The rise of the subscription economy has disrupted some of the most traditional B2B markets and will continue to do so in 2016. Marketers, who are often credited for the disruption they create, are also experiencing an impact. As a career marketer who joined a software start-up in 2015 as the head of Customer Success, I’m acutely aware of how the shift to the cloud has impacted the way companies need to be marketing to their partners and end-customers. OpenView Labs, the content hub for OpenView Venture Partners, did a tremendous job of explaining the impact on customer marketing. They describe it as the shrinking role of SaaS marketing. While the article focuses on the SaaS sector, the disruption it mentions will begin to change how marketers of any subscription-based product or service communicate with their customers. No longer can marketing simply focus on generating demand, nurturing prospects and handing off marketing qualified leads to their sales counterparts. Customer Marketing For SaaS In SaaS, the type of subscription offering will influence the role marketing takes in continuing to engage prospects vs. leads vs. freemium users vs. paid users. For example, customers of an enterprise SaaS offering that has no freemium product, longer implementation cycles and longer time-to-value (TtV) will still benefit from thought-leadership and other content that speaks to the benefits they will eventually derive from the software. A user of a lighter SaaS application with a free-trial or freemium version of the product would probably benefit more from nurture…
Read More: Customer Marketing In The Subscription Economy
