Effective Software Marketing: Best Practices and Budgets, 3rd Edition

by Dan Burke

Effective Software Best Practices and Budgets, 3rd Edition, provides benchmark data for evaluating your company's current marketing program and future plans. Based on the practices of 106 software firms, this report can help software executives discover what marketing activities are most effective and how to best allocate their budgets.

This research project has addressed key components of effective programs, including marketing budgets, strategies, intelligence gathering, communications, and staffing. In addition to presenting data on other companies' marketing performance, the research project managers have provided tips for being more successful in each of these areas. Company characteristics, such as total annual revenue, typical sales transaction size, primary product type, product packaging, market share change, and total sales volume, have been used to segment our findings. This breakdown of data allows you to make business decisions based on information from similar companies.

Using the information in Effective Software Best Practices and Budgets, you

* Establish a marketing budget that is in alignment with the industry and can be more easily justified to upper management

* Determine which programs software companies consider most important so that you can best allocate your marketing dollars

* Understand which market intelligence gathering activities provide the most value

* Develop market penetration strategies that get your products and services into the hands of the users who really need them

* Know which marketing communications tactics are most effective for spreading your corporate and product messages

* Decide which marketing activities are best outsourced, and which ones should be kept in-house

* Staff your Marketing Department to achieve the desired results, while staying within your budget

Software companies are reporting an average marketing budget increase of 33 percent! Effective Software Marketing can help you evaluate if your software company's marketing budget is in alignment with industry norms. Also, this report will help determine if you are spending marketing dollars on the most effective programs.

346 pages

Published March 1, 1999