Help Prospects Forward In The Software Sales Cycle
I am normally asked to try out a couple of software products every week. Between writing this blog, marketing software for SoftwareCasa.com, consulting Software Publishers and running about 30 other marketing related websites you can understand that I am hesitant to download, install and run new software.
To say that the average B2B software buyer is in a similar situation – equally pressed for time is an understatement. So how do you help him forward through the sales cycle?
When you have caught his attention you have a couple of ways to do this. The most normal tactics are talking about your product features, showing the product by screenshots and offering a trial version.
All of these marketing tactics are great, but there is one measurement that is severely underutilized and that is presenting an online video ad of your product.
You may argue that a video isn’t necessary because your prospect get a much better look at a product by running a trial version.
That’s correct, but the often overlooked point is where your prospect is in the sales cycle. If your product has just caught his attention, he is early in the cycle you will have a hard time to convince him to download, install and try your software.
You can peak the interest by easy accessible screenshots and describe the features. And the key word this early in the buying process really is “easy accessible”. You have to make it easy and fast for the prospect to understand the advantages and problem solving features of your product.
DoubleClick’s “Video Ad Benchmarks” study examined over 300 online video ad campaigns for over 130 advertisers in 2006.
Among the important findings:
- A higher ad interaction
The online video ads resulted in some kind of interaction in about 8% of the cases, compare this to the normal interaction with a standard jpg or gif image which is about 0.1%
- Longer viewing
The online video ads played on average 2/3 of their full time (about 20 seconds for a 30 second spot).
- The ads had a higher CTR (Click Through Rate)
The videos had a CTR of 0.4% – 0.74%, compare to image ads 0.10% – 0.15%.
So if you are interested in driving your suspects into prospects into buyers, you should definitely look into online video ads.
Expensive you say…
No, not any longer and I will tell you how next week.
You may reprint or distribute this article as long as you leave the content and this information intact. This Article was written by Peter Gillberg and published at http://www.SoftwareMarketingSecrets.com
Related posts:
- Sell More Software Online – 10 Tips
- Benchmark Online Software Sales
- Online Video Advertising Conference
- The Future: Advertise Your Software with Online Video Ads
- Software Marketing for the Software Developer
Comments
7 Responses to “Help Prospects Forward In The Software Sales Cycle”
Leave a Reply
Great post Peter. I posted and linked to your blog about this post on my blog. I didn’t see a trackback link so I thought I would let you know of this. Again, thanks for the post…good stuff.
http://thescrappysoftwaremarketer.wordpress.com/2007/04/19/help-prospects-forward-in-the-software-sales-cycle/
[...] Help Prospects Forward In The Software Sales Cycle Peter Gillberg has a great post on producing an online video ad of your product. [...]
[...] 2) Include a short Video presenting your product for suspects early in the purchase process. Not everyone will want to download and install a trial version so this is an easy way to present your product benefits. We will introduce a service shortly that can help you with this. More about using Video [...]
[...] It should come as no surprise that this Conference is held now. It was just a few months ago when Nielsen released the interesting findings on Online Video Advertising. Nielsen/Netratings are of course also present. [...]
[...] Using video online is growing by leaps and bounds. And I am sure very few people will contradict me when I say that 2008 will be the year when online video and ads in this format will have a complete break-through. Camtasia Studio will naturally be a big part of this development. Software Marketing Secrets, a website on how to sell software has an interesting article on this. Read more about: Sell software with online video ads. [...]
Reboxetine edronax….
Vestra reboxetine. Reboxetine edronax. Reboxetine….
Great infomation. Thanks. We will be talking one day. Regards, Tom