Every business needs to be promoted. Companies entering the highly competitive IT market need an effective way to communicate the value of their offerings to the target audience. Successful implementation of products and services, introduction of specialized solutions requires communication with “their” clients.
PR is the starting point of the sales funnel and an important promotional tool that makes a company and its products recognizable. The key task of PR is to warm up the client. It expands the target audience, creates an image, shapes the image of an expert, increases investment opportunities and profits.
If you do not invest in advertising, relying only on word of mouth and the exceptional quality of the product, you can face a situation where even good developments will be unclaimed. The information vacuum will lead to the fact that the client will prefer to buy a similar product from a more promoted competitor.
The main difficulties of PR in the IT-sphere
- The human factor. IT-specialists have formal-logical thinking, operating with algorithms and schemes. PR specialists are unpredictable, working with deviations from their plans. Effective PR is impossible without a “strong back. Before convincing potential clients of the benefits of an IT product and its ability to solve their problems, it is necessary to establish communication between PR specialists and IT specialists. Both parties should accept the possibility of adjusting plans, clarifying or refusing to post information.
- Confidentiality of information. It is often impossible to publish ready-made solutions because of NDA conditions. Therefore the contract concluded between an IT company and PR-agency, always takes into account “red lines” in information sphere. Sometimes you have to coordinate ready-made promotional materials with clients before publication. It is necessary to be ready that the client can withdraw the permission to mention the brand or any specifics even from the already published materials.
- Different target audiences imply different priorities and values. The image of a product or company should be unified, but emphasize different aspects important to each CA segment.
The main tools of PR in IT
PR is a marketing technology that shapes public opinion and helps save resources. It is especially useful in situations when it is necessary to choose effective tools capable of reaching various segments of the target group as much as possible. Using all promotional tools at once leads to unjustified expenses, because different situations require different ways of influence and communication.
- Website. It concentrates all the information about the company and its product, with news, interviews, expert materials – everything that can attract attention and arouse interest. Strict requirements are imposed on the site for usefulness, informativeness, relevance and optimization. Search engines highly evaluate the uniqueness of “human-oriented” content and behavioral factors.
- Corporate Blog. Builds a dialogue, the articles correspond to the topics of the IT-company’s sphere of activity. The blog publishes the most interesting materials corresponding to the philosophy and goals of the company. These can be both successful cases and stories of “failures”, training articles to improve the readers’ literacy in the IT-sphere. Such a presentation creates a respectful attitude and interest, brings an increase in ranking and reposts.
- The media is an opportunity to convey narrowly focused information to potential clients, even those far from IT. Articles are written by IT specialists and then processed by PR specialists with changes in stylistics, presentation, etc. The main formats on external sites are articles, news, interviews, paid publications, summaries of specialized literature. Paid texts are recommended only for an advertising campaign to promote a particular service or product. As a rule, articles in the media are expensive and require the highest level of expertise.
- Social media. Posts on them attract attention, while informativeness is secondary. SMM-promotion is required to work on increasing the presence of the brand, its recognition, the cultivation of loyal users.
- Telegram. Maintaining a channel does not bring in leads, but it helps build an audience without overpowering efforts. In order for the channel to become the mouthpiece of an IT company, you have to write regularly, communicate with the target audience, take commercial placements, and make cross-posts. Let there be fewer readers, but their quality will be higher.
- Contextual advertising also works in line with PR. It allows you to quickly get information to the audience about the product, releases, discounts, and active sales.
- IT events. At these events, meetings with potential clients are held, infopods are created that are used in the future for writing articles and releases. Participation in seminars and conferences allows you to “get noticed” in the core community and build up expertise.
- Ratings, contests, surveys. They increase the importance of the company in the eyes of large customers, create a reputation. Even a startup or a small company that has recently entered the market and is next to a large, “promoted” brand dramatically increases its value in the eyes of users. Who will the client go to if he wants to develop an application or buy a software? Someone who is a recognized expert. If a small company is a “household name,” it may be the first choice for a particular task.
- Press releases. Their publication increases the number of mentions in search engines, reminds about the company and its products, and leads to a permanent presence on the Internet. Releases are placed on general or specialized publishers.
- Guerrilla marketing is a complicated but free method of PR. Creating interesting newsletters, viral videos, memorable actions at conferences or exhibitions requires enthusiasm, adventurism, and out-of-the-box thinking.
One of the basics of PR is content. It is the information environment of the company – texts, videos, and visuals. Thanks to content, emotional messages are formed, a rational explanation of the benefits of a product or service is given.
In order to stay “on the radar screen”, it is necessary to monitor the information space. Significant profile news is searched for, the competitive environment is studied. Thanks to this it is clear which topics (and what level) readers are interested in. The higher is the PR activity of the IT-company, the more accurate picture can be obtained from monitoring.
The effectiveness of PR can be estimated through the annual revenue growth of the IT-company. The effect is always “delayed,” but you can see it. Sometimes the article placed can give a minimum of hits, and then, after six months, “shoot”.
KPIs are used in the short term. Metrics of citation, direct visits to the site and the number of registrations are important. These metrics are needed to evaluate results, to adjust advertising methods.
The cost of PR is never small. Any promotion requires significant funding, but the more specialist a PR specialist is, the lower the company’s costs.
PR methods are universal, but in addition you need to know the nuances of the IT market, understand the difference in the mentality of customers, executors and the target audience. It is necessary to tell about the experience, successes, to interest audience, redirecting it into the sales funnel. This is how an IT company is promoted: it becomes recognizable and the products it produces become in demand.
