BI 327: How Screencloud Found Success With Targeted Inbound Marketing
August 18, 2020
On the show with me today is David Hart, a co-founder of the SaaS Digital Signage business, ScreenCloud.
Since launching in 2015, the company has attracted 9,000 SMB customers using primarily inbound marketing strategies. But...going forward, they are making a shift to going after enterprise customers in an effort to increase their Annual Contract Value (ACV).
In today's discussion, you are going to hear David and I talk about how they initially figured out product/market fit for their SMB customers, as well as the specifics of what has made their inbound marketing work so well. You'll also hear us talk about their plans to transition to selling to enterprise customers, the challenges they expect to experience, and their plans to overcome these challenges.
If you are part of a SaaS company looking for ideas on how to accelerate growth and/or pivot your marketing, this episode is for you.
Today's episode is brought to you by Flowster. If you run an eCommerce business and are struggling to effectively delegate your highly repetitive routine work to your remote team, Flowster's process management software and pre-made ecommerce workflow templates make hiring, training, and delegating to your team a breeze. Check it out today at Flowster.app
Thank you so much for listening! Please subscribe rate and review on your favorite podcast listening app. To get to the show notes for today's episode, go to https://brightideas.co/xxx...and if you have any questions for me, you can leave me a voicemail at brightideas.co/asktrent
Since launching in 2015, the company has attracted 9,000 SMB customers using primarily inbound marketing strategies. But...going forward, they are making a shift to going after enterprise customers in an effort to increase their Annual Contract Value (ACV).
In today's discussion, you are going to hear David and I talk about how they initially figured out product/market fit for their SMB customers, as well as the specifics of what has made their inbound marketing work so well. You'll also hear us talk about their plans to transition to selling to enterprise customers, the challenges they expect to experience, and their plans to overcome these challenges.
If you are part of a SaaS company looking for ideas on how to accelerate growth and/or pivot your marketing, this episode is for you.
Today's episode is brought to you by Flowster. If you run an eCommerce business and are struggling to effectively delegate your highly repetitive routine work to your remote team, Flowster's process management software and pre-made ecommerce workflow templates make hiring, training, and delegating to your team a breeze. Check it out today at Flowster.app
Thank you so much for listening! Please subscribe rate and review on your favorite podcast listening app. To get to the show notes for today's episode, go to https://brightideas.co/xxx...and if you have any questions for me, you can leave me a voicemail at brightideas.co/asktrent
Episode Highlights
[03:30] — David introduces ScreenCloud
[03:30] — David introduces ScreenCloud
ScreenCloud is a SaaS digital signage company launched in 2015. They help companies control their content across multiple screens.
Digital signage is both advertising and content.
From being a side project of their previous agency, they funded it to become a start-up.
[06:52] — How they established the product-market fit
Before they got to a point where people were buying the software, they launched a series of side projects. By doing so, they were able to gauge customers' feedback better.
Instead of being hardware vendors, they completely went the other way by focusing on the software aspect.
Their initial product didn't work because they didn't consider how it would work outside their studio.
They created a basic first version of their product to know where they needed to make adjustments.
[12:08] — ScreenCloud’s biggest challenge
ScreenCloud's biggest challenge is moving upstream. It is because a lot of their current customers are small and medium businesses.
However, for them to clinch more prominent companies, they have to increase their ACV.
To get to a million dollars, they have to reach 100,000 customers. Looking at their cohorts’ behavior, they found that what would help them achieve this feat is their bigger customers who are more likely to expand and less likely to churn.
[15:41] — ScreenCloud’s niche
Their niche is spread over different industries.
They’re making inroads into companies who use screens for “internal comms.” What ScreenCloud does is provide them with an effective means of sharing dashboards.
[18:54] — Filtering out customers
Self-serve — They are pushed down the funnel through webinars.
Big customers — They are pushed to a sales team.
[19:07] — ScreenCloud’s marketing route
They haven’t found success yet in outbound marketing.
Their enterprise customers had come in through inbound content marketing. ScreenCloud makes sure they’re producing content specific to them.
What works for them is speaking to the right people and giving them an easy way to sign up.
Their products primarily require people to be in the office.
They have come up with different use cases of getting information. For example, they created a version called Embeddable Channels that you can embed on the intranet or open as a tab on your browser.
[25:31] — Finding success in inbound content marketing
Right from the very start, they have invested in content.
They use long-tail content that incorporates smaller details.
They also use video marketing to showcase various use cases.
[28:34] — Building a matrix of use cases
Keyword research
Guesswork
Talking to customers
Automation
[31:51] — Driving leads down the funnel
They first introduce the idea of a digital signage solution.
Then, they do lots of retargeting and make them understand what ScreenCloud is.
At the bottom of the funnel conversion, they explain how companies have used ScreenCloud to engage their people.
They have a hybrid approach in their funnel conversion through a newsletter, free trial, and email sequence.
The biggest focus is on making free trials a success.
[33:59] — ScreenCloud’s sales process
They split the sales process into three depending on the customer size.
Small customers — website content
Middle group — semi-automated
Large customers — sales teams
They document and automate these different sales processes.