Three of the Biggest Problems in
Marketing for IT Companies and their Solutions
Problem 1: Your Brand Lacks Differentiation from its Competition
The IT industry is growing year after year. This brings more competition in your industry. More companies are doing what you do and this makes it difficult for you to get buyers for the products and services you offer since it requires getting in front of them at the right time.
The solution to this is to market your brand and get your message out there to attract potential customers to your business. Unfortunately, your competition in the market also knows this and it can lead to a scenario wherein your offer is not any different from what the competing brand offers to the market.
Solution: Differentiate Your Brand from the Competition
The solution to this is brand differentiation. This is achieved by capitalizing on the advantages that your brand has over your competitors and using it to attract and convert your target market then turning them into customers. This could be an innovation that only your business has, a winning pricing strategy, a unique solution that you offer to customers, or a unique experience that they can get from your product or service.
Here are a few tips on how to differentiate your brand from its competition in the market:
Research your competitors and the market
Competitor research can help you identify gaps and weaknesses in what they offer in the market and ways that you can differentiate your brand from them. Areas you need to look into about your competitors include:
- Their products and services
- Their content
- The engagement on their website and social media channels
- The satisfaction of their customers based on reviews, testimonials, and online reputation
Analyze your strengths
Out of the two ways to differentiate your brand, the easiest way is by identifying your unique strengths. Some examples include:
- The most impactful areas of your business
- The most influential factors in the purchasing decision of your customers
- A specialization in an industry wherein you have built a reputation as a provider of IT products or services
- Specialization as a provider of a particular IT product or service
- A unique business model compared to your competition
- A reputation built from superior product or service quality, performance, or customer service
- The relationships your business has built over time
From these strengths, you can identify which ones set you apart from your competition based on the research you have done about them.
Provide an excellent customer experience
Your clients expect an excellent customer experience from your brand nowadays. The hard work you have put into differentiating your brand from others in your market will go to waste if you fail to deliver the customer experience your clients expect.
Moreover, providing your clients with excellent customer service can become a way to differentiate your brand by itself. You do not even need to state it in your IT marketing campaigns or sales copy. Your customers will do it by themselves with their reviews and by recommending you when people ask them for a referral.
Establish your brand as an authority in its space
Establishing your brand as an authority in your niche influences your target market to look to you for information and advice related to it. This authority not only uniquely positions your brand but also increases your chances of attracting prospects for your business that you can convert into customers.
Positioning your brand as an authority requires you to produce high-quality content that delivers unique value to your audience. Moreover, you must produce this content regularly since search engines and social media channels are more likely to promote it to the relevant audience you are trying to reach.
Test the brand differentiators
You cannot just use something unique about your brand to differentiate it from other brands in the market. Aside from being grounded in reality, your brand’s differentiator must matter for your potential clients and you must be able to prove its claim. Moreover, your differentiators should not be something that clients expect, such as good customer service and good value for the cost of your product or service.
Avoid using worn-out statements as differentiators
Some businesses use common statements and use them as their brand differentiators. Some examples include:
- “Excellent customer service”
- “Trusted service providers”
- “Proprietary process”
- “Excellence is our guiding principle”
Although a common statement may apply to your business, these are overused statements that will more likely make your brand just like everyone else than make it stand out. Instead, word your brand differentiators in a unique way that stands out and sounds different from how your target market is used to.
Blend your differentiators if possible
There is always a chance, no matter how unlikely, that another brand starts offering what makes your brand different. You can avoid this by blending your differentiator/s and your brand’s strengths. This makes it less likely for your brand to be affected by changes in the market and gives it a better chance of standing out.
Blending can be done in two ways. You can combine two differentiators or combine a differentiator and a strength your brand has. For example, if you are specializing in information security and have an extensive healthcare clientele, you can brand your business as “information security experts in the healthcare industry”.
Problem 2: Your Content Does Not Appeal to Your Target Audience
Content marketing is one of the best ways to attract people to your marketing channels, engage them to establish a relationship, and convert them into leads or customers. However, you cannot achieve any of these if your content does not appeal to your target audience.
Solution: Apply Best Practices in Content Marketing
Here are some best practices to implement when using content marketing for IT companies:
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One
Create your content based on your audience’s level of understanding
When using content marketing for tech companies, you must deliver the information based on your audience’s level of understanding. Doing so will not only ensure that they can understand the information you provided but, also, your content delivers the value that you intend to communicate to your audience. As a result, your content marketing efforts are more likely to help achieve your branding and marketing objectives.
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Two
Use your audience’s language
Similar to meeting your audience’s level of understanding, you must also use their language in your content. This means doing away with the jargon used in your organization and the industry. Instead, you must use common language in place of the terms that are unique to your industry. If you must use industry terms in your content, you need to explain these in your content to prevent them from navigating away from your page, post, or video.
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Three
Work with subject matter experts when creating your content
Marketing for tech companies requires the cooperation of your subject matter experts. Their involvement in your content marketing efforts will give more authority to the articles, videos, or social media posts you create. And, creating content with the help of experts will make it even more difficult for other brands in your niche to compete against your content marketing strategy.
You can turn to your team members as resource persons for your content. They can become the content creators themselves or you can have someone co-author or ghostwrite the content for them with their input.
Aside from your team members, you can also reach out to experts in your niche and interview them. This approach is also an effective way of expanding your reach since your brand is benefitting from the popularity of the interviewee in your industry.
Problem 3: Your IT Marketing Campaigns are Not Generating Sales
Some businesses make the mistake of thinking that a customer only needs to know of your brand then you can promote your product or service directly. Alternatively, other businesses skip bringing awareness about the problem you are aiming to solve or educating your target audience about the solution your offer brings and go straight to promoting their offer.
However, the best that either of these approaches can result in is to start a conversation about your business or your offer. You will have a hard time generating interest and converting your audience since the strategy is singularly focused on making a sale. The best that you can expect is to generate some sales but still fail in achieving a justifiable return on your marketing spending.
Here are the ways that you can improve your results if you found your business in this situation:
Solution: Create a full-funnel marketing strategy
Successful marketing requires engagement with your customers on all stages of the buyer’s journey – awareness, consideration, and decision. The engagements you conduct in these stages aim to transition your audience from the start to the last part of their journey into becoming your customers. Below are the objectives for each stage and the suitable marketing strategies to achieve them:
Awareness Stage
Your target market has varying levels of awareness regarding what your business offers. They may be unaware of the problem, aware of the problem but unaware of the solution, or aware of the solution but unaware of your business or offer. Your objective in the awareness stage is to make your target market aware of the problem, its solution, your business, and the product or service that provides the said solution.
The marketing strategies in this stage involve talking about the problem you are aiming to solve and the solution that you provide through your products or services. These strategies include:
- Creating valuable content on said topics and distributing it through SEO, video marketing, and social media marketing,
- Creating content that shows off your expertise in your niche and highlights your unique selling proposition
- Creating content that introduces your business, product, or service to those newly aware of your brand
- Using paid ads with messaging relevant to your target audience
Consideration Stage
Your potential customers enter the consideration stage when they start to weigh your offer, compare it with their other options and evaluate which one is the right choice. This is an important stage in marketing for technology companies and other B2B businesses since your customers spend a significant amount of time in this stage.
Although you cannot always know if they have entered into this stage of their buyer’s journey, you can gauge which ones and how many of your audience are currently considering your offer through the various channels and strategies used in this stage. These marketing channels and strategies are the following:
- Creating website content about topics that people often ask about your product, service, or brand (including branded content, product comparisons, case studies, and product or service pages)
- Creating landing pages that address specific segments of your target market
- Capturing leads from your target audience in exchange for exclusive content that solves their problem
- Using email marketing campaigns to build trust and nurture your relationship with them
- Using account-based marketing and direct sales activities to nurture your relationship and engage them directly
Decision Stage
At this stage, your prospective customers are ready to decide on which brand, product, or service they will choose from the ones they were considering in the previous stage. The objective in this stage is to give your potential customers specific reasons why your offer provides the best solution for their situation. Here are the different marketing tactics that you can use to achieve this:
- Create content that addresses common concerns and objections about your offer
- Share stories, reviews, and testimonials of your customers
- Offer free or limited trials or demos to your customers
- Run promotional campaigns that offer discounted rates for a limited time
- Offer free consultation that provides value to your customers
- Send email marketing campaigns to promote your offer to those who are close to converting into customers
Do You Need Help Marketing Your IT Company?
With these solutions provided, you have a better idea of how you can approach these issues in your information technology company. However, if you are like most businesses, you will need a more in-depth solution to address gaps and issues in your marketing strategy. For a more personalized marketing solution for your business, our experts here at Big Market Solutions are ready to help. Contact us today and schedule your free marketing consultation with us!
