Marketing and sales are vital to being a successful IT company. To stay competitive, you must know what you want to achieve from your marketing campaigns, such as improving conversions or increasing brand awareness.
No matter if you do everything yourself or hire a digital marketing agency to help, there are ways to get your voice heard, even in the most specialised industries like IT.
Here are 4 marketing tactics every IT company should leverage in 2019.
Publish Problem-Solving Content
The purpose of problem-solving content is to educate the readers rather than selling rather than selling to them. Position yourself as an IT expert by demonstrating your knowledge in the subject area. In turn, this builds trust with the reader.
In fact, according to ComboApp, content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less. High-quality IT content will be shared across social media, email and word of mouth, widening your reach for new customers.
Guide your customer’s through the buyer’s journey and split the content into four parts:
Part One: Educate New Readers
This section is for those that didn’t know that they had a problem. It should be informative, talk about the reader’s pain points and encourages them to read on. Also, include data and stats to back up any claim you make.
Part Two: Connect With Your Audience
This is the main bulk of the content. This where you tell the reader how to solve the problem, using your products or service as part of the solution. Include a bit of personality to build a relationship with the reader.
Part Three: Show Your Knowledge
This is where people already aware of the issue tend to focus. They want deep understanding and need convincing you are the business that can help them. Include call-to-actions and infographics here too.
Part Four: Conclude
This is where you sum up and tell your reader what they should do after reading.
PR Campaigns
Public relations ie PR is another strong marketing strategy for IT companies. Like problem-solving content, PR campaigns help position your business as a market leader. Material such as press releases, interviews or magazine articles can help spread noteworthy news.
Create your PR strategy in-house or hire an external agency to do it for you. Either way, you are controlling your marketing strategy by deciding what positive information you want people to know about you.
Here are a few things to remember when creating your IT PR campaign:
Focus On Your Audience
The campaign must address the reader’s needs. Even though you want media outlets to be interested in your business, they aren’t who you’re targeting. Keep the message aimed at potential customers.
Interact With Customers
Every great PR campaign has a strong strategy behind it. It must create a positive image of your business whenever you interact with customers. Responding to customer interactions is also important. Ensure you have a team or dedicated business time to deal with any questions your PR campaign has created.
Be Unique
This is especially important in IT. A lot of businesses will offer the same services so you need to ensure you stand out. What can you bring to the table? You may wish to leverage yourself here. After all, no other company will have you!
Email Marketing
The third marketing technique for IT companies is email marketing. Email marketing generates $38 for every $1 spent ie a 3,800% ROI.
Email marketing helps you nurture prospects, generate more sales and further your relationships with existing clients. Here are a few ways you can use it to your advantage.
Create Engaging Opt-in Emails
To run a successful email marketing campaign, you need people on your email list in the first place. Create an engaging opt-in form that attracts people to sign up.
Try out different opt-in form spots on your website and split test to find out where they work the best, such as when they first arrive on the page, or as popups that appear as they browse your IT services.
Always Follow Up
As your subscriber list grows, you must send them timely, targeted follow up emails to convert them. For example, you may wish to send an automatic email to thank the customer for the initial subscription.
Send personalised content every few days to keep customers satisfied. However, don’t send emails too often or you risk being sent to the spam folder.
Write Attractive Subject Lines
This is one of the most important parts of your entire marketing campaign. It must grab the customer’s attention so they open it.
You may want to tell the reader what they get out of opening the email or go down the personalised route by including their name. However, avoid spammy language like ‘great offer’ and ‘guarantee’ or you won’t make it past the first step.
Paid Social Media Ads
The final IT company marketing strategy is using social media ads to generate traffic to your website. Use Facebook and Instagram in particular. Facebook had 2.32 billion monthly active users in 2018, while Instagram had 1 billion respectively.
This has created a huge pool of potential customers like never before. Considering Facebook makes 95% of all its revenue from ads, they are going to ensure their service works. Facebook ads have an average conversion rate of 9.21%, which is significantly better than the 1.4% conversion rate inherited by nearly 40% of marketers.
Facebook and Instagram ads drive immediate results and are also easy to measure. Built-in analytics tools track how many impressions, clicks and conversions you get from each ad. Install Facebook’s conversion pixels on your IT website and it will pick up all the data you need.
With all these benefits, you could be forgiven that Facebook and Instagram ads are expensive. On the contrary, they are actually the cheapest forms of advertising.
In terms of ROI and impact on your business, there is nothing better. Their metrics show that you can get your brand in front of more than 1,000 people for around $5. No other forms of advertising can do that!
Want to learn more about IT marketing? This comprehensive guide includes a lot more actionable advice and infographics to help you guide through your IT marketing strategy in 2019.