Understanding the global SaaS buyer to make digital marketing effective
When you are a SaaS company, you are global from Day One. In this series of blogs on digital marketing, I wrote about building and scaling global teams for digital marketing, how to approach digital marketing as your brand recognition goes up and the metrics that you should be tracking to run an effective digital marketing operation. In this piece, I’m going to talk about the nuances of different markets that we picked up over the years.
At Freshworks, our first customer was Atwell College, from Australia. In the last five years, I have seen leads come in from countries that I didn’t know existed. (Note to Self: San Marino is a country in Europe). While the digital marketing team continues to generate leads globally, we also segment geographies based on market maturity, heterogeneity and growth potential. Here is how I see the challenges in each of these markets.
US: The biggest of markets
The United States is a mature market. Silicon Valley brews a new start-up almost everyday, each of them promising to solve a new problem. As a digitally savvy economy, the buying committee is open to trying to newer cloud-software, and what plays an important role there is the promise of the brand. The US represents a huge, largely monolithic opportunity — and one language. It is also most likely home to the Independent Software Vendor and go-to-market partners who will best help you reach American prospects and bring leverage to the model. A majority of the existing players are growing their share of voice on the internet at least 20% year on year. With intuitive, easy to use products, and a promise that helps you acquire customers for life, I am super kicked about the opportunity that lies ahead of us at Freshworks.
Europe: Fragmented and Unique
While the US is the biggest market for SaaS companies, European markets are growing and developing, peppered with smaller startups, taking old, legacy systems, head-on. Europe is a collection of smaller, fragmented markets with their own unique traits — primarily language but also use cases and local integration partners. I see an opportunity for us to grow over 60% in share of voice in the coming year alone. However, that will depend on flawless execution on optimizing for regional websites, messaging that connects with the people across regions and finding the right channels to reach this almost skeptical audience. For example, the Germans opt for brands that they can trust implicitly without a shadow of doubt. So highlighting our security and compliance certifications or even our marquee customers in the form of testimonials becomes key.
Southeast Asia: Up and coming
SaaS is making strong inroads in Southeast Asia and it’s going to be one big party. This part of the world led the race when it came to BPOs and KPOs and they are no strangers to modernization. They’ve jumped right into the new modern era of supporting customers across all channels like WeChat, Whatsapp, FB messenger and even Instagram. What is common to all of them is a strong mobile first strategy. With some of the fastest mobile adoption numbers in the world, I’m excited to explore a mobile first strategy in markets like SE Asia.
As a digital marketer, you enable businesses, however big or small, known or unknown to compete, as equals, in the modern economy. To quote Jeff Bezos, “It’s hard to find things that won’t sell online.” So my team and I have our work cut-out for us. With such tailwinds, it is going to be one heck of a ride in the coming years, to be a digital marketer at Freshworks.
