The first rule of technology marketing? Don’t make it sound like marketing.
This is something we’ve learned in our years of marketing software-as-a-service (SaaS) to highly technical audiences, but it’s honestly a good reminder of how the marketing process should be regardless of industry: It shouldn’t feel or sound like marketing at all.
This can be tricky when you’re trying to promote products or services to a specific niche within the tech industry, some tried-and-true marketing efforts that succeed with other audiences just don’t work. Instead, digital marketing campaigns are essential for effectively reaching and engaging this audience, as they allow for targeted technology marketing strategies that generate leads and improve key metrics.
Understanding Technology Marketing
Marketing tends to have universal principles and, of course, every industry has its nuances. Tech marketing is a specialized field that requires a deep understanding of the technology industry and its unique challenges. Marketing efforts here involve appropriate leveraging of marketing channels, timely strategic communications, target audience engagement and social media all credibly tailored to the industry and your particular subset within it. Technology companies that leverage marketing strategies in concert with engineering, product development and sales will become market leaders.
How Technology Buyers Make Decisions
The SaaS buyer’s journey starts like any other: with your target audience becoming aware of their challenges and reaching out to others in their community to find solutions.
They might ask questions on social media or on an online forum to see what other users recommend. Many also look at reviews on Capterra, Software Advice or G2Crowd.
They typically come with a mental checklist of critical key factors before they’ll go further.
First (like any buyer), they want to know how your product solves their problem. They want to see which other companies are using it. Then, they typically need to validate the solution with their IT team, especially if it’s an enterprise software solution.
This is where deals can stall.
First, they need to know how your solution integrates with their existing technology stack. They need to ensure it meets their enterprise security standards. Finally, they want to know how much it costs. Then, if your product checks all their boxes, they’re ready to try it for themselves.
This evaluation stage is critical. If they can’t get satisfactory answers about security or the free trial doesn’t offer rich customer experience, they aren’t likely to come back.
During this stage, it’s important marketing efforts provide resources and support to help them understand the value and ease their concerns. A marketing automation tool can help provide these resources and streamline the evaluation process by automating lead nurturing, scoring, and segmentation.
Once you’ve obtained buy-in, IT leaders can become some of your strongest ambassadors. They’ll be eager to recommend your solution to others. And, if it complements other technologies, you might even be able to partner with resellers, expanding your target audience and enhancing customer acquisition.
Key Marketing Strategies for Tech Companies
Technology companies need to shift their approach to continue to produce real results. Digital marketing strategies for any technology company include leveraging thought leadership and content that is as unique as their solutions to provide substantial ROI. Effective marketing strategies can transform how technology companies market themselves. Some key marketing strategies for technology companies include:
- Leveraging social media to build brand awareness and engage with your target audience
- Developing a robust content marketing strategy to educate and inform potential customers
- Utilizing influencer marketing to reach new audiences and build credibility
- Investing in marketing automation tools to streamline and optimize the marketing process
- Creating targeted digital marketing campaigns to reach decision-makers and drive conversions
Content Marketing
Content marketing is a crucial component of a successful marketing strategy for tech companies. It involves creating and sharing valuable, relevant and consistent content to attract and engage your audience. The goal in content marketing is to build trust, establish thought leadership, and drive meaningful, profitable customer action. Tech companies can use content marketing to educate potential customers about their products and services, address pain points and challenges and provide valuable insights and information.
7 Technology Marketing Tactics That Work
1. Be clear and concise
Marketing copy for any industry should be clear and concise, but when you’re marketing to a highly technical audience, I can’t emphasize this enough. Content may be king, but clarity keeps it on the throne.
We consulted one tech industry client to revamp their homepage content to make it clear that they now offer two main products. I proposed a few sentences that I thought summed up both offerings clearly, with a call-to-action for each. After a few revisions, we landed on the right copy, and the audience responded accordingly.
2. Show, don’t tell
Again, this isn’t just a lesson for technology marketing, but it’s particularly important here.
You might think you’ve done a good job of summarizing what your solution does, but if you’re seeing high bounce rates and low conversions, chances are, you haven’t been specific or clear enough.
Within seconds of visiting your homepage, prospects should understand:
- Who the solution is for
- What problems you’re solving for them
- Why your technology solution is better than existing solutions
- What kinds of results they can expect
- How your technology integrates with other products they already use
The Slack homepage makes it immediately clear what teams can do with its software — share files, connect on a call and collaborate with partners. It also shows the benefits of Slack’s integrations with other tech brands.
3. Meet audiences where they are
Knowing where to find your audience is half the battle of technology marketing.
This is where buyer personas can be very helpful. It’s not enough to just wing it. Whether you interview existing customers, engage in data analytics, conduct a survey or focus group, or use audience research or business intelligence tools like SparkToro, you need to know where your audience or ideal customer spends their time online.
And to get those answers or at the best opportunities, you may need to think beyond conventional social media.
For instance, StackOverflow allows you to place ads where developers and highly technical people are asking specific questions. Reddit operates in a similar way, giving you access to searches for highly targeted topics.
Websites like TechCrunch, DZone or The Hacker News also have advertising opportunities.
Don’t forget about conferences, too. While almost every conference and convention now has a virtual component or digital presence, there is still no substitute for being there, networking and getting face time with clients.
4. Make it easy for them to try your solution
A free trial is a given for most technology buyers, so you need to make yours extremely easy to navigate. Great customer experience from the outset turns trial users into new customers.
The form should include as few fields as possible to remove any barriers to getting started. Consider giving users several options to try your product.
App container solution Docker gives users three ways to get started.
5. Double down on documentation
Whether your tech marketing is reaching prospective customers who are just becoming aware of your solution, actively evaluating it or using it regularly, they’re hungry for more information. Create content that enhances customer satisfaction wherever they are in their lifecycle. Documentation isn’t just for new customers or decision makers; it’s just as valuable for customer retention, as well.
This is the time to:
- Develop in-depth and accessible user guides
- Share playbooks or scripts that help clients solve their problems
- Record demo videos that walk-through your solution’s inner workings
- Host webinars featuring different applications and use cases
As an example, Visual Code Studio has an extensive user guide that covers everything from basic editing to using extensions, debugging, working with GitHub and beyond.
Closer to our hearts, HubSpot Academy, Spotlight and their knowledge base are regularly updated and curated with helpful articles, video content and updates on the newest features in the HubSpot ecosystem. Their years of commitment to value-rich, audience-centric content where it counts (after all, they coined the term ‘inbound marketing’) allows them to also get away with being one of the more absurdist tech companies on social media.
6. Share valuable information that benefits the community
While highly technical audiences may resist ad campaigns or overtly promotional marketing techniques, savvy readers and consumers are all about sharing educational content when it benefits the greater good.
There are plenty of opportunities to get your company’s name out via channels making genuine contributions to the community — often, this can be done without paying a dime. What’s more, brand-positive user-generated content often comes from cultivating an organic and engaged audience.
There’s a podcast or video content for just about every niche, whether it’s digital transformation, cloud security, coding, industry trends or something else. Many podcasts are looking for guests.
Social monitoring tools are another helpful way to add to the discussion. If your product is more niche, you can use HubSpot’s social media monitoring to receive notifications whenever someone mentions it, and then you can decide if it makes sense to engage and respond.
Some companies have user groups or forums you can join to get a better sense of questions or challenges your audience is experiencing. For instance, tech brands like HubSpot and AWS have official communities and discussion forums for startups, developers, security and other topics.
The key is to be helpful, not promotional when contributing in these environments. This is not the place to promote your latest blog post or broadcast a new product announcement. Always think about the greater good.
7. Emphasize software security features
Security has always been important to the tech industry, but it has taken on greater emphasis after a spike in pandemic-era cyber attacks exposed vulnerabilities across digital sectors.
Over 60% of organizations have experienced a data breach from 2022-2024, according to research from the Ponemon Institute.
That means IT leaders, as professionals and as potential customers, will undergo stringent evaluation processes when they consider your software or technology services. Due diligence with your security team is mandatory, and you must have the documentation to validate it.
Be prepared to answer questions such as:
- What is your process for performing system, application and data backups?
- How do you dispose of data?
- Does your security policy cover data privacy and handling, encryption, configuration for network and operating systems, change control and physical access?
- How do you audit your security controls?
- Have you achieved SOC 1 and SOC 2 compliance?
While your marketing team may think of security as a standard and not a differentiator, don’t underestimate its importance in the SaaS sales process. Make sure you’ve addressed security features and policies on your website and your business development team has the support they need to handle tough questions in sales calls.
Effective Marketing Tactics for Tech Companies
Technology companies need to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to digital marketing efforts. Some effective tech marketing strategies and tactics include:
- Utilizing social media platforms to increase brand awareness and engage with target audiences
- Creating targeted marketing campaigns to reach stakeholders and decision-influencers
- Investing in marketing automation tools to streamline and optimize marketing efforts
- Leveraging influencer marketing to reach new audiences and build credibility
- Developing a robust content marketing strategy to educate and inform potential customers
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is critical to any successful marketing strategy for tech companies. Effective social tactics build brand visibility, spark customer engagement, put customer testimonials front and center and foster conversions into your sales funnel. Technology companies can use social media to:
- Build brand awareness and establish thought leadership
- Engage with target audiences and build relationships
- Generate demand
- Provide customer support and service
- Share valuable educational content and information
By leveraging these marketing strategies and tactics, tech companies can stay ahead of the curve and achieve their marketing goals.
Get Help With Your Technology Marketing Strategies
Tech marketing, like any other industry, comes with unique challenges. Technology and software companies often find that identifying their audience is the hardest part. However, once you understand who they are, what they’re looking for, and where they spend their time, you can get their attention.
And once you have their attention and you’ve proven your product or service is useful, a technology company can build a loyal community that will help amplify your message.
Teaming with an experienced digital marketing agency can help you find the right target audience and provide them with the relevant messages and information. At Kuno, we’ve been successfully attracting, converting and closing deals with highly technical audiences for decades. Our team can help you plan effective technology marketing strategies that include a compelling website and digital experience, content marketing resources, search engine optimization, paid advertising, social media and lead nurturing so you can attract buyers you may be struggling to reach.
To learn more about our technology marketing solutions, request a consultation today.
