161–170 of 195 posts
I hope they don't go down a route of blocking non-subscribers from reading their content like Quora.
Off-topic: since when did Medium ask readers to "sign in to get the full experience" with a giant modal? Is anyone else getting this, or are they A/B testing? I hope they don't go down a route of blocking non-subscribers from reading their content like Quora.
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It's an answer that provides a possibly logical reason for the behavior but I don't buy it. Firstly because inbound phone calls are incredibly rare. Maybe it's more common for people to pick up the phone in the states but in my three years selling B2B SaaS (enterprise and startup) I never received a hot inbound lead on the phone. It's a bit different if your market leader but most companies and products aren't so I d…
B2B startups don't rely on inbound phone calls, they want you to leave your email, phone number, and company size in order to "receive a case study", "book a product demo", or "subscribe to a newsletter", and that's when the real sales process starts. They put a lot of money and effort into sales and marketing, and you underestimate them by thinking that it's a sign of incompetence.
We're talking about why a lot of B2B tech companies have a lot buzzwordy nonsense instead of descriptions of what they can do for their customers (this is not unique to tech companies, I would say this goes for most B2B) and the theory put forward was that it's to get people to pickup the phone so they can understand what the fuck the product does. This is what I debunked.
I literally worked as a salesrep at a fairly big B2B marketing startup and one of the largest enterprise software companies.
What you refer to is content marketing to generate inbound leads. Those leads would then be put on a mailing list and and an outbound process would start. Except the "book a demo" (inbound lead) which I never recall leading to a good deal.
If you are a small stage startup with a small sales team you can probably get by on inbound but you have to go outbound to saturate the market. Even then, having poor description is going to hurt your Google fu so I don't buy the strategy.
If your the market leader, like salesforce in crm, you're going to see a lot of inbound but that's because people know your product and you're gartner quadrant status. Even then you'd still do maybe 50/50 inbound outbound.
In either case, the "it's shit because it works" argument still doesn't really hold up.
They put a lot of money into sales, they put a lot of money into going to conferences. They do not, however, seem to put really any money into a decent copywriter.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's an answer that provides a possibly logical reason for the behavior but I don't buy it. Firstly because inbound phone calls are incredibly rare. Maybe it's more common for people to pick up the phone in the states but in my three years selling B2B SaaS (enterprise and startup) I never received a hot inbound lead on the phone. It's a bit different if your market leader but most companies and products aren't so I d…
Last point is on the dot. I work to optimize websites and bring this issue with clients all the time. In the end, a mid-level in house marketing guru will convince his seniors that this is the way to go - after all how else will they justify their jobs?
I feel your pain. I just brought the Google fu aspect up in another comment.
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You may want to get them "confused" (or, to use a more positive phrase, excited), but crucially, you don't want them to get sticker shock. Most software is essentially free on the margin. You don't want to leave $20k on the table by scaring them with a $40k price tag, but you also don't want to charge someone who'd be happy to pay you $50k tens of thousands less, just because you felt called to put a number on your w…
That kind of pricing is bad in the long run, though, because that customer who paid $50k is eventually going to learn that their competitor only paid you $20k and then they're going to be pissed at you about it forever and ever .
If you're selling the exact same product ("exact" in the business-sense that includes stuff like support or long-term price commitments, not in the geek-sense where CentOS is the exact same as RedHat) for two vastly different price points, you should probably make sure those customers don't meet.
I came across this recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l644fAxGzlw Don't waste your time watching it. It's a promo video for yet another a very scammy looking ICO. I watched through the entire 3 minute video, only because I found it increasingly amusing how long they were taking to "get to the point". As it turns out, this video is 3 minutes of stock videos of Dubai with a pseudo-inspirational voiceover about n…
"The First A.I. Big Data Marketing Cloud for BlockChain" This is pure comedy.
You'll notice over there that you can "BELIMITLESS", if you like.
At least today this is making my world a better place.
This inspired me to redo the landing page for my side project: https://formapi.io/ Would appreciate some feedback. Is the purpose clear enough? I know it won't make sense unless you're a developer, but it's a tool for developers. It's just a rough draft, so it probably won't be that sparse when I launch. I need to add a proper pricing page, and a tab bar at the top. I'm also planning to add a demo API request that yo…
Outside of that the website is pretty good and serves its purpose!
So much this. Another perfect example: https://databricks.com They just raised a $140m round of financing so apparently they have some good stuff going on. If you look at the website though: The Unified Analytics Platform. Accelerate innovation by unifying data science, engineering, and business. Sorry, what? Click on "learn more about the platform": DATABRICKS IS A TRULY UNIFIED APPROACH TO DATA ANALYTICS AT SCALE.…
This is hilarious! I'm a paying customer of databricks, a useful service that can, and should, be described in a single medium length sentence.
So much this. Another perfect example: https://databricks.com They just raised a $140m round of financing so apparently they have some good stuff going on. If you look at the website though: The Unified Analytics Platform. Accelerate innovation by unifying data science, engineering, and business. Sorry, what? Click on "learn more about the platform": DATABRICKS IS A TRULY UNIFIED APPROACH TO DATA ANALYTICS AT SCALE.…
Then there's a Learn More button right there, which explains all that in more details.
It's certainly complex and has a large ambition, but it's not like they're advertising that they're making the world a better place while selling todo lists.
> the more expensive the service a B2B company provides, the more incomprehensible its website > I think the big companies do it to get you on the phone — so they can upsell. I was thinking these things, and then BOOM, he says what I'm thinking haha. These are sales oriented companies. By contrast, B2C is quantity oriented. They need more customers buying their mostly undifferentiated price tiers. Selling expensive p…
Clarity is difficult, and if it rarely makes a difference to businesses then it gets left out.
One reason clarity is difficult is that it requires narrowing what you say. Measurable accountable and integrated business software solutions. From the outside this sounds pointless and meaningless. From the inside it sounds nice and wide, encompassing everything they do. Better too broad than too narrow.
People's CVs sometimes have the same problem, resistance to limiting language.
The reason it doesn't matter is the way they get business. In face-to-face sales, clarity is surprisingly unimportant. It can even hurt by allowing prospects to raise objections without the presence of a salesman. Basically, the company's marketing doesn't matter, so it sucks.