The first rule of technology marketing? Don’t make it sound like marketing.
This is something we’ve learned in our years of marketing software-as-a-service (SaaS) to highly technical audiences, but it’s honestly a good reminder of how marketing should be regardless of your industry. It shouldn’t feel or sound like marketing at all.
But when you’re trying to promote products or services to a specific niche within the tech industry, some of the tried-and-true marketing tactics that succeed with other audiences just won’t work. Instead, digital marketing campaigns are essential for effectively reaching and engaging this audience, as they allow for targeted strategies that can generate leads and improve key performance metrics.
Understanding Technology Marketing
Technology marketing is a specialized field that requires a deep understanding of the technology industry and its unique challenges. It involves strategic communications, marketing solutions, and social media tailored toward the tech industry. Effective technology marketing is crucial for success in the technology industry, as it helps build brand awareness, establish thought leadership, and drive lead generation. Technology companies that leverage marketing strategies in partnership with engineering, product development, and sales will become market leaders.
How Technology Buyers Make Decisions in the Technology Industry
The SaaS buyer’s journey starts like any other: with your target audience becoming aware of a challenge and reaching out to others in their community to find solutions.
They might ask questions on social media or within an online forum to see what their peers recommend. Many also look at reviews on Capterra, Software Advice or G2Crowd.
They typically come with a mental checklist of a few key factors that are critical before they’ll go further.
First (like any buyer), they want to know how your product solves their problem. They want to see which other companies are using it. Then, they typically need to validate the solution with their IT team, especially if it’s an enterprise software solution.
This is where the sale can stall.
IT leaders have their own mental checklist.
First, they need to know how your solution integrates with their existing technology stack. They need to ensure it meets their enterprise security standards. Finally, they want to know how much it costs. Then, if your product checks all their boxes, they’re ready to try it for themselves.
This evaluation stage is critical. If they can’t get satisfactory answers about security or the free trial doesn’t offer a good experience, they aren’t likely to come back.
During this stage, it’s important to provide resources and support to help them understand the value and ease their concerns. A marketing automation tool can help provide these resources and streamline the evaluation process by automating lead nurturing, scoring, and segmentation.
Once you have them on board, IT leaders can become some of your best ambassadors. They’ll be eager to recommend your solution to others. And, if it complements other technologies, you might even be able to partner with resellers.
Key Marketing Strategies for Technology Companies
Technology companies need to evolve their marketing approach to produce real results. Key marketing strategies for technology companies include leveraging thought leadership and unique solutions to provide substantial ROI. Effective marketing strategies can transform how technology companies market themselves. Some key marketing strategies for technology companies include:
- Leveraging social media platforms to build brand awareness and engage with target audiences
- Developing a robust content marketing strategy to educate and inform potential customers
- Utilizing influencer marketing to reach new audiences and build credibility
- Investing in marketing automation tools to streamline and optimize marketing efforts
- Creating targeted marketing campaigns to reach decision-makers and drive conversions
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a crucial component of a successful marketing strategy for technology companies. It involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and engage target audiences. The goal of content marketing is to build trust, establish thought leadership, and drive profitable customer action. Technology companies can use content marketing to educate potential customers about their products and services, address common pain points and challenges, and provide valuable insights and information.
7 Technology Marketing Tactics That Work
1. Be clear and concise
Marketing copy for any industry should be clear and concise, but when you’re marketing to a highly technical audience, I can’t emphasize this enough.
One of our clients, Indeni, recently revamped their homepage to make it clear that they now offer two main products. I proposed a few sentences that I thought summed up both offerings clearly, with a call-to-action for each. After a few revisions, we ultimately landed on this.
2. Show instead of tell
Again, this isn’t just a lesson for technology marketing, but it’s particularly important here.
You might think you’ve done a good job of summarizing what your solution does, but if you’re seeing high bounce rates and low conversions, chances are, you haven’t been specific enough.
Within seconds of visiting your homepage, prospects should understand:
- Who the solution is for
- What problems you’re solving for them
- Why your technology is better than existing solutions
- What kinds of results they can expect
- How your technology integrates with other solutions they already use
The Slack homepage makes it immediately clear what teams can do with its software — share files, connect on a call and collaborate with partners.
It also shows the benefits of Slack’s integrations.
3. Meet audiences where they are
Knowing where to find your audience is half the battle of technology marketing.
This is why buyer personas are essential. Whether you interview current customers, look at existing data, conduct a survey or focus group, or use audience research tools like SparkToro, you need to know where your audience spends their time online.
You might need to think beyond the traditional social media channels to find the best opportunities.
For instance, StackOverflow allows you to place ads where developers and highly technical people are asking specific questions. Reddit operates in a similar way, giving you access to searches about highly targeted topics.
Websites like TechCrunch, DZone or The Hacker News also have advertising opportunities.
Don’t forget about conferences, too. While almost everything has been virtual this past year, some in-person technology marketing conferences are making a comeback.
4. Make it easy for them to try your solution
A free trial is a given for most technology buyers, so you need to make yours extremely easy to navigate.
The form should include as few fields as possible to remove any barriers to getting started. Consider giving users several options to try it.
App container solution Docker gives users three ways to get started.
5. Double down on documentation
Whether your technology marketing is reaching buyers who are just becoming aware of your solution, actively evaluating it or using it regularly, they’re hungry for more information.
This is the time to:
- Develop in-depth user guides
- Share playbooks or scripts that help them solve specific problems
- Record demo videos that walk through the inner workings of the solution
- Host webinars featuring different applications and use cases
Visual Code Studio has an extensive user guide that covers everything from basic editing to using extensions, debugging, working with GitHub, and more.
6. Share information for the good of the community
While highly technical audiences may resist marketing that is obviously promotional, they’re all about sharing information when it benefits the greater good.
There are plenty of opportunities to get your company’s name out while contributing to the community — often without paying anything.
There’s a podcast for just about every niche, whether it’s digital transformation, cloud security, coding, or something else. Many of the podcast hosts are looking for guests.
Some companies have user groups or forums you can join to get a better sense of questions or challenges your audience is experiencing. For instance, AWS has discussion forums for startups, developers, security and other topics.
The key is to be helpful, not promotional when contributing to them. This is not the place to post your latest blog or your new product announcement.
Social media monitoring tools are another helpful way to add to the discussion. If your product is for a niche topic, you can use HubSpot’s social media monitoring to receive notifications each time someone mentions it so you can decide if it makes sense to respond.
7. Emphasize software security features
Security has always been important, but it has become an even bigger focus in light of the pandemic.
Nearly 60% of organizations have experienced a data breach resulting from a third-party provider, according to a survey by the Ponemon Institute.
That means IT leaders will be undergoing a stringent evaluation process as they consider your software. You’ll need to ensure you’ve done your due diligence with your security team and have the documentation to support it.
Be prepared to answer questions such as:
- What is your process for performing system, application, and data backups?
- How do you dispose of data?
- Does your security policy cover data privacy, data handling, encryption, configuration for network and operating systems, change control, and physical access?
- How do you audit your security controls?
- Have you achieved SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliance?
While your marketing team may think of security as a standard and not a differentiator, don’t underestimate its importance in the SaaS sales process. Make sure you’ve addressed your security features and policies on your company’s website and your sales team has the support they need to handle tough questions.
Effective Marketing Tactics for Tech Companies
Technology companies need to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to marketing tactics. Some effective marketing tactics for tech companies include:
- Utilizing social media platforms to build brand awareness and engage with target audiences
- Creating targeted marketing campaigns to reach decision-makers and drive conversions
- Investing in marketing automation tools to streamline and optimize marketing efforts
- Leveraging influencer marketing to reach new audiences and build credibility
- Developing a robust content marketing strategy to educate and inform potential customers
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is a critical component of a successful marketing strategy for technology companies. It involves using social media platforms to build brand awareness, engage with target audiences, and drive conversions. Technology companies can use social media marketing to:
- Build brand awareness and establish thought leadership
- Engage with target audiences and build relationships
- Drive conversions and generate leads
- Provide customer support and service
- Share valuable content and information
By leveraging these marketing strategies and tactics, technology companies can stay ahead of the curve and achieve their marketing goals.
Get Help With Your Technology Marketing Strategy
Technology marketing comes with unique challenges. Technology and software companies often find that identifying their audience is the hardest part. However, once you understand who they are, what they’re looking for, and where they spend their time, you can get their attention.
And once you have their attention and you’ve proven your product or service is useful, a technology company can build up a loyal community that will help amplify your message.
Partnering with a digital marketing agency can help you find the right audience and ensure you provide them with the most relevant messages and information. Kuno Creative has more than 20 years of experience successfully attracting, converting and closing deals with highly technical audiences. Our team can help you plan an effective technology marketing strategy that includes a compelling website, content resources, SEO, paid advertising and lead nurturing so you can attract buyers you may be struggling to reach.
To learn more about our technology marketing solutions, request a consultation today.
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