effective services marketing at different phases

Services Marketing

It’s Not a Roll of the Dice

Cynthia J. Curtis

Curtis Consulting

20 October 2009

Support the

Product

The Evolution of IT Services

Provide a

Major

Source of

Growth

Contribute

to Profitability

Improve

Customer

Satisfaction

Product-led

Product-centric Customer-centric

Solutions-led

Source: ITSMA

Challenge #1: How is Marketing Defined?

• 4 Ps (Product, Placement, Pricing, Promotion)

• Advertising

• Branding

• Sales Support

• Communications, collateral (aka brochures)

• Events / tradeshows

• PR/AR

• Website & social media management

• Strategy

• …

Topics for Discussion

• Product lifecycle vs services business lifecycle

• Services Marketing in the different phases of

business lifecycle

• Alignment of business strategy & marketing

execution

What is the Current Relationship

Between Marketing & the Business?

1. Integral member of management team

2. Involved with management decisions,

as needed

3. Solid communications support function

4. No dedicated services marketing

resources

Introduction Growth DeclineMaturity

Marketing Focus in a Product Lifecycle

Product Marketing

Resource Investment

Scale

Mainstream

Growth

Start-up

Services Business Lifecycle Curve

Services Marketing

Resource Investment

Scale

Mainstream

Growth

Start-up

Services Business Phase Attributes• Adoption

• Traction w/sales

• Helping to drive deals

• Building backlog

• Customer examples

• LOB

• Equal player

• C-level; reports to CEO

• Services sales arm

• Thought leader

• Significant backlog

• Services tax

• Slows down sale

• All about the product

• Dogfight for everything

• After thought for sales

• Zero backlog

• Known value

• Expands deal value/scope

• Advocates within Sales

• Healthy backlog

• Leveraged model

Scale

Mainstream

Growth

Start-up

Services Offering Examples• Same, plus:

• More complex integration

• Health checks

• Product consulting

• Deployment

• Migration

• Education & Training

• Same, plus:

• Business consulting

• Outsourcing

• Solution creation

• Basic assessment

• Installation

• Design

• Simple integration

• Some Free offerings

• Same, plus:

• Growing non-

product focused

portfolio with

solutions

orientation

• Managed Services

Where are you in the Services

Business Lifecycle?

1. Start up

2. Growth

3. Scale

4. Mainstream

Applying Services Marketing to the Curve

Scale

Mainstream

Growth

Start-up

• Adoption

• Traction with sales

• Customer examples

• Services Marketing getting heard by corp. marketing

• Services sales arm

• Thought leader

• Full cycle marketing org

• Strategic partner to the business

• All about the product

• Dogfight for everything

• After thought for sales; no references

• No voice/ understanding in corporate marketing

• Service = Support

• Minimal website visibility

• Known value

• Advocates within Sales

• Marketing seat at the table

• More marketing resource

• Solution-oriented offering development

Moving to the Next Phase can be Daunting

Scale

Mainstream

Growth

Start-up

• Full-cycle marketing

• Established thought leadership

• Strategic, VoC research feeding corporate direction

• Sought out for press commentary & speaking events

Transitioning to the Next Phase

• Internal customer examples

• Sales champions

• Marketing & offering fundamentals

• Initiating analyst relations

• Initiating thought leadership

• More real estate on website

• External customer stories

• Primary research

• Press engagements

What Holds You Back?

• Getting stuck in the marcom rut

– Effective communications are important, but don’t

help strategy & service development

• Ignoring the basic ‘blocking and tackling’

• Inside-out versus outside-in

– Winning over the internal customer (i.e., Sales) is

critical, particularly in early stages

• Mis-alignment with the services business and

with product sales

What Propels You Forward?

• Alignment with business

– Effective stakeholder management

– Measure what’s important to achieving

business objectives

• Finding & exploiting a beachhead

• Understand how the business makes $$

• Try new programs & initiatives and measure

them – do more of what works

• Direct customer communication

Services Business Examples

Scale

Mainstream

Growth

Start-up

High Stakes

• Situation– Excellent (free!) support services

– Lacked PS infrastructure

– Product was the only game in town

• Actions taken– Isolate services marketing; focus on fundamentals

– Multipronged communications strategy, sales references

– Strategy: VoC research; portfolio management; pricing; segmentation; customer satisfaction measurements

• Results: The bet has paid offSignificant revenue contributor (51% software & services); strong delivery capability

• Actions taken

– De-emphasized product

– Placed big bets on consulting and outsourcing

• Result: Ball still in play; Marketing got ahead of

execution; significant drop in stock price

Roulette

• Situation

– History of ‘big iron’, innovation,

quality, skilled employees

– Vertical expertise in government, transportation &

payment systems

– Strategy: Become a services company

• Actions taken

– Top-down services strategy, coordinated & systematic

– Data-driven strategic marketing

– Facilitated renewed portfolio mgmt

– Developed service product lines for

more cost-effective, efficient offerings

• Result: A winning hand!Star of services business; largest

backlog in the industry; 91% of profit from software &

services

• Situation

– Silo-ed product business & marketing

– Services brand = support

Blackjack

Where Do You Place the Bets?

Scale

Mainstream

Growth

Start-up

Questions?

Cynthia J. Curtis

curtis.consulting@yahoo.com