Don't Waste Marketing Money: All Thought, No Action

 I pulled up behind a step van at a stop light and read on the back door, "Need a spark? Call Mark. Mark Olsen, Electrician"

OK, it's not Shakespeare. It's not even Ogden Nash, but kinda catchy. I thought it could work for other tradesmen too. "Sprung a leak? Call Dominique." "Need concrete? Call on Pete."

(OK, it was a long light.)

The silly tagline did part of its job. It got me to think.

What it didn't do is get me to act.

Why not?

There was no phone number. No 1-800-SPARK-ME, no 1-800-POWER-UP, no nothing.

Here I've been invited to "call Mark," but haven't been given an easy way to actually do that. He got me to think, but not do. Mark the Electrician never closed the circuit. (Sorry.)

SaaS marketers can't afford to waste time and money

SaaS marketers sometimes make the same mistake - not closing the circuit, not connecting thinking to doing. And for SaaS companies, where maximizing the impact of every marketing and sales effort is critical, this kind of mistake wastes precious time and money.

We pay good money to reach the right prospects - execute a search engine marketing program, run an email campaign, host a webinar.

We successfully capture the attention of a prospective user, present a compelling value proposition, invite them to contact us.

Missing the next step

But then after all the up-front work and expense, we miss the next step.

We don't offer a clear path for the prospect to do something: call us, sign up for a free trial, download a paper, subscribe to our newsletter, whatever.

That's money wasted, prospects squandered, revenues lost.

The problem often comes from forgetting about the overall goal of the customer acquisition process, namely to acquire customers. (See "SaaS marketing, baseball and the batting order.")

Instead we fixate on a single portion of the process: build a beautiful website, host an inspiring webinar, deliver a clever tagline.

But that's just part of the process. They get prospects to think.

Now we need to make it easy for them to act.