When should you consider a switching campaign?

A switching campaign refers to the creation of a certain marketing campaign that aims at the customers of your competitor, ie where your goal has a competition solution. In part 1 we examined some of the challenges associated with the search for your competitor’s customers. In this second part, do we now examine when we use a switching campaign and how you can successfully run it?

1/ perceived switching costs are low

First, it is clear that the user identified pain and that it must have been considerable enough to justify a software solution. By using a competition solution, you also signal that you have been trained via the advantages of the software to solve your problem. You have also secured a budget for larger ticket items, so that it is now an advertising booking in the P&L. In your marketing efforts, it is less about convincing you that you have pain that can solve your SaaS solution, and more about how your solution exceeds everyone or is better suited for your needs (be it more affordable or better with your specific requirements). It may be that after you have evaluated the probable strength of the lock-in, that it is low enough to be not an essential factor.

2/ Your solution is much better

Many early stages SaaS applications can vary significantly with regard to product ripening. If a competitive offer seems to have some product challenges, existing users probably have an incentive to change. As already mentioned, there is a way to measure this to analyze negative reviews of Get App, Capterra, G2 Crowd and Software Council if your solution category is there. Recognizing the possibilities of gaining angry customers can be a narrow window because the competitor works hard to remove product -related defects in the next sprint.

3/ You identify a sustainable niche

Software companies can compete on many other reasons as a price or feature set. Perhaps you are aimed at certain industries or try to move the ascent or a down market. Depending on these layers, your offer may be better for certain customers, and therefore try to leave them out. For example, after the companies have collected significant VC funds, they are often encouraged to move a leverage marker to increase their income of less profitable customers. Or maybe you lack local support and you want to have access to support in your time zone.

“One of our investments is that a 1% of Salesforce is a unicorn. What we mean by finding a dissatisfied segment of the Salesforce population and building a better product for this segment, the size of the customer opulation of which was 1%. Tom Tunguz, Redpoint

4/ You have collected a lot of money

Perhaps you have closed a large round of donations and the addressable market is limited because the market is young and immature. Winning business from the competitors weakens their position and strengthens their strength. It is therefore worthwhile to assign the marketing budget to change campaigns. Their profitability is still associated with how strong or not the previously listed factors are for your category. Perhaps your investors believe that there are winner-all-all characteristics in their category, and they are less concerned about the economic and acquisition costs of the unit and are more interested in one country gripper at all costs.

5/ The size of the price is sufficient

Finally, it is worth noting that all of these additional efforts must be reconciled with a sufficiently high lifetime value (LTV), otherwise they layer the costs without a sufficiently large price being reached.

Although this list is not exhaustive, it provides some evidence of when a switcher campaign is appropriate. Now it is a case to take a plan.