So now you have your core product, and you have the confidence that it can bring significant benefits to customers. The next step is to make people aware of that, to get this message out to potential customers. Make no mistake, though, marketing your shiny new Asterisk system is hard. This is regardless of how good it is, how cheap it is as compared to competitors, how easy to install and maintain it is, and how wonderful the benefits to the customer are. It's hard because you have to get that message out to the right people, at the right time. Unfortunately, there's no sure-fire way to make it work either. However, we have a couple of pointers that will hopefully get you started on the right lines.
With any telephony system, including Asterisk, the important thing to recognize is that they are not changed very often. We've seen already some of the common drivers for changing a phone system, but it's also worth having a look at a couple of other factors considered by companies making that decision.
Change: Changing a phone system has the potential to cause huge disruption to a busy office environment. Staff will probably need to gain familiarity with new handsets, new processes (for example, for setting up conference calls), new functionality, and maybe even new extension numbers.
Risk: Phone systems continue to be a core part of every company's communications strategy, and the disruption of that service even for a short amount of time has the potential to cause serious loss of income and goodwill.
As a result of these factors, messages along the lines of "Simply install this new phone system to realize savings in line rental charges" are unlikely to work unless you happen to catch a decision maker at just the right time. In order to persuade a company to even consider changing their phone system, you need to be able to demonstrate that the change is worthwhile and will be completely stress free. Customer testimonials are great here, but when starting out, you may need to take a different tack, such as demonstrating that you use a formal methodology for managing the implementation, such as PRINCE2 or PMP.
But to start with, you need a flow of hot leads into the business. It's very sensible not to have all your marketing eggs in one basket. A strategy that combines alliances, advertising, and more targeted contact over a range of media is more likely to bear fruit than a single mailshot to all the businesses in a particular area. So how do you go about it?
Forging an alliance (formal or otherwise) with another company is a strategy for generating leads that, with a little luck, can be very successful. For instance, you may already have an arrangement with a cabling company, through which you can utilize their services if customers need their LAN upgraded. However, in the normal course of their business elsewhere (for example, outfitting new or refurbished premises), they may have customers who would welcome the details of a company that can provide an affordable, high-quality phone system.
An even better association would be with a commercial property agency, as they are involved with businesses at precisely the time that most consider their telephony options. The benefit for them may merely be the chance to offer a better "package" to their customers, or possibly you would need to negotiate a finder's fee for every customer they bring to you.
Advertising is about getting your "name" out into the marketplace, preferably as a provider of high quality yet affordable systems. Traditionally, advertising has been seen in terms of television, radio, newspaper, and magazine ads. While adverts in select trade magazines can be an effective strategy for marketing an Asterisk system, some online tools are likely to be of more use, and it is into this area where much of the marketing effort goes these days. The great thing for you is that online marketing can be carried out without huge cost, and yet achieves far better results than "old school" methods.
A good exercise when designing any part of your marketing strategy is to put yourself in a potential customer's position. For whatever reason, they have made the decision that they want to consider changing their phone system. So what will they do to investigate their options? To start with, they are likely to use one or more of the popular search engines. Therefore, having your details come up on the first page of results, or in the first lot of paid links, is likely to generate a steady stream of very hot prospects.
However, taking a step backwards, in order to be included on search engines, you need to have a presence on the Web. Having a web site does not have to be costly, and if done well, it can project exactly the professional image that is required. Although, in order to feature highly in search engine results, your web site not only has to have the right content, but must also be designed in such a way that it will feature highly in search results. Additionally, it is hugely beneficial if your web site is linked-to from many other places. There are a number of ways of achieving this, one being the use of blogging as a business tool.
Advertising on search engines is slightly different, in the sense that the emphasis is very much on choosing appropriate keywords to associate with your advertisement. The skill here is in choosing keywords that are likely to be used by prospective customers, but haven't been chosen by rival phone system providers for their adverts. This increases the likelihood that your advertisement will appear more often when one or more of your keywords are entered. The pricing structure for such advertising is based on the number of times your advert is clicked, hence the term Pay Per Click (PPC).
Putting everything together into a coherent whole requires a good deal of expertise, so this is one area where using the skills of a company that specializes in Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is usually money well spent.
Another means of raising your profile in the marketplace is to position yourself as an expert in the field of Asterisk-based systems. After all, if you have a product that is commercially viable, then you've progressed to a point where you have knowledge that is relatively rare. One means of publicizing that expertise is to write, possibly in the form of magazine articles, press releases, or even a book. Alternatively, you could offer tidbits of information via your blog, which has the added benefit of bringing people to your web site and generating external links. You could also use this strategy to initiate an email marketing strategy, through which you ask web site visitors to subscribe to a regular newsletter.
By acquiring information about your audience, you have reached a stage when you are no longer using a scatter-gun approach to marketing, that is putting a message out to a large audience in the hope that some of them could use your product. Now you can target your message based on the information you have about individual subscribers. At this point, tradition suggests that you start reeling in your potential customers, and try to convince them to change their phone system. Please resist this urge! By all means, inform your captive audience of the benefits of Asterisk in general and your wonderful system in particular, but this strategy works best if you are perceived as an expert in your field, and not as a sneaky sales person (apologies to all sneaky sales people reading this!). In other words, they need to trust you.
Now, the fact that your prospective customers are interested in your opinions indicates that it's likely they are considering a new system anyway. So let that itch continue to irritate, and when they finally decide to scratch it, they will come to you for advice, precisely because you've worked hard to build up that trust. Of course, since you are communicating directly with them through the use of personalized emails (at least that's the impression you are trying to give them), there is an opportunity to foster that relationship. An effective email marketing campaign can track what each recipient does with the email you send them. Do they open it at all, how many times do they open it, and which links do they click on? The last in particular is very pertinent, as it can allow you to understand where your subscriber's interest is in a better way. Do they click through to a list of handsets? Are they looking at how to improve their LAN? All this is useful data that can help you build up a picture of subscribers and tailor the message you send them.
You may be worried that doing all this writing rather than actively selling to customers will simply take up too much time. It is certainly likely that you will spend a few evenings updating your blog, composing marketing emails, and understanding the results of previous campaigns. However, selling is not possible if you are not generating leads in the first place, and it is far better to be feeding hot leads into the sales funnel rather than a load of dross. In addition, the research needed to generate content for your blog/emails will keep you up-to-date with what's happening in the marketplace, which you should be doing regardless.
Note
Perry Marshall is a guru of Google advertising and email marketing techniques and shares much of his knowledge on his web site www.perrymarshall.com.