Would you rather purchase from a SaaS company whose copy read:
This software is the best in the market, purchase it here.
Or:
With the invincible spirit of the Secret Service Agent 007, Prime Cloud delivers the toolset you need to drive your marketing and business goals to new heights 😉. (Loyalty Prime)
We reckon the latter.
So, what was the difference?
Fresh, story-driven digital marketing.
Many technology companies still rely on traditional advertising methods to grow their business – like word of mouth or attending trade shows. And while this isn’t wrong, digital marketing has taken the lead— by a long shot.
And, this is particularly true for tech and SaaS companies.
By using a digital technology marketing strategy, tech companies can outpace traditional competitors, generate more revenue more quickly, and stay competitive over the long run.
In short, by the time you finish this post, you’ll have the secret sauce to market your tech business.
What is technology marketing?
We know you’re at the seat of your chair with excitement, but before we get into the details, let’s define technology marketing.
Technology marketing refers to the application of digital marketing strategies to help tech companies achieve their business goals.
So, whether you want to attract more prospects, convince your current customers to buy your excellent products, or position yourself as an authority in your product niche, digital marketing helps you get there.
Think of it as your roadmap.
Technology marketing goes beyond just a website with an about page. It entails consistently producing engaging content that your audience will love and then share with those around them.
This content could be anything from animated videos explaining the benefits of your products to fresh infographics about how to use your products.
It could also involve email marketing strategies or social media campaigns. Overall, the right technology marketing strategy transforms a startup into a global company with brand evangelists.
Now you know the what, let’s chat about the how.
The advantages of technology marketing
If you aren’t already jumping for joy about how you can cut through the noise with tech marketing, let’s go over some other advantages.
Build authenticity through in-depth content
Building credibility is one of the most effective ways to get new customers.
You do this by providing informational content about tech products to the right audience in a consistent manner.
Like for example how SaaS company, Evernote, provides extensive articles on how to work more effectively. They showcase their attention to their audience by incorporating FAQs and customer feedback woven in throughout their content.
At the end of the day, customers want their hands held. They want to feel good about a purchase decision.
Think about the last time you went out to eat. Maybe you were indecisive, so your waiter came along and pointed out the “specials” or “starred options” to help you choose.
Creating helpful content plays the same role in the marketing world.
Improve customer journey through a deeper understanding of customers
When you develop a dedicated digital marketing strategy, you interact with clients and learn about their pain points.
You can then use these pain points to improve the features of your next tech product. You can also produce valuable content to help your customers make intelligent choices.
When a customer perceives you as helpful, this builds authority and drives brand awareness and, thus, revenue.
Increase ROI through monitoring and optimization
You see the traffic sources with the highest ROI by learning how to analyze your website’s metrics (such as through your Google Analytics report). Monitoring success guides you to increase your investments on successful platforms and reconsider ones that aren’t working.
Okay, strap yourself in and get ready to craft a game plan.
How to create a technology marketing strategy
A strong marketing strategy lies at the foundation of every successful business.
It’s a company’s overall roadmap to attract clients by providing appealing content about products and services. A well-designed marketing strategy is a crucial piece of the puzzle for tech companies.
Here are the steps to create a formidable technology marketing strategy:
Step 1: Know your target customer
Define your target customer to ensure your marketing strategy focuses on a specific section of the population. You’ll skyrocket your ROI for your marketing efforts when you know who you’re targeting.
The best way to know your potential client is to create a buyer persona. This helps to market your services to people who need your product. Without one, you’ll be trying to sell curtains to someone who doesn’t give a hoot about new curtains.
Let’s craft your buyer persona together.
Start by defining what your ideal client would look like. Then create a list of the demographics of this kind of client. Typical questions that define a buyer persona include:
- Location: Where do they live?
- Age: How old are they?
- Gender: What is their gender?
- Interests: What do they love doing?
- Job title: What is their current occupation?
- Education level: What is their current level of education?
- Income level: What is their income level?
- Buying motivation: What are the possible reasons for buying your product?
- Buyer concerns: What will they consider when purchasing your product, or what might stop them?
You need to know your potential customer as if they were a close friend or a relative. To create a much more effective buyer persona, interview people who are your actual ideal customers. Conduct a simple survey with your current clients to get more accurate information about your ideal client.
Remember, the more accurate your buyer persona is, the stronger your marketing strategy will be. Once you know your target client, then it’s time to move to the next step.
Step 2: Research your competitors
Conduct a competitor analysis to uncover what your competitors are doing to get clients – and then improve on their strategy. This also helps you discover new opportunities that are yet to be implemented by your competitors.
There are many online tools you can use to learn about the marketing strategies your competitors are using.
For instance, Mention is a social listening tool that searches all the mentions of your competitor on social media platforms. It analyzes online conversations about your competitors in key places, such as online communities. This tool helps you learn how their customers found their products, the reviews about their products, and the promotions that they offer.
Another helpful tool is Moz’s Open Site Explorer. It helps you learn about the marketing strategies your competitors are using, such as their SEO techniques. You discover the backlinks your competitors are building and the types of content strategies they are implementing. You also learn where they are running ads online.
Another trick is to subscribe to their email list so you can analyze their email marketing strategy. You can do this to get an overview and a personal experience of what their email advertising looks like.
Step 3: Choose your channels and supporting tools
To get the highest ROI, you need to pick the most aligned channels that will reach more people, turn them into prospects, and finally, into clients. It takes testing to learn which is the right channel to market your products.
The best way to define the appropriate channel for your business is to divide the potential channels into three: paid, owned, and earned.
Owned channels refer to the marketing tools you have absolute control over, such as your blog, email list, or website.
Your earned media refers to the exposure your content gets organically from potential clients. This can be guest posts on other websites or your SEO strategies. Identify at least one earned media to use as a channel.
Paid media refers to any type of marketing tool that you pay to use. They can be sponsored updates on Twitter, Google Ads, and Facebook ads. Paid media gets you more exposure for your owned and earned media.
You should choose at least two owned media – one earned and one paid – for your marketing channels. It’s also worthwhile to choose affordable paid media according to your budget and scale up towards the more expensive ones later.
Phew, are you still with us? We know this may seem overwhelming, so here’s another quick tip to help you manage it all: implement a CRM (customer relationship manager).
This way, you can stay connected with clients and prospects by creating automated processes. You don’t need to guess when you should be using paid media vs. owned media because a CRM analyzes everything and tells you where you need to improve things.
What’s more, all marketing, sales, and customer service processes are automated with a CRM. This increases productivity, makes the purchasing process easier for customers, and takes a whole load off a company’s back for managing tons of different channels.
Now that we’ve nailed down which tools to use let’s discuss your sales funnel.
Step 4: Formulate your sales funnel
To come up with a highly converting marketing strategy, you need to create content that meets the needs of your potential clients at each stage of the sales funnel.
There are 4 stages of the sales funnel that form the acronym AIDA:
- Awareness: someone becomes aware of a brand, service, or product
- Interest: they realize that a brand, service, or product can solve a particular problem
- Desire: they compare solutions to this problem
- Action: they make a purchase.
But how do you know what content to show a customer at which stage?
Glad you asked.
Here again, is where a CRM is a crucial factor. A CRM automates your content through the sales funnel, so not only do you no longer need to guess about when to use certain channels, but you can also monitor all the related analytics in one place. With everything in one place, this enables optimization.
And optimization = scalable, sustainable business growth.
Now for the fun part— marketing goals.
Step 5: Create SMART marketing goals
It’s time to define and measure your marketing goals clearly. We recommend using the SMART formula to create your goals. They should be Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Time-bound.
Stating a goal such as “I want my articles to rank number 1 on google” is vague. It is neither specific nor timely.
Check out this alternative: I want to rank number 1 for the keyphrase “writing portfolio” on Google by December 2021.
In addition, your goals should be directed towards solving a specific problem and be easily measurable. For example, “I want to get 20,000 subscribers in my email list by the end of 2021” fits the criteria as a SMART goal.
Stop and think if your marketing goals are action-orientated. How does it impact the performance of your business? Is this goal relevant to where you’re at right now in your business?
The last piece of the pie is timeliness. Make sure you create a goal with a specific deadline so that you can hold yourself (and your team) accountable for reaching those milestones.
Step 6: Monitor and optimize
Monitoring your marketing strategy is the last and most crucial step in running an effective marketing strategy. You better understand patterns and tweak your plan to ensure you’re on track by consistently analyzing your results.
Technology marketing examples
There are many technology marketing methods that you can use to attract more clients, educate your audience and position your company as a thought leader in the tech industry. Here are a few to help you get started.
Marketing automation
Marketing automation improves efficiency on repetitive tasks and helps to provide personalized messages for each client.
It’s highly relevant for the tech industry for these reasons:
- There’s a high number of competitors, so you need a way to stand out
- Tech products often take a lot of explanation for customers to understand their value
- Having a tech product requires digital marketing for customers to even begin to recognize the brand
Let’s look at an example: think of N26, the world’s fastest growing fintech that promotes online banking. What if they didn’t use online marketing? Nobody would even believe their product.
So, if you are in the tech industry, digital marketing is an absolute must if you want to thrive. And, as mentioned earlier, the easiest way to set this up is through a CRM.
Drip campaigns
One of the most effective marketing methods for the tech industry is email marketing. Because products are complex, the target audience needs to be educated about how they work to understand their value.
Here is where you can use a type of email marketing known as a drip campaign. Drip campaigns are a succession of emails that tell a story about a particular product in chronological order.
The idea is that with each stage, a potential customer becomes more interested in a product by learning about it over some time, up until they make a purchase. The goal should be to make the drip campaign occur over the right period of time and convey the right content to receive the highest ROI.
Animated explainer videos
Humans retain more information visually than when presented in the form of words and numbers. An animated explainer video (tutorial) is the best way to show the features of your products to your site visitors.
These videos can offer key benefits of your products and help you build your brand when they go viral. 73% of people who view animated explainer videos about products will likely buy them.
Case studies
Case studies are highly recommended for the tech industry because they build authority by presenting concrete facts about how your product has improved other companies.
To illustrate, there are nearly endless project management tools available online. Case studies help potential customers narrow down their options to know which project management tool is most relevant for them.
Ebooks
While ebooks are one of the most effective tools for lead generation for all types of businesses, they are beneficial for B2B tech. Ebooks are often used as lead magnets because they’re a great way to get users interested in your email list.
Similar to case studies, they outline how your particular technology is better than your competitors by answering potential questions in advance.
By providing educational content, at the right time, you’ll certainly be ahead of the game.
