As a software business owner, you’re in the business of satisfying customers’ needs, increasing sales, and growing your business. Although the road to increasing your software sales can be uncertain, you can send your sales soaring with a mix of a smart software marketing strategy and proper planning.
Whether you’re looking to get your software company off the ground or you need ideas to attract new customers, these are a few ways to drum up new business and increase software sales.
Fill in The Gaps of Successful Software Systems
While there are tons of successful software applications available on the market, none of them are perfect. There may be an opportunity for discovering what your competitor is missing within their product and offering the solution within your own software.
You can find clues regarding what’s missing by checking out your competitors’ forums, reviews, and social media profiles. Customers aren’t shy about expressing their wants and needs to companies on Facebook and Twitter, especially if they’ve already paid for a product.
Your competitors’ shortfallings can be a boost to your own software sales.
Always be Innovating
The digital world changes at a rapid pace. It can be difficult to keep up with the changes and new requests of customers, but it’s imperative to keep this data top-of-mind.
To consistently sell software, you’ll need to be improved and innovating your product on a regular basis. This doesn’t mean that you need to re-invent the wheel every time, but you do need to be in tune with what’s in demand and how you can better help customers solve problems.
Establish customer feedback and recommendation systems that can supply your business with an abundance of new ideas directly from the customers that might be willing to buy them.
Trials or Demos Are Still Important
While giving away software won’t immediately put cash in your pocket, trials and demos will encourage potential customers to check out your product and potentially stay.
Trials and demos can give potential customers a taste of what your software product has to offer, and exactly how it can help benefit them. The obvious intent of trials and demos are to allow the customers to try your product before the buy.
What is less obvious is the value of making the trial or demo process delightful for the prospects. Prospects can gain a good feel and understanding of your company during the trial or demo. They can get envision what it would be like to become a customer during this period, which is why your business needs to ensure this step is well designed and delivered.
Design your customer experience wisely.
Put The Buy Button in a Noticeable Spot
This might sound obvious, but you want to make purchasing your software product as easy and foolproof as possible. It’s very frustrating for prospects when they are “buy ready” and can’t figure out a way to get it done.
If your buy button is too small or your content is missing a call-to-action, it’ll make the sales funnel longer and harder than it has to be. Suffice to say, broken links on your website’s sales/shopping cart page can significantly impact your business’ success.
Software sales can be improved by designing a smooth and easy buying process that makes the purchase a natural extension of the customer experience.
Offer Pricing and Payment Alternatives
Sometimes the deal breaker can be the price. Your best-case scenario is to offer a value proposition so compelling the prospect can’t help but accept your offer, regardless of price. Your business may not be there, yet.
While every software company would like all of their money up front, you can consider offering an alternative pricing and payment methods to help attract more buyers and convert them to customers.
Consider subscription pricing, value-based pricing, or usage-based pricing arrangements. If your business has a well defined up and cross-sell process in place it may make perfect sense to convert the prospect to customers via alternative pricing and payment scenarios.
Evaluate your sales conversion process and see if your business would benefit from pricing and payment alternatives.
Are Your Software Sales Soaring?
If not, you may want to seek some external advice and counsel.
Valens Point can help your business sell more software by developing and executing a rock-solid marketing strategy. Our experience in the software and IT industry allows us to understand your needs and also design marketing systems that fit your ideal customer.
Take advantage of our Marketing Checkup and you’ll receive actionable advice on ways to improve your marketing results right now. Click here to get started.
