Today’s marketer consensus is that nothing much beats word of mouth (WOM) and personal recommendation. That means connecting with the communities likely to be most relevant to your product. All standard stuff and any number of talking heads can give you the 1,2,3 on that one. Case studies though are few and far between with the exception of the Basecamp story and occasional references to Freshbooks. Rarely though do you see one that works like this, demonstrating many of the characteristics of what a successful service looks like from the POTENTIAL buyer’s perspective. Here is one such.
Demian Turner of PHP Kitchen was looking for new accounting software and posted this message in a forum. He got a handful of responses including this from Nigel James who said:
I have been using Freeagentcentral.com
They are a saas offering for accounting / invoicing / timekeeping / VAT /Annual Accounts. They have all sorts of time saving things going on for running your business – limited co or sole trader.
Use this link and you will get a 10% off the normal rates. http://www.freeagentcentral.com?referrer=28djmljh
Make life easy for yourself and your accountant. They can log in too.
Based on this and the other comments, Demian wrote up a comprehensive PRE-SALES assessment of the services he came across. I know FreeAgent is a sponsor and yes, I still have that tiny shareholding but Demian’s analysis is an awesome read. It’s a classical assessment of the kind any buyer should undertake. It should also be required reading for modern marketers, trying to find the stuff that works, rather than the usual derivative BS they trot out. Here’s a selection of what Demian said:
Billings is another sexy looking app, recommended by some of the PHPlondon guys, but ultimately it’s way too simplistic to be useful.
Underpowered
Moneyworks looks like a decent accounting package and is reasonably priced, but seems a bit much for my needs. I must be honest and say that I didn’t download the demo, but after looking at the screenshots I wasn’t too impressed. Overall it seemed like a package more suitable for someone with an accounting background, which I don’t have.
Not built for end user
FreshBooks is a very exciting app. It’s widely used in the web industry, and for good reason. The interface is fantastic and there’s a lot of functionality. Not to mention the app has been around for ages and has gone through a lot of iterations presumably based on customer feedback. And the customer service was excellent, best of the batch. I exchanged a few emails with Grace who was very helpful but ultimately let me know that the 2 features I needed (recurring expenses and balance sheet) were not available.
Missing essential features
Kashflow was an interesting one. They have all the features I listed above, and they’re even UK-based so great for businesses like mine. They’re web-based which should be an advantage, but the UI looks stuck somewhere back in the 80’s. And the logo is pink. In fact the whole site is pink. Not that I have anything against pink, but arguably it’s an unusual choice of colour for a business app. But the functionality is there, even if it takes a bit of searching around to get to it. In fact I think of all apps compared here Kashflow had the most functionality of the bunch. Guys, drop the ASP frontend and hire my company to rebuild your product into a web2.0 app with PHP calling out to your extensive API – you won’t regret it.
Technical criticism from someone who knows apps
FreeAgent is where things start to change. Wow was I impressed with this software. A big thanks to Nigel James who suggested it and gets my 10% referral fee with a a free beer thrown in at the next PHPlondon
FreeAgent is a very complete web-based accounting/timesheets/invoicing app that’s perfect for small businesses. And if you’re based in the UK it’s even more strongly recommended, taking in its stride things like IR35 intermediaries legislation, VAT obligation, corporation tax due, National Insurance and PAYE payments, the list goes on.
Incentive to buy coupled with recommendation (noted above), functionally relevant to the user.
Demian finishes his post with a question: what do you think? which elicited 21 responses, all of which were interesting, relevant and added to the conversation he’d started. Demian settled on FreeAgent and has since become an advocate but has no affiliation with the company.
If that was all there is to the story then we’d be done and pretty excited. But there’s more.
Today, the FreeAgent boys were responding to a similar question Tweeted by @DannyKoolen. He wants to undertake a comparison.
The FreeAgent folk have taken his request, suggest he looks at Damien’s analysis and acknowledged that all the apps Danny was looking at are ‘really good.’ Check the graphic above/next to this paragraph to see what I mean.
I have no clue what is going through Danny’s mind or even whether he is in the market to buy. What I do know is that WOM, pointing away from yourself, soliciting other people’s views, getting a third party reference that wasn’t asked for or pushed and then providing an analysis that ANYONE can consume represents a startling piece of indirect marketing of which I’m sure Hugh MacLeod would be proud.
Not a penny spent and no PR required. Except of course that is what I am effectively doing by amplifying the story.
Naturally I’m pleased because more customers means more value for FreeAgent but the same could be true for any software service. I would still say the same thing. But in truth I think it starts with the fact that FreeAgent was conceived by people who were fed up of not having the right solution. They built it for themselves. Crucially, they understand the pain points that freelancers experience. That’s the kind of vertical market play I was talking about when I ripped into Ben the other day. Having the technology – ie blogs, forums and so on makes a huge difference but they are nothing without the essential ingredients required to make FreeAgent an attractive proposition.
The only thing that remains is to thank Damien for inspiring this post.
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