Effective Promotional Marketing for IT Companies

The marketing department for your IT or technology company should create a well-planned promotional agenda that gets your content marketing assets out to many people. For this step, there must be a clear understanding of what action to take. This needs to be determined by studying what the customers do with the information they are provided with. We’re not saying not to spend money on promotion; we’re saying that in order for it to be effective, it needs to be well planned. That means you have to have all of the other pieces in place first. It is important to have up-to-date knowledge of LinkedIn, Facebook and Google, and to understand how this type of promotion is performing for other organizations.

Inbound Marketing for Technology Companies

As you would expect, sales professionals much prefer using marketing that focuses on outbound lead sourcing techniques, such as tradeshows, direct mail, and telemarketing. That being said, next to email, the three most important lead sources for salespeople are all decidedly inbound – social media, SEO, and blogs.

It turns out, sales professionals do understand inbound marketing, sometimes even better than the marketers do. This will only continue to be the case as the inbound methodology becomes more deeply entrenched in sales, meaning that as time goes on there’s likely to be even less variance between the segments.

Additionally, there are notable differences in the kinds of marketing that different types of companies partake in. B2B and B2C companies tend to prioritize similar inbound tactics, but with a several exceptions. B2B companies will often place a more value on formats that are educational, such as webinars whereas consumer or B2C businesses are more willing to experiment with online tools and interactive content.

Despite these differences, marketing experts do appear more closely aligned when it comes to which tactics to prioritize. This is likely the due to the focus that all marketers place on data and statistics.

Measurement and Reporting

Some of the KPI’s that are listed below could be used to measure performance of a marketing plan:

1. Visits: Although many consider website visits as one of the major KPI’s, measuring the performance of the website does not truly indicate if the marketing plan is working well or not.
2. Unique Users: This information will identify the number of unique users visiting an online site. This would help to understand if you are geographically targeting the right target market.
3. Leads: Through specifically designed content you should be able to nurture the ideal customers and eventually gain them as customers. This metric is often referred as a qualified lead.
4. Lead to Customer Conversion: This KPI measures how many of the qualified leads were you able to convert into customers, so you can better understand the success of the marketing program.
5. Return On Investment (ROI): Return on Investment is defined as the revenue generated by the marketing campaign weighed against the cost associated with the campaign.