The technology industry is an exciting, fast-moving and competitive landscape. In fact, a staggering 70% of upstart tech companies fail just shy of the two-year mark. Why? Technology marketing — or lack thereof. Very often, success unravels due to failure to find an audience that resonates with a brand’s core message. Even if a technology company has a great idea that fills a market need, if their messaging doesn’t effectively communicate to their target audiences, such as potential decision-makers and investors, success is nearly impossible to achieve. That’s where technology marketing makes all the difference.
Marketing technologies in a compelling way may involve building brand awareness, showcasing case studies and current customer experiences, and creating powerful marketing strategies that drive lead generation. As technology companies grow, those that leverage marketing strategies in partnership with engineering, product development and sales will become market leaders.
What Is Technology Marketing?
Technology marketing involves strategic communications, marketing solutions and social media for the technology industry specifically, not to be confused with marketing technologies, tools and apps for marketing — though those may also come into play.
Why Is Marketing Important for Tech Companies?
Taking a technology start-up to an enterprise, accelerating company growth and disrupting the status quo requires successful technology marketing that solidifies and shares core messaging, generates attention and creates demand.
As a technology marketing and public relations agency with skill sets in content marketing and social media, Communications Strategy Group (CSG®) partners with marketing technology companies to create compelling narratives for complex technology solutions that engage, inspire and activate relevant audiences. CSG’s expertise ranges across the technology spectrum in the following categories:
• Cybersecurity
• Managed IT Services
• Blockchain
• SaaS
• Big Data
• AI
• FinTech
• EdTech
• HealthTech
• Aviation Technology
9 Marketing Strategies for Technology Companies
Facing increased competition for attention on digital channels, B2B marketing efforts in the technology sector struggle to reach the right audiences on the right channels to achieve their goals. According to almost 500 CMOs and other marketing leaders, privacy is the number one most important technology, topic, or space for marketing in 2022. For technology organizations, the ability to connect with decision-makers about an important issue, goal or challenge to their business can have a dramatic impact on their success.
Here are nine key marketing strategies for technology companies to leverage to transform how they market themselves:
Brand Communications
Your brand is the first thing potential customers will know about you. And an identifiable, successful brand is something customers will remember long after an ad impression. Consistent good branding simplifies future planning, streamlines creative work and informs everything from corporate social responsibility initiatives to culture, but it also offers tremendous benefits to the bottom line. In the quick-moving world of technology marketing and advertising, brand work of any kind is a long-term play that is easy to overlook in favor of faster ROI, but the opportunity cost of not taking the time to build a thoughtful brand communications plan is considerable. Without integrated marketing communications planning, brands lose the opportunity for meaningful and consistent engagement with their target audiences, and ultimately, the chance to make a lasting impression.
Content Marketing
Content marketing for startups is a chance to meet consumers where they are and stay top of mind even when you can’t be face to face. As traditional sales and marketing techniques become less effective, there’s an opportunity for technology organizations to provide relevant and useful content that educates, solves problems and clarifies next steps for prospects and customers alike. When executed correctly, a robust content marketing strategy will not only help move prospects through the sales funnel but also drive organic traffic, build brand awareness and eventually, cultivate brand champions.
Crisis Communications and Reputation Management
The entire world is not within your control. Whether external or internal, there are forces beyond technology organizations’ influence that may create challenges. It’s not a question of if a crisis will occur, but when the next one will happen. When crisis situations arise, technology companies need to have strategic, tailored plans in place of how to respond to effectively communicate to stakeholders and overcome potential setbacks.
Digital Marketing
No one understands the need for digital marketing more than technology companies. In fact, according to Google, mobile searches account for more than 50% of all searches. Digital marketing is the strategic discipline that brings sense to it all. Which channels are right for your business? What do your customers need to hear? Where can you get the most bang for your buck? The right strategy will consider these questions to meet your audiences at the right time and with the right message, and leverage data-driven insights to plan and execute digital touch points and experiences at every stage of the customer journey.
Internal Communications
Internal alignment begets external success — keeping the team engaged and focused on the broader company mission often comes down to open, honest and strategic employee communications. Though it might seem too simple, alignment truly does begin with communication.
Public Relations
If your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room, public relations is your chance to join important conversations. Third-party endorsement from the media and important influencers plays a critical role in developing brand awareness, promoting thought leadership and creating demand in the marketplace for technology organizations.
Social Media
Social media is made up of short-term content, but it is a long-term strategy. We believe that every piece of content has a job. And we believe that every social platform has a purpose. To that end, we use a blend of organic and paid strategies — a particularly important measure as increased monetization across social platforms has cannibalized much organic growth — to optimize the relevant platforms and infuse social into integrated technology marketing strategies that span the entire content and customer lifecycle.
Video Marketing
From live-action to animation, video is one of the most diverse and flexible marketing mediums. Video is an easy-to-consume, visual and memorable format that engages audiences in a way that no other channel can. Put another way, for technology organizations that have a story to tell and an eye on strategic impact, video is the watchword.
Website Development
In an increasingly digital world, customer acquisition and retention can be won or lost on any given web page. Modern web users expect seamless experiences, responsive sites, mobile apps and other robust digital solutions. Technology brands’ site functionality and build should operate in tandem to create a seamless user experience, while the site design and copy should guide users to take desired actions and make obvious how to achieve their goals. A simple web technique to leverage in 2022 is providing answers to frequently asked customer questions about your product on your website.
7 Technology Marketing Challenges and How to Solve Them
At its core, technology marketing objectives include 1) creating awareness, 2) establishing value, 3) building preference, and 4) driving an efficient decision and purchase. But of course, no marketing strategy is without its challenges. Consider these seven common challenges in technology marketing:
1. Messaging to Experts, Not Consumers
When marketers speak to customers as if they were an insider with perfect knowledge, they don’t support the customer decision process or respect their time enough to deliver digestible information. No matter how impressive the technology product or service, it still must serve the business benefit.
Instead, marketing teams must meet customers where they are in the decision-making process and deliver ongoing, accessible and understandable resource value.
2. Relying on Industry Jargon
Marketers have just mere seconds to capture prospects’ attention on a website. In that brief window, marketing efforts need to make the product relevant, instill its value and motivate the prospect to learn more. Jargon-filled content wastes everyone’s time because it often has no meaning to the prospect. Instead of establishing expertise; it alienates.
Instead, marketers must speak in the prospects’ language, not their own. Messaging should convey everything a customer needs to know, and not leave them filling in big gaps.
3. Failing to Consider the Buyer’s Journey
Marketing is a continuum, not a point solution. When done correctly, it guides prospects and customers through purchase decisions. All too often, technology companies don’t define the buyer’s journey, which is key to a successful marketing strategy.
Instead of solely focusing on immediately driving revenue, technology companies must take the time to understand their target audience and the overall buyer’s journey so that marketing efforts can complement the overall continuum.
4. Pushing Instead of Telling
Technology marketing sales get a bad rap for coming on too strong, too soon. Unsolicited emails and phone calls rarely lead to success, because they fail to understand the buyer’s decision cycle.
Instead, technology marketers need to understand what prospects need to learn in advance of purchasing their product — and create compelling, helpful content that will help them achieve those learnings.
5. Relying on Outrageous Claims
What is a surefire way to shatter credibility? Use outrageous claims in marketing materials. Even when a technology product holds incredible value, exaggerated or unfounded claims can dilute its worth.
Instead, technology marketers should rely on compelling data and engaging storytelling to share their products’ value in a way that will resonate authentically with audiences.
6. Tech for Tech’s Sake
In the competitive world of technology, many brands make the mistake of marketing to other tech marketers and not the true decision-makers in charge of marketing budgets. Unfortunately, this tactic neglects to harness the technology’s true value. Unless a real and necessary value can be established, technology will not find support among those with decision authority.
Instead, technology marketers need to make the business case for their products. It’s really not about technology. No matter how impressive, successful technology must still solve a business challenge or offer a business benefit.
7. Neglecting Customer Needs
Every other issue cited above can be distilled down to knowing the customer. Understanding the customer is the chief objective because marketing to a prospect establishes a relationship. When technology brands neglect to understand and cater to customers’ needs, they’re essentially speaking into a vacuum and spinning their wheels.
Instead, technology marketers must invest in understanding the customer and speaking to their needs. What problems are you solving for the individual and/or the organization? How can you establish credibility by illustrating, not telling? How does your technology impact their business?
Partnering with an expert with the right skillsets and an understanding of the technology industry landscape, such as a technology marketing agency like CSG, can help your organization overcome these challenges and reach your goals.
FAQs About Marketing For Technology Companies
How to ensure success in marketing technology products?
Simply put, marketing is about getting the right information in front of the right people. Successful technology marketing involves identifying the right target audiences and employing strategies that ensure your message effectively resonates, enhancing the customer experience.
How to calculate technology marketing ROI?
Understanding unified marketing measurements is becoming increasingly more important when evaluating marketing budgets. According to Gartner’s Marketing Technology Survey 2018, only 18% of marketers understood what multitouch attribution (MTA) was in 2016. Return on investment (ROI) calculations are made first by determining the dollar amount of value that a given marketing strategy has returned — which is an art in its own right, to understand which, read our ROI post — subtracting the cost of the strategy from that number, and then dividing the result by the cost again. This gives a company a fixed point to travel from, allowing them to gauge the strength over time of new content and new marketing campaigns. The orientation this provides is vital in technology marketing. Without it, companies cannot be sure that they’re breaking into the markets they target, appealing to the right audiences, or in general improving their marketing performance.
Is investing in technology marketing worth it?
Yes. Whether your organization is searching to increase B2B marketing efforts or employ B2C technology marketing strategies, partnering with the right technology marketing agency that understands your brand’s needs and goals and has the expertise to take you to the next level can make your investment even more valuable.
How to know if your tech marketing strategy is effective?
In short, data is key to measuring the success of marketing technologies. The amount of data available from a tech product creates unique opportunities for marketers to make decisions quickly, optimize products, develop campaigns, and reach customers where they are. The effectiveness of your technology marketing efforts depends on your organization’s unique goals. Are you trying to sell more products? Raise awareness? Bolster reputation? Get your brand in front of a new audience? The right technology marketing partner will create and measure marketing campaigns based on the answers to these questions.
How to increase sales of technology products?
To increase sales, marketing technology companies must invest efforts to fully understand their customer. From understanding needs and value drivers to speaking their language and earning their trust, leveraging the voice of the consumer in marketing efforts is critical to the success, and increase in sales, of every technology.
Develop Your Technology Marketing Strategy With Us
Strategic technology marketing is key to standing out and resonating with target audiences in a competitive and fast-moving market. Contact us today if you’re searching for a technology marketing agency to develop compelling strategies that resonate with target audiences and achieve your organization’s goals. As an experienced marketing agency for tech companies, CSG helps technology companies — from start-ups to enterprises — generate attention, create demand, accelerate growth and disrupt the status quo.
