Online marketing is often a challenge for IT companies. There are many competitors in the market offering similar services and targeting the same audience. For this reason, it is very important to take the problem of the target audience as a starting point for online marketing and communication. However, in practice we often see that founders and managers within IT companies are very strong on the technical side, which means they tend to think in terms of the possibilities of a product or service. A well-thought-out online marketing strategy can help IT companies identify the challenges in the market, create online visibility with the right people and how to position themselves in the market.
How do you start drawing up an online marketing strategy for your IT company?
When writing an online marketing strategy, it is important to think carefully about what you want to achieve with your IT company, who your target audience and competitor is, which online marketing channels you want to use and how much online marketing budget is available. We’re happy to help you with the above questions by describing them step by step.
What do you want to achieve with your IT company?
Determining goals creates a dot on the horizon. If everyone within the organization is aware of the dot on the horizon, everyone can contribute in their own way. It becomes easier to make choices about whether or not to use certain tools. The absence of objectives in your online marketing strategy can create situations where a manager or director prioritizes his/her own goals. A consequence can be that employees lack a long-term vision and work interchangeably on different goals. They do not know what they are working towards and react to situations ad hoc. This makes work less focused and effective.
It is best to use the SMART method (Specific, Measurable, Acceptable, Realistic and Time-bound) to set goals. Once the objectives are known, you as an IT company can decide which online marketing channels to use to achieve the objectives. Based on the objectives, you can set up KPIs to gauge whether the online marketing campaigns are successful in the interim.
Who do you want to focus on in the market?
As an IT company, when creating an online marketing strategy, it is important to think about who your target audience is. By immersing yourself in the preferences, behaviors and tasks of your target audience, you will find out how and with what message you can best reach these people. With more insight into your target audience, it becomes possible to produce targeted content that you can offer them. The more insight you have into your target audience, the better you can respond to their needs.
Who is your competitor?
When analyzing the competitors, you can ask yourself the following questions; who are our competitors and what differentiates us from our competitors? It is good to ask around internally which companies your colleagues see as competitors. When you know who your competitors are, you can delve more deeply into the marke in which they operate and the target audience on which they focus. This can be done by analyzing the website, reading their blogs and newsletters and keeping an eye on social media.
Which online marketing channels do you want to use?
You can use the knowledge about goals, target audiences and competitors to determine which online marketing channels you want to use. The options are very diverse. It is possible to advertise through Google Ads and/or social media or focus primarily on generating organic traffic with SEO. Which channel (or channels) you choose depends on the available online marketing budget you have to spend and what you want to achieve.
How much online marketing budget is available?
Determining the marketing budget can be done in a number of ways. We have several methods we use for budget determination. The most commonly used method is the turnover percentage method. You calculate a percentage of your sales as your marketing budget. According to a Gartner study, the average marketing budget is between 6.5% and 10% of annual sales. Another method we usually recommend is the task-setting method. In this method, you make a list of marketing activities and calculate what they will generate. You do this based on the marketing and sales funnel. It is important to understand how many leads lead to an MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead), an SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) and/or a customer. For each phase, you can see which online marketing channels provide the most leads or where optimization is needed.
How does Leadgate help?
Now that we have discussed the steps, you can get started writing your online marketing strategy as an IT company. Do you still have questions after reading this blog? Or would you like help figuring out your online marketing strategy? Request a consultation with our specialists via our contact page or call 010 268 1148. We’re happy to help you!
