伟大SaaS公司的9大营销学科

比尔 Macaitis是Zendesk的前CMO，在最近Point9会议上提出了伟大SaaS公司的9大营销学科，如何将它们组合在一起产生强大的营销体系；下面是我记录的bill的发言：

运营和分析团队

操作和分析团队是每一个SaaS公司营销体系中应该首先建立的团队，因为这支团队你能确定哪些营销策略是可行的。随着时间的推移，它也成为最大的团队。

 

Zendesk使用了很多产品来构建分析和运营基础，包括Convertro，谷歌分析，Infer，Optimizely和DemandBase。这个团队采用先进的分析模型，推断出那些印象以及哪些类型的印象能进行需要付费转化。

In addition to managing the experiments of performance marketing, the Ops and Analytics team measures qualitative metrics like net promoter score, aided and unaided recall, and sentiment analysis of the brand. These qualitative analyses provided Zendesk insight into the top five reasons users recommended product and the top five reasons users didn’t convert to customers, informative data for adjusting marketing tactics and guiding the product roadmap.

除了管理绩效营销，运营和分析团队在行动和分析小组的实验测量定性指标像净推荐值，辅助和独立的回忆，以及对品牌的情感分析。提供Zendesk洞察的五大理由用户这些定性分析推荐产品的五大理由用户没有转化为客户，翔实的数据，调整营销策略，引导产品路线图。

成功客户传播（粉丝路线）

Zendesk通过长期举办客户线下沙龙，不断构建强大的品牌，从而取得用户有效增长。

bill讲到这个团队有三个目标，第一，识别粉丝用户；第二，培育和他们的关系；第三，有意识的利用他们对产品的热情去最大的形成转化律。

 

Content
Bill frames the value of the brand incredibly well. In his words, “A brand is the sum total of all interactions a customer has with the company. I never want a customer’s first interaction with a product to feel like visiting a used car salesman. In SaaS, that means the first visit is the pricing page.”

To ensure this didn’t happen, Bill and his content team devised a content marketing strategy that mimicked the buying process of their target customer. The team created content (text, audio and video) for the top, middle and bottom of the funnel. Top of the funnel content focuses on industry questions like the Top 5 Trends in Customer Support, or the Top 10 Interview Questions for Support Teams. Top of the funnel content identifies Zendesk as a helpful resource in the ecosystem to future customers.

Middle of the funnel content introduces the company and some of the key value propositions that solve tactical challenges for customers. Bottom of the funnel content focused on a specific features in the product that would trigger a conversion to paid event.

Creating content at scale is challenging. So, much of the inspiration for the content came from interviews with different team members within the company. In addition, content is the second largest marketing team at Zendesk.

Paid
The third largest team is paid acquisition. Many SaaS companies equate paid acquisition to marketing. In Bill’n view, this is short-sighted. Paid is just one part of the nine disciplines of marketing.

Zendesk used paid acquisition to target and saturate a particular vertical, geography, customer segment, or company. The Ops and Analytics teams’ infrastructure enabled the company to quickly determine which channels worked to drive leads and which built brand equity.

Zendesk used video frequently because it was less competitive than SEO/SEM. They also advertised on the search “Zendesk alternatives” by creating a fictitious alt rock band called Zendesk Alternative. The video went viral, further bolstering the brand.

Website/Conversion Team
Known better know as growth hacking, the Website/Conversion team is a group of front-end and back-end engineers optimizing the various funnels potential users may go through, by creating referral program, testing new designs on the website and experimenting with incentives.

Product Marketing
Zendesk’s product marketing team focuses on understanding customer needs, segmenting the market and developing pricing plans to meet their needs.

When Zendesk moved into the enterprise, the company tested substantially higher price points. Like other Veblen Goods, Zendesk’s product increased in demand as the team increased the price point. The higher price conferred a greater perception of value and quality to enterprise customers accustomed to paying large amounts for software.

Lifecycle Nuturing
The typical enterprise customer will have 10-30 interactions with a company before buying software. And because of upsell and cross-sell after the sale, more than half of the customer’s revenue potential occurs after the customer starts to pay. The lifecycle team strengthens the companys’ relationship with the customer throughout this lifecycle.

Zendesk marketed to existing customers most effectively by building an internal a messaging platform within their product that allowed very granular targeting and segmentation of their users. For example, if a user checks the reports tab frequently and a new advanced reporting feature were released, they might receive free access for 30 days to the advanced reports.

Comms
The marketing communications team is a PR team managing the brand strategy, brand narrative and the public relations of the company.

International
Zendesk structured their international team differently than most companies. They hired native speakers of their target countries to work at headquarters in San Francisco. Keeping these marketers at HQ enabled them to stay connected to the company and feel empowered rather than isolated.

The field marketing teams complemented the HQ-based marketing teams. But these field marketing teams focused more on user activation, sales enablement and training, rather than feature announcements and content.

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Bill has built marketing teams at four very successful companies. It’s plain to see why. He has mastered the structure, organization and management of large scale marketing teams that balance performance advertising and brand building, top and bottom of the funnel, product marketing and growth hacking.