The use of online marketing offers a lot of growth potential for the IT market. Why is online marketing for IT so promising? And how do you generate leads specifically in the IT market? We give you 5 steps to generate more leads with online marketing.
Why is online marketing interesting for IT?
With the rise of the internet, there is almost no company left that does not focus on online marketing and uses offline marketing only in combination with online. Developments in the industry follow each other in rapid succession and online marketing budgets continue to grow. Online marketing is popular. It is cheaper, easier to target and more measurable. And most importantly, consumers are finding themselves online more and more often and for longer. No company wants to miss this opportunity.
Next, let’s look at the IT market. The shift of consumers from offline to online has certainly not skipped the IT market. Whereas this market used to rely mainly on leads via its own network, recent research indicates lead generation through the website as one of the most important sources of leads. In addition, the Dutch ICT sector is growing strongly: the expectation for 2018 is a 6% growth, and the expectation for 2019 is that the market will grow by another 5%.
The growing IT market and the fact that the customer is increasingly online in that market as well, makes online marketing an interesting growth opportunity for IT companies. But online marketing is very different for each industry in terms of approach. How do you approach this as an IT company? We give you a step-by-step plan that will help you generate more leads in 5 steps.
Step 1: Shape your online marketing strategy
Everything starts with strategy. To win a contest, you have to have a strategy in advance. In online marketing for IT, too, it’s best to start with a good strategy. Set goals: what do you want to achieve with your online marketing? For example: how many leads, conversions or clicks do you want per month? Think about which topics, products or services you are going to focus on with your online marketing. Consider which online marketing resources you want to use for this and determine your budget.
Don’t forget to think about the communication strategy. Your target audience also includes people who have no knowledge of IT. A target audience survey will quickly show that your target audience consists of two subgroups. In addition to IT people, these include managing directors, operational managers and various senior employees, who are looking for a solution to a current problem. The challenge is to keep your communication messages understandable, so that less technical people also understand what you offer.
Step 2: Write good content
Good content is key to winning over potential customers through online marketing for IT. In addition, good content will help you score high in the search engines. The idea of good content is that you offer the reader something that is of value to him or her. Time and attention must therefore be spent on the content.
Think in advance about your content calendar, your topics and the form in which you will offer the content. Examples of content that work well in online marketing for IT are infographics, fact sheets, white papers, reference cases, videos, blogs, trials/demos.
Step 3: Set up your advertising
Now that your strategy and content are in place, you can start advertising. The ideal goal of advertising in online marketing for IT is to generate leads who enter their contact details in exchange for content. In the IT market, the order value is higher and the purchasing process takes longer. That’s why you first want to generate leads: people who are interested in your product or service. You will get the most return on LinkedIn Ads and Google Ads. These are the platforms where most B2B leads are generated.
With LinkedIn Ads you push content to the target audience (push marketing). The target audience sees the advertisement in their timeline. LinkedIn Ads is ideal for this, because you can target very specifically. On LinkedIn you can target, among other things, job title, company industry, company size, field of study, and skills of your target audience. Take full advantage of this by tailoring the message precisely to the target audience and, if necessary, create different advertisements for this, aimed at different sub-target audiences.
Google Ads is a form of pull marketing, where the target audience is already actively looking for a product or a solution to a problem. You just need to know which keywords to advertise on. To do this, do your research in advance. Put yourself in the shoes of the target audience for which your product or service is intended. This way you discover the underlying needs of the target audience and you can adjust your ad text and keywords accordingly.
Step 4: Optimize your website
You’ve written a catchy ad, well done! But what page does your target audience land on after the click? This is where website optimization comes into play. Make sure the content of the landing page matches your ad text and your call to action. With a relevant landing page you ensure a higher conversion rate and score higher in the search engines. Tip: with marketing automation software you can build special landing pages that are purely focused on the intended conversion, without distracting menus, texts or links. This will increase your conversion rate. Furthermore, make sure the website looks attractive and has a clear and user-friendly structure. Website optimization involves a lot of testing. You can apply A/B testing to see what works and what doesn’t.
Step 5: Follow up on your leads with marketing automation
Now that you have generated leads with online advertising and your website optimization is in order, it is time for lead follow-up. In online marketing for IT, this is best done with marketing automation. Marketing automation is warming up leads through lead nurturing. To do this, you develop a schedule (workflow) that the lead goes through after downloading, for example, a white paper. As this workflow progresses, the lead will receive automated emails. For example, this may contain new content that ties in with the previous content that the lead has read. This way you work towards the moment when the lead is ready to be approached by your sales. The big advantage of marketing automation is the ‘automation’: you develop the workflow once and then you only have to monitor and optimize it.
Bonus tip: Use the power of referrals
In the IT market, references are often of decisive value. Switching systems or service providers isn’t a small decision, especially for large companies. An IT decision often affects a company’s entire infrastructure. That is why a company wants to be sure that the choice is future-proof. References from successful customers who have chosen the product or solution in a similar situation, and where this delivered positive results, can give that extra push. Therefore, make sure you have a graphically attractive reference database in a clearly visible place on your website.
Wishing you good luck (and many leads)!
Leadgate specializes in online marketing for IT
Could your IT company use some help with online marketing? Leadgate is the ideal online marketing partner for IT companies, because our specialists have knowledge of IT, but also understand how the market works. This allows us to quickly understand your issues and tackle them easily. Because we offer online marketing ‘as a service’, the offer can be tailored to your wishes. Are you curious about Leadgate? Please feel free to contact us, or take another look at our website.
