Hello, SaaS | PR and marketing Dental Cloud
I have 2 news for today and both are good.
1) I decided to change the name of the series of articles on SaaS from “How to create and earn money on SaaS” to “Hello, SaaS” and removed the numbering.
2) Our Chief Marketing Officer Ksenia Khizova joined the company's blog.
Today, Ksenia will talk about the choice of the Dental Cloud promotion strategy, the reasons for success and the pitfalls of SaaS services development.
About PR and the need to promote a new brand, they wrote everything and much. Every first founder of a startup knows about the importance of marketing strategy, they tell about analytics and the effectiveness of advertising channels at each conference.
But how to apply this data to start a project, how to form the most effective marketing strategy with minimal costs? For any project two components are important: involvement of a wide audience in the company's brand and sales to end customers, respectively, making a profit by the company. The greater the involvement in the company's brand, the higher the visibility of the service in the IT development and SaaS market, the greater the loyalty of potential customers to the company's product.
')
Product Matter
But how to repeat the success of Asana, 37signals, Sales Force? Consider the strategy of promoting a startup on the example of the work of cloud service for dentists Dental Cloud.
The very first rule of a successful startup is a quality product. If your project from the series “collect data on all grocery stores in your area to the cloud service”, this project is unlikely to be popular and will cause admiration and a large flow of customers wishing to access your service. It is important to understand that the market is oversaturated with all kinds of software, services, widgets and mobile applications that simplify and improve the work of users and companies. To be different on the general background, it is necessary to develop a really useful and necessary service. Sophisticated users do not want to simply "store data in the cloud" - we need specific advantages in the work, which will simplify the system of work, synchronize data with add. Services and applications, etc. At Dental Cloud, we chose a functional approach to working with cloud technologies. Working with this service, dentists can opt out of paper management of patients, store all data in one office, manage their time and much more. How convenient is the cloud management of dental clinics? Naturally, work from anywhere in the world, for the work of the clinic - the distribution of roles, as well as an important factor - the safe storage of all customer data on the service side. An important factor for the promotion of the project is legal knowledge of controversial issues, especially related to the transfer and storage of customer information. In terms of promotion, this can be either a good competitive advantage and a “trick” of the company, or its black mark on reputation.
IMPORTANT: if you start a service that works with the transfer, processing or storage of data - you should not save on legal advice at the start stage, in the future this can bring a lot of negatives and customer churn.
PR brand and product 2 different things
Many startups are afraid of the words "PR" and "strategy." In fact, from the point of view of product promotion, PR ceased to exist as a separate product. For a long time, any PR is used to further promote and monetize the traffic of interested customers. In simple terms, omnokanality should work efficiently for each source mentioning the brand and the company.
The next important point of PR strategy is the distinction that there is a commercial promotion, brands and reputational .
For a project, this is critical and it is a different investment at the launch stage. For primary monetization and customer acquisition, we in Dental Cloud use mailings to target segments of dentists, posting articles on prof. portals, commercial seo promotion. This is the fastest and easiest way to start monetizing a new product. From the point of view of development strategy, the next step of investment will be for reputation and brand promotion. This is another story - here the conversion in the product payment will certainly be several times less, due to brand and reputational promotion, we will “insulate” new potential customers who do not know anything about cloud service. Clients, insulated with information with feedback on the work of the saas service, are more interested in and accept information for further study, they are much more active in contact. Therefore, the following tools will be free webinars and partner events, publications on traffic portals \ electronic media to attract attention to the DC brand of course work with delusional and reputational core queries from the point of view of SEO promotion.
IMPORTANT: when choosing a channel to attract traffic, the team must clearly understand what type of visitors they will receive: “warmed” or not, immersed in the scope of the proposed technologies or not knowledgeable about the product, will depend on this conversion rate in applications and ROI of each advertising channel. The practice of the service used in the company is also important - if you are not the first on the market, then you will not have to explain to the potential user of all the nuances and, most importantly, convey to him the basic, “wow!” Product.
Channels and promotion tools
The cheapest way to launch a commercial channel for monetization of a startup is to promote a commercial core of queries from the point of view of search promotion and many, many, many publications on various subject portals that will help not only attract potential customers, but also increase the brand awareness of the company in the market. And of course analytics - clicks, transitions, conversions from the application, the effectiveness of applications and payment. Only with a complete analytical picture can one effectively and efficiently distribute a small advertising budget of a startup.
So far, as already mentioned, we are testing standard promotion channels:
and not only…
Not format
We also have original tools for increasing customer loyalty and promotion - the idea is to create around the service a club for discount programs of the company's partners - suppliers of equipment, consumables, drugs, media, consulting companies. All customers of the service will receive the best products and services of partners at the most attractive prices.
We do not really like to attract customers due to discounts (discount and there are expenses on attracting in essence), but nevertheless we announce in the near future a number of promotions for different categories of users - students, small offices, branch clinics, users of competitors. The reason for using promotions in promotion is simple - there are quite a few competitors on the market that need to be moved and this is one of the ways.
An open question for us and another way to attract users as cheaply is virality. We do not understand how it works, and whether b2b works, we understand, working on the format of incentives for inviting colleagues and friends to the service. That is, there is an understanding that the service itself, unlike mobile applications, will not spread avalanche, but it is necessary to stimulate this distribution. How, while we are not quite clear.
We do not want - PR in start-ups. Why this and live with the understanding that we must go and be with the client. Those. CPU , come on, bye!
On the effectiveness of each channel and tool, we will definitely tell in the following posts.
CMO Dental Cloud Ksenia Khizova
Materials series "How to create and earn on SaaS"
1) I decided to change the name of the series of articles on SaaS from “How to create and earn money on SaaS” to “Hello, SaaS” and removed the numbering.
2) Our Chief Marketing Officer Ksenia Khizova joined the company's blog.
Today, Ksenia will talk about the choice of the Dental Cloud promotion strategy, the reasons for success and the pitfalls of SaaS services development.
About PR and the need to promote a new brand, they wrote everything and much. Every first founder of a startup knows about the importance of marketing strategy, they tell about analytics and the effectiveness of advertising channels at each conference.
But how to apply this data to start a project, how to form the most effective marketing strategy with minimal costs? For any project two components are important: involvement of a wide audience in the company's brand and sales to end customers, respectively, making a profit by the company. The greater the involvement in the company's brand, the higher the visibility of the service in the IT development and SaaS market, the greater the loyalty of potential customers to the company's product.
')
Product Matter
But how to repeat the success of Asana, 37signals, Sales Force? Consider the strategy of promoting a startup on the example of the work of cloud service for dentists Dental Cloud.
The very first rule of a successful startup is a quality product. If your project from the series “collect data on all grocery stores in your area to the cloud service”, this project is unlikely to be popular and will cause admiration and a large flow of customers wishing to access your service. It is important to understand that the market is oversaturated with all kinds of software, services, widgets and mobile applications that simplify and improve the work of users and companies. To be different on the general background, it is necessary to develop a really useful and necessary service. Sophisticated users do not want to simply "store data in the cloud" - we need specific advantages in the work, which will simplify the system of work, synchronize data with add. Services and applications, etc. At Dental Cloud, we chose a functional approach to working with cloud technologies. Working with this service, dentists can opt out of paper management of patients, store all data in one office, manage their time and much more. How convenient is the cloud management of dental clinics? Naturally, work from anywhere in the world, for the work of the clinic - the distribution of roles, as well as an important factor - the safe storage of all customer data on the service side. An important factor for the promotion of the project is legal knowledge of controversial issues, especially related to the transfer and storage of customer information. In terms of promotion, this can be either a good competitive advantage and a “trick” of the company, or its black mark on reputation.
IMPORTANT: if you start a service that works with the transfer, processing or storage of data - you should not save on legal advice at the start stage, in the future this can bring a lot of negatives and customer churn.
PR brand and product 2 different things
Many startups are afraid of the words "PR" and "strategy." In fact, from the point of view of product promotion, PR ceased to exist as a separate product. For a long time, any PR is used to further promote and monetize the traffic of interested customers. In simple terms, omnokanality should work efficiently for each source mentioning the brand and the company.
The next important point of PR strategy is the distinction that there is a commercial promotion, brands and reputational .
For a project, this is critical and it is a different investment at the launch stage. For primary monetization and customer acquisition, we in Dental Cloud use mailings to target segments of dentists, posting articles on prof. portals, commercial seo promotion. This is the fastest and easiest way to start monetizing a new product. From the point of view of development strategy, the next step of investment will be for reputation and brand promotion. This is another story - here the conversion in the product payment will certainly be several times less, due to brand and reputational promotion, we will “insulate” new potential customers who do not know anything about cloud service. Clients, insulated with information with feedback on the work of the saas service, are more interested in and accept information for further study, they are much more active in contact. Therefore, the following tools will be free webinars and partner events, publications on traffic portals \ electronic media to attract attention to the DC brand of course work with delusional and reputational core queries from the point of view of SEO promotion.
IMPORTANT: when choosing a channel to attract traffic, the team must clearly understand what type of visitors they will receive: “warmed” or not, immersed in the scope of the proposed technologies or not knowledgeable about the product, will depend on this conversion rate in applications and ROI of each advertising channel. The practice of the service used in the company is also important - if you are not the first on the market, then you will not have to explain to the potential user of all the nuances and, most importantly, convey to him the basic, “wow!” Product.
Channels and promotion tools
The cheapest way to launch a commercial channel for monetization of a startup is to promote a commercial core of queries from the point of view of search promotion and many, many, many publications on various subject portals that will help not only attract potential customers, but also increase the brand awareness of the company in the market. And of course analytics - clicks, transitions, conversions from the application, the effectiveness of applications and payment. Only with a complete analytical picture can one effectively and efficiently distribute a small advertising budget of a startup.
So far, as already mentioned, we are testing standard promotion channels:
- SEO;
- Company blog on Habrahabr;
- Personal blogs of team members;
- Social networks;
- A pool of specialized Internet resources in dentistry, for example, Stomatologiya.rf ;
- Mailings of specialized portals, for example, Doctor at work ;
- Work with specialized forums;
- Contextual advertising.
and not only…
Not format
We also have original tools for increasing customer loyalty and promotion - the idea is to create around the service a club for discount programs of the company's partners - suppliers of equipment, consumables, drugs, media, consulting companies. All customers of the service will receive the best products and services of partners at the most attractive prices.
We do not really like to attract customers due to discounts (discount and there are expenses on attracting in essence), but nevertheless we announce in the near future a number of promotions for different categories of users - students, small offices, branch clinics, users of competitors. The reason for using promotions in promotion is simple - there are quite a few competitors on the market that need to be moved and this is one of the ways.
An open question for us and another way to attract users as cheaply is virality. We do not understand how it works, and whether b2b works, we understand, working on the format of incentives for inviting colleagues and friends to the service. That is, there is an understanding that the service itself, unlike mobile applications, will not spread avalanche, but it is necessary to stimulate this distribution. How, while we are not quite clear.
We do not want - PR in start-ups. Why this and live with the understanding that we must go and be with the client. Those. CPU , come on, bye!
On the effectiveness of each channel and tool, we will definitely tell in the following posts.
CMO Dental Cloud Ksenia Khizova
Materials series "How to create and earn on SaaS"
- Part I | remove all unnecessary, hit the target, experiment
- Part 2 | invaluable experience of Russian ISV
- Part 3 | sales through an affiliate channel that may not be needed
- Part 4 | Startup Quickme - communication and collaboration of small teams
- Part 5 | widespread SaaS integration, how nice the threat is to the rest of the software business or how 1 + 1 turns into 3
- Part 6 | Quickme story for partners or 7 reasons to do things together
- Part 7 | why not sell SaaS?
- Part 8 | SaaS - the realities of the Russian market
- Accidentally forgotten Part 9 | Legal Fog SaaS
- Part 10 | Business Model Metrics
- Part 11 / Cloud Services Reviews / UX and Usability Testing
- Part 12 | Mobile revolution of access to the clouds: how to change the operator in "one click"
- Part 13 | Three steps roaming technology
- Part 14 | Somersaults with prices
- Part 15 | Virtual SIM? No, not heard
- Part 16 | Own mobile network WI-FI
- Part 17 | Personal data and medical secrets in the cloud
- Hello, SaaS | PR and marketing Dental Cloud
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/255429/
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