Marketing strategies for product software assist software firms to determine the type of market analysis that is needed for decision-making. Two general strategies that are well known in the marketing discipline are:
marketing mix; and
relationship marketing.
"Marketing mix" is the typical strategy for traditional mass marketers of product software in competitive markets. Structured market research, and agility in reacting to sales, are characteristic of their product development process (Alajoutsijarvi et al., 2000). An example would be Electronic Arts, with their various home computer software games, which are advertised on television and sold in many electronic stores.
"Relationship marketing", (closely associated to CRM), is used by product software companies who focus on long-term customer relationships (Alajoutsijarvi et al., 2000). An example of this is SAP, which offers enterprise resource planning systems, along with support (since the software is complicated to install). Maintaining customer relationships helps sell additional modules and future upgrades.
Broethers and van't Kruis explain two other strategies that are important to the growth of software firms:
a service-based strategy; and
a different marketing channels strategy.
