Marketing Tips For IT Companies

Tech marketing encompasses the entire spectrum of marketing techniques.  New, innovative tech startups are often at the cutting edge in terms of their marketing and comms strategies. The more traditional IT services sector has often been found lagging behind when it comes to inventiveness and embracing the latest marketing methods.  

There are many reasons for this.  A lot of the traditional tech firms were established in a time before the internet and social media really took off.  They did business with loyal clients for years and business was often won through referrals, word of mouth or traditional sales techniques.  It served them well at the time, which is why their need for the more inventive areas of marketing was ignored.  

Now though, IT companies need to get serious about their marketing and embrace the platforms they had avoided in the past to produce results. 

1. Create Video Content

Video is fast becoming one of the most successful marketing tools. You can use it to introduce products, visual case studies or how-to videos.  When producing videos, make sure that they are informative, fun and able to convey your story and brand.  IT support can benefit from content such as customer testimonials. According to research done by Smart Insights, people will spend an average of 100 minutes a day watching videos by the end of 2021. 

Webinars are also a great way to build up your sales funnel as people need to give you their data in exchange for participating. A report by Hubspot found the 73% of B2B marketers saw increased ROI from video.  

1. Influencer Marketing

There are a lot of misconceptions about influencer marketing.  Many people believe that it is simply confined to people bloggers promoting content on YouTube and Instagram feeds. This isn’t the case. Many business decision makers look to the experts in their particular sector to discover and recommend new products and technologies. 

As other forms of marketing vie for the attention of the target audience, influencer marketing cuts through that noise and provides a level of trust that is difficult to achieve in other ways. A basic influencer marketing campaign includes the following stages: 

• Identify your buyer personas - create overviews of your ideal target clients.  What is their background, goals and pain points?  Where do they get their information? What format do they prefer to consume information? 

• Find the influencers - now that you know who you are targeting, you can research the people that they listen to.  This can include publications, individuals, social media accounts and LinkedIn Groups. Who are they following and retweeting? This will provide you with your initial influencer list.  

• Build your own profile - influencers and experts aren’t just going to promote anyone and everyone who asks.  Their reputation is at stake.  Therefore you need to build your own credibility online through social media and blogs. Quality content and professional expertise will make it far easier to get influencers on board. 

• Approach influencers - this can take many forms.  You might want to hire them to speak at your event, or to contribute to a whitepaper or news story that you can then use to attract people to download your gated content.