4 Important Things to Look for in an IT Marketing Company

If you run a technology business, do you need to employ an IT marketing company? You probably do because marketing is essential to generating new leads and building your business, especially in the highly competitive technology market. The key is to choose the right tech marketing company for your company's needs.

Key Takeaways

• IT marketing is everything you do to promote and sell your products to technology buyers

• IT marketing notifies customers of new products, builds brand recognition, establishes your company's reputation, and generates leads and sales

• When evaluating an IT marketing company, look for one that offers customer targeting, either multi-channel or area-specific expertise, content marketing and syndication, and a focus on lead generation from tech buyers

What Is IT Marketing?

Marketing refers to everything a company does to promote and sell its products or services to customers. It isn't product development, although it can influence the development of new products. It also isn't sales, although it can support the sales department and also directly generate sales. Marketing is about getting the word out about new technologies and products and turning interested consumers into paying customers.

Marketers often refer to the "4 P's" to describe the four primary aspects of marketing. These are:

• Product: in particular, ensuring that new products and features meet the needs of targeted customers
• Price: determining how much customers are willing to pay for a given product or service
• Place: where and how products are distributed
• Promotion: how customers are made aware of a company's products

IT marketing is nothing more than traditional marketing for technology companies. Technology marketing helps inform the development, pricing, distribution, and promotion of new technology products and services.

🤫 PS: Looking for pricing on IT marketing? Get a price list here

Where Does IT Marketing Take Place?

Just like traditional marketing, IT marketing can take advantage of several different channels and media. Traditional media include print advertising, broadcast advertising, and direct mail. Digital media include:

• Website marketing
• PPC (pay-per-click) advertising
• Email
• Social media
• Podcasts
• Video
• Content marketing (articles, white papers, eBooks, etc.)
• Webinars and events
• Content syndication
• SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (search engine marketing)

Marketing strategy can involve any or all of these traditional and digital media, depending on how best to reach targeted customers.

Why Is Marketing Important for Tech Companies?

Research shows that 70% of tech startups fail, usually within their first two years of operation. One of the reasons for this high failure rate is that technology professionals know how to build technology, but they don't know how to market it.

This is why marketing is essential for all types of companies, including technology companies. Technology marketing brings several benefits to tech companies that embrace the concept, including:

• Notifies customers about new products and features
• Builds brand awareness
• Establishes your company's credibility and reputation as a thought expert
• Increases website traffic
• Generates high-quality leads
• Grows sales

4 Things Your Business Needs from an IT Marketing Company

Launching a new tech product isn't a “Field of Dreams” experience; if you build it, they won't come unless you talk about it. Even the biggest tech companies sometimes stumble all over themselves when marketing the new products they develop. Marketing just isn't one of their native skillsets.

This is why an increasing number of tech companies are employing IT marketing companies. Partnering with a company specializing in marketing to technology buyers gives you a marketplace boost that your technology-focused rivals don't yet have.

When evaluating tech marketing companies, look for a firm that supplies the following services.

1. Customer Targeting

You should know as much as you can about your potential customers. You need to know:

• Who your customers are
• Where they are
• What they need
• What they want
• Where they get their information
• What they expect from the buying experience

A quality IT marketing firm will provide guidance to help you identify the right customers for your products—and steer your marketing to that targeted audience.

2. Multi-Channel Expertise or Area Specialization

Some IT marketing firms offer services across the entire marketing spectrum, from PPC advertising to social media to online events. That type of agency is a good choice if your marketing needs encompass all those channels.

Other IT marketing firms specialize in a few particular areas and bring extensive experience in those types of marketing. Not all tech companies promote to the general consumer market, so you might not need to engage in B2C or mass media advertising. Instead, a firm that specializes in those channels specific to B2B buyers—content marketing, video marketing, webinars, and events—might be the better choice.

3. Content Marketing and Syndication

The strategy of promoting your business and products via original content is called content marketing, and it's essential to successful IT marketing. You need an IT marketing partner who is skilled in content marketing in a variety of media, including:

• Website articles
• Blog posts
• White papers
• eBooks
• Webinars and other online events

Effective content marketing requires entertaining, educational, and engaging content—what marketers call the 3 E's. The educational aspect is essential; self-serving content about your company's latest accomplishments won't do it. Backlinko's B2B Content Marketing Report found that B2B blogs with educational content generate 52% more organic traffic than blogs publishing company-focused content.

When you create great content, you shouldn't limit it to just your own website. You can also post your content to social media and syndicate it to third-party websites. Content syndication is a great way to get your content in front of even more leads than you can on your own site. (ActualTech Media offers a content syndication program that makes it easy to syndicate your content to related sites that can generate thousands of targeted leads for your syndicated content.)

4. Lead Generation

Many of your marketing activities focus on generating leads for your sales team. A quality IT marketing firm understands this and offers several lead-generating activities.

IT marketing can generate leads in several ways. Leads can come from the content you create, webinars and events you promote, search engine results, PPC ads, and more. You need a tech marketing firm that can generate content and produce events that generate high-quality leads.

The firm you choose also needs to know how to feed those leads into your company's sales pipeline and provide the support to turn those leads into sales. Your company's success depends on your IT marketing company's experience marketing to and generating leads from technology buyers.

Let ActualTech Media Be Your IT Marketing Company

When you need to properly market your company, your technology, and your products, turn to the experts at ActualTech Media. We specialize in IT marketing for technology companies and offer lead generation services like multi-vendor webinars, content marketing and syndication, and other effective marketing services. We've been providing innovative content and services to technology companies for more than a decade and can help your company develop an effective IT marketing strategy.

Contact ActualTech Media today to learn more about how IT marketing can benefit your business.