & PricingPackaging and Pricing is the assembly of the elements of a product into a unified whole that the customer will be evaluating in comparison to your competition. It is your offering. Key Questions to Think About
All too often there is a tendency to think of pricing as a distinct issue from the creation of the service "offering". When pricing is performed incorrectly, multiple prices may be added together to calculate the offering "price" in a cost-plus fashion; this is almost always an indication that the customer perspective needs greater consideration and research to uncover unique value added service bundling possibilities. Strong pricing and packaging is distinguished by customer segment-specific offerings which include compelling value-infused add-ons in the packages, tiered appropriately to the segment and competitive environment, and crafted with a sensitivity to researched price point sensitivities. The better your customers are understood, the more resonant your ensemble of offerings will be to them. Make the offer and pricing directly relevant to the targeted segment of buyer. Features and SLAs do NOT comprise an offer! What it meansMany operators attempt to cover all the bases through a comprehensive range of feature-centric offers. Instead, choose 2, or at most 3, well-defined bundles and effectively target the offer to a defined persona. IF you understand who you are selling to, you will understand why they are buying and what matters most to them. If you don't know, ask, and they'll tell you. Why it's importantChoice = Confusion. Too many offerings will lose most prospects. Prospects are seeking offers more clearly in line with their needs and addressing their 'pain points' in ways that endless lists of features never can. Applications of the Best PracticeOne successful operator publishes a single package at US$15 that includes:
To provide an entry point, they offer a Free Business Email Light package that is still based on Exchange, offering a simple future upgrade path to full MAPI. Another - clearly visible - option available to the standard package is an upgrade to full mobility. By offering a single core package with clear added-value, and ancillary offerings around it, the operator is clearly targeting a particular customer base, and increasing their chance of additional upgrade option sales. |
