Everything You Need to Know About Marketing for IT Companies

IT companies have numerous opportunities today. Consumers expect top-notch technology in every facet of their lives. However, these endless opportunities promote a hyper-competitive field where all players need to be the best to succeed. So what can help your IT company not only compete, but succeed? It can be as simple as an effective marketing strategy. Marketing for IT companies is more important than ever. It’s at the heart of a business’s success story because without marketing, how will potential customers know everything you have to offer?

Here are five reasons why marketing for IT companies is so important

1. Awareness

The best marketing strategies for IT companies involve spreading brand awareness. For your business to succeed, potential clients need to know who you are and how you can help their companies. Let consumers know how you can solve their problems by effectively developing an outreach plan.

Educate people about the ins and outs of your product or services and show off your value proposition. Building your brand through marketing can mean the difference between remaining stagnant or increasing your client base and growing exponentially.

2. Relationships

Developing a marketing plan for your technology company promotes long-lasting relationships with customers. Think of marketing as essential food for your business to grow. It’s meant to sustain your brand’s presence while helping it flourish. Consistent marketing strategies offer exposure to the right audience, which leads to plenty of opportunities to strengthen those relationships.

3. Engagement

Not only do clients enjoy great face-to-face interactions, but they also appreciate being contacted by a business even after leaving the store. Marketing allows you to do this. Don’t let customers forget about your amazing products—instead keep them engaged by sending rich content filled with extras to keep them involved. Not only does this show how much you value your customers, but it also gives you the opportunity to educate them even more about your services.

4. Selling

Marketing drives sales, and without it, you might not have a business. You need to draw in customers to your fantastic services through engaging content—and keep them there long enough to make a purchase. Marketing helps the selling process, which in turn, helps your business. An effective marketing strategy will keep your bottom line healthy.

5. Growth

Increasing growth is the most important benefit from marketing for IT companies. While you should always focus on client retention, expanding your marketing efforts to reach a wider audience is essential. Tactics like social media, newsletters, and email marketing engage clients while spreading the word about your brand to potential customers. Growing your brand also solidifies your reputation and increases recognition. Meeting client expectations consistently means building trust and maintaining prestige. Actively participating through innovative marketing initiatives enhances customer experience and casts a wider net for bringing in new customers.

The importance of marketing can’t be stressed enough. While strategies for marketing for IT companies may come in all shapes and sizes, tech marketers need to stand out against their competitors. Focus on delivering clear, compelling, and understandable content to clients and potential clients about your services. Marketing will build brand awareness, strengthen relationships, sell products, and promote overall growth.

Now that you know why it’s important your IT company have a good marketing strategy, it’s time to put those marketing skills to the test and successful market your business. With so much competition, marketing IT services to businesses can be tricky. A lot of technology service providers struggle to find the right B2B channel at the best time. This means making the connection between stellar IT services and other companies is an ongoing challenge.

To market your technology solutions, you need to discover strategies and tools that invite decision makers to give you a chance. Turn your IT company into a unique thought leader that knows customer pain points and understands how to fix them. While it may seem like an ambitious task, on to marketing your services to businesses.

3 tips for successfully marketing IT services to businesses

1. Differentiate

IT companies currently flood the market. How can yours stand out? You need to look at your unique selling propositions and what makes you unique. Make these points the central focus when marketing your business. Then personalize your efforts toward the ideal customer by creating buyer personas to target these segments. It makes sense to limit your energies to the right clients. That way, these customers feel valued instead of just a number.

According to DemandGen Report’s 2017 B2B Buyer Survey, 92% of buyers emphasized the “growing importance of sales teams that had insights about personalized company needs.” Resonating with potential customers could give you an edge over the competition.

2. Offer bundled services

Instead of engaging in price wars with competitors, try offering customers the best value for their money. One of the best marketing strategies for IT companies gives customers a bundle of great services at a fair price instead of lowering prices overall to compete. This shows potential clients that you have high-quality services without needing to lower the price. Usually, businesses don’t mind spending a little more on something that’s worth it. Eventually, your company can increase the prices on bundles that have a higher value.

3. Increase visibility

How can you market your software products to other companies? Expand your reach by using multiple marketing channels. It’s not wise to focus your marketing strategies on one place. For example, instead of advertising in the local newspaper, get into local online search through pay-per-click ads. This can greatly narrow your customers by location and send them to your content-rich website, which will further entice them into action. Other channels you might consider include inbound marketing, social media, and referrals. Through trial and error, your business will decide which marketing channels to focus on and which to leave out.

Make your IT company stand out from the crowd by showing off what makes you unique. This might mean increasing customer satisfaction by creating personalized content and pitches to show you care. Along with this, offer bundled packages of the most requested services to attract more customers. Then, to bring it all together, make your face known on a wide variety of marketing channels that increase engagement and visibility.

Marketing your IT products will never be easy. But with the right tools and strategies, you’ll be able to increase sales, grow your brand, and strengthen your client base. One of the best tools to use these days is your online presence. Marketing for IT companies using the traditional marketing methods is always a good idea, but with the digital world constantly expanding, it’s significant that you’re taking advantage of the online space as well. Most of us get all of our information through websites, so knowing how to market to an online audience will be beneficial in creating a great marketing strategy.

Here are several ways that you can market your IT company online

Digital versions of local publications

Who knows your area better than local publications? People (potential clients) will go to various publications for local information. If you can get the website of a newspaper, magazine, or another medium to mention your company or provide a link, it could give your company a serious boost. Don’t cross off smaller publications, either; they most likely have a devoted reader base that could turn into additional business.

Utilizing local publications can provide additional proof that your business is local, which could make people interested in supporting a local business.

Branding

Branding is the gateway to your company. Who is your company? What is it about? What does your company want to do? What do you wish to achieve? Having strong branding will provide solid answers to any questions readers have. Branding your event and filling it with all things that relate to your company is a great way to get across your point subtly.

Branding is especially crucial to your website, email and social media. You want to make sure that everywhere someone sees your company name or logo, that it is consistent.

The most important part of branding is consistency. If you say one thing, you want to follow through. To create a memorable and cohesive web page, use colors, format, and logo choices that will make recognizing your company simple. Distinguishing your company from the crowd can boost your brand and provide additional marketing.

SEO

If you aren’t familiar with SEO, it refers to search engine optimization, the process of enhancing websites, so they are easy to locate by large search engines like Google and Yahoo. If you’re going to create a business centered on IT, your website should include keywords or phrases that will make your website show up when someone searches for what you do. To be successful when using local SEO, you need to know how and where to utilize keywords within the content on your website for maximum search-ability.

As a little tip, research articles with similar content to your own and see what words or phrases are gathering appeal with their readers. You may be able to get some ideas on how to create better content for your business.

Online review mentions

Websites such as Yelp, Google, Foursquare, etc. all allow customers to submit reviews of your company and your products. While customers will be blunt and candid in their reviews, these websites can turn into excellent marketing tools. Monitor the reviews, respond to them, and build a reputable business profile for your company.

Learn to use these review sites as a powerful marketing tool to the thousands of people that see them every single day. Don’t hide behind the reviews—take control and build a reputation for being hands-on and great at communicating.

Digital content

Adding weekly content to your website through articles, downloads, and new web pages is a strong way to build traffic. Updating a website with new content and keywords on a frequent basis will increase page views. When search engines look at your site more regularly, there is an opportunity to achieve higher rankings based on the content you provide.

Now that you understand the different ways you can successfully market your IT company, it’s important to know how to develop a strategic plan that will ensure your marketing strategies are a success.

As we’ve already discussed, we know it can be a difficult task to market IT services to other businesses. Technology services can be hard to explain and market in a concrete way, especially when your services are specialized or when a business may not realize what technology services they need.

Plus, many business owners and decision makers don’t necessarily know everything they need to know about technology, so it’s imperative that you come to them with great communication and information. This is where a strategic plan comes into play.

No matter what type of media you use to communicate to potential customers. It’s crucial to be in the right place at the right time and to be able to clearly demonstrate what your services are and how they can help your customer.

Here are three ways to create a successful strategic plan for marketing your IT services

1. Be in the right place at the right time

Essentially, when creating a plan around marketing for IT companies, you need to be reaching the right people with great content when they need your services.

So, how do you do this?

First, think about getting your brand out to the “low-hanging fruit” first. These are businesses or individuals who are already searching for your services. You can find them through website SEO and search advertising. This way, you’ll get your brand in front of your customers when they require your services most.

You can also use data to utilize strategic targeting. Look at your past clients to find patterns: What types of businesses are they, and where are they located? How do they normally find you, and what questions do they ask when you’re making a sale?

Once you have a firm idea of who your potential clients are, target your audience based on those findings. That way, you’ll be able to replicate those results again and again.

2. Keep it simple

Technology and digital services aren’t easy to explain or describe, especially to potential clients who don’t have a lot of experience with technology. Because of this, it can be a challenge to market technology services and make sure your potential clients understand how exactly your services can help their business.

So, regardless of what marketing channels you use, make sure you do everything you can to make your services clear and easy to understand.

For example, you could promote an animated explainer video that captures people’s attention and shows them how your product works, or you could offer a free webinar to get people interested. It can also be helpful to keep case studies handy about your past work, so potential new clients can understand how you helped similar businesses in the past.

3. Leverage your relationships

Using your current relationships is always a good strategy in marketing and sales, but it’s especially important when thinking about how to market a software product to companies.

There are a couple of different ways to think about relationships regarding marketing for IT companies. First, focus on communication in your relationships with current clients and potential new sales.

In information technology marketing, the relationship between the customer and the provider is critical: You’ll have to provide customer service, train them on your programs, and let them know if there’s an update being made.

Because of this, your customers will want to know that they can trust you to communicate precisely in the long term, and a good first impression will stand out.

Once you have strong relationships with your current clients, don’t be afraid to ask them for help. Word of mouth is a great way to get new business. Plus, companies are usually happy to give you or your products a good review online—and reviews influence online buyers more than you might think.

Finally, if you’re wondering how to market technology services, know that testing and using data from past campaigns is key. Your own data will tell you what’s working and what isn’t—so always be prepared to change gears if needed.

Ready to Elevate Your Marketing Strategies?

Marketing IT services can be a challenge, but with the right plan in place it is possible to see success. Knowing how important marketing is to your business success and utilizing strong marketing strategies are the first major steps in seeing a return on your marketing investment.

For any clarifications about marketing for IT companies or would like to speak with one of our professionals, please don’t hesitate to contact us.