Promotion of IT companies on the market

What gives the promotion of an IT company

Unwillingness to invest in marketing results in losses and the closure of even promising projects. Meanwhile, in order to expand business, it is necessary to attract new consumers and increase sales. Launching advertising campaigns and promotion on your own, without involving specialists, is undesirable. There is a chance to drain the budget and get no result.

It is necessary to form a need to buy goods from a buyer, and for this purpose a whole complex of measures is used. Marketing for IT-companies takes into account the complexity and intangibility of services and products. To make the client understand his benefit, marketers are required to compose a commercial offer in simple language, using a moderate number of terms.

Promotion in the IT sphere is a set of marketing activities aimed at increasing the company’s scale, market share, and brand recognition. Many companies that are engaged in testing, information security, software development, implement business applications, but do not pay due attention to informing consumers about their services and products.

Peculiarity of promotion of IT companies

As a rule, promotion of a company starts with brand promotion. The mentioning of products or services should evoke a positive response from potential consumers, and must necessarily be associated with the fact that the company offers a solution to “pains”. For example, business support services build confidence, a sense of security, and an understanding that any problem will be quickly closed. Customers don’t have the headache of what to do if something goes wrong, a server crashes, etc.

Therefore, the key position to sell is the promotion of the company’s brand, and only then – the services and products behind it. The work is done through emotions and important meanings for the client. The decision to choose an IT company is often based on the first emotional contact, and then logical justifications are pulled up.

For example, promoting the development of mobile applications, websites, and complex corporate portals requires simplicity of presentation. A company should not at first acquaintance broadcast to potential clients the technical peculiarities of work performance.

If the task is to promote an IT company, it is necessary to sell not the company as such, but ready-made solutions. At the first contact, communication is built on two main factors – security (problem solving) and emotions with a “plus” sign. This is what all the company’s activities should be aimed at, and only after that we can talk about technical aspects.

Optimal mechanism for promoting an IT company

Three main methodologies are used to attract traffic and promote IT-companies (brand):

• PR;
• content marketing (including SEO-optimisation, attracting organic traffic and using Google search engine, national search engines);
• targeting / PPC advertising.

Building advertising bundles requires studying search demand. When working with clients, we always analyse semantic blocks (about 15-20 sets), from which we select promising ones. The result is a stock of offers and bundles attractive to clients, which is then actively used in targeting and search advertising.

A separate topic is the promotion of mobile applications. The same methodologies work in it, but with their own nuances. For example, in SEO for playmarketing goes the purchase and optimisation of advertising for search queries in its microcosm.

Marketing for IT companies implies that the client’s criteria for choosing a supplier of IT services or products are extremely blurred, and he is looking for a ready-made solution. Patience and a significant period of time (up to 1.5 years) will be required for the site to pay off and start bringing in sufficient volumes of applications.

PR as an important tool for promoting IT companies

Selection, integration with local trust sites of the country of promotion and additional purchase of traffic is a normal work of PR department.

Interviews, including interviews with hired people, are effective in PR. Communication is built in such a way that creates a sense of expertise due to the fact of interviewing. The conversation is organised according to the requests necessary for the IT-company, and then by separate blocks and inserts the received material is used in advertising. A quote is taken, a question-answer, like “this helps me”. When used in the announcement, a short video (no more than 30 seconds) is obtained. It should be remembered that the more limited the budget, the less creativity in PR.

• The simplest option is advertising banners on a web portal and native articles placed on the same resource to attract users.
• With small budgets you can use cartoon stories, animation with heroes.
• An interview without an invited guest is an inexpensive and optimal variant of storytelling.
• If there is a budget for marketing, popular persons act as a guest.
• When funding is large, interviews are booked with internal opinion leaders and subject matter experts, each of whom works in their own “field” for a specific segment of the target audience – in TickTock, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. In parallel, a separate programme (a YouTube channel) promoting a specific product (brand) is launched.

When launching a product, it is necessary to understand what directions and segments in the target audience exist. Usually there are three to six of them, but it is best to start with one segment, gradually building up the others.

In each segment, for example, “young people 21-24, men”, there is an opinion leader. You need to find such a person and film an interview with him or her. It can be anyone – the important thing is that they reflect the opinion of their audience, even if it is a very small one. Opinion leaders are taken for each segment, and short interviews are filmed with them, which are then cut into adverts.

Case promotion for IT companies

Most B2B deals are long, complex. It is better to promote IT companies through case studies. They are equally effective in both PR and content marketing, bringing organic traffic. The only difference is that in PR the traffic is brought by a trusted site, which not only attracts significant amounts of traffic, but also gives an opportunity to provide its inflow from outside for money.

Cases should be publicised on as many platforms as possible, using simple methods – publications in industry magazines, on profile platforms. Industry sites have high trust, so they quickly get to the top places of search indexation by keywords. But before a case can be posted, it must be prepared in accordance with the queries on the chosen subject.

If you are writing a case study on mobile application development, you need to clearly optimise specific keys – for example, “mobile application development for the fintech/financial sector”. Seoscientists and copywriters should work on them, so that the finished material enters the index well and brings a significant amount of traffic.

The majority of profile sites do not support the possibility of interaction with visitors. It is extremely difficult to get access to the base of those who read the material and build a retargeting funnel with them. Therefore, you need to grow your own web resource, publish cases on it, build up traffic from targeting, from all over the world and work with this base of interested users who are ready for further progression.

For example, a number of sites (not industry-specific sites!) offer an opportunity to publish cases of various IT companies. It makes sense to post on them if the site has existed for many years and is among the trusted sites. This allows you not only to get a lot of traffic, but also to promote special projects at a cost lower than that of all available portals.

If a client wants to launch a special project with a guaranteed volume of traffic, he will need at least 5400 $. Similar work on the portal of such a site will cost two or three times less. At the same time, he can get a retargeting base as a bonus.

The client receives SEO-optimised and re-linked material on the site, guaranteeing traffic from search engines and contextual advertising, with ready-made lead forms. When publishing case studies, the client can expect a clickability rate (CTR) of 0.2-0.8%.

It should be understood that cases are projects implemented earlier, sometimes even several years ago. This delay is due to the fact that a lot of time passes between the deal, the sale and the first results for the client. There may be no feedback on them, as in some businesses, clients may be mega-cool but one-off. Publishing case studies with examples, before/after results, your own finds and failures increases CA interest.

Importance of contextual advertising and targeting for IT company promotion

Contextual advertising is necessary to attract leads to the site and quickly get profit. The channel works from the first day of launch. The advertising campaign allows you to adjust the strategy, change budget inputs, adjust targeting. At the same time, the effectiveness of PPC advertising depends on financial investments.

The channel performs well if:

• segmentation by service type;
• low-frequency, narrowly targeted queries;
• conversion queries;
• remarketing.

The effectiveness of contextual advertising is assessed by analysing queries and conversions. If you do this constantly, optimising the advertising campaign, the channel pays off the funds invested in promotion.

If we talk about contextual advertising, PPC, targeting, the correct methodology will be the selection of semantic bundles that take into account the relevance of proposals. One should take into account the financial capabilities of the customer in the search query. For example, the customer has an application that analyses 25 thousand shares, and due to this it has a huge potential.

Taking the query “analyse TOP 50 stocks”, which is often searched for by users, you can count on targeting and contextual advertising to answer that this particular application offers this feature. It is designed for such a thing, picking up the TOP of 10, 50, 150 shares.

In practice, a user from a search query goes to a microlending, which offers a convenient google-key registration to explore the top stocks. As a result, a relevant response to the customer’s query is built at all stages of the funnel. Next, he plummets inside the app, registers. A tag is thrown in, where he came from, a filter is switched on, and he is shown exactly the TOP 50 stocks to buy.

Having dismantled such a semantic block once, a similar thing is done for targeting. Banners are drawn and texts relevant to the query are written for subsequent placement on the landing page. As a result, one microlending closes both the search demand and solving the client’s problem by using the application.

Traffic will come from various directions – from YouTube, FB, search engines Yahoo!, Xing, etc. Once on the same screen, the traffic gives high conversion rate. If you send such traffic to an ordinary customer’s website, the conversion rate will be 1-3%. When there is a hypersegmented traffic, with the coincidence of all offers in the chain, the conversion demonstrates the effectiveness of 5 to 20%. Almost every fifth visitor registers. On average, even 7-8% conversion rate is an excellent result.

Reviews and recommendations, which are advised by marketers to form a positive perception of the company, do not have a significant impact on promotion. But you should not go to extremes and completely abandon them: to increase trust, you should work with reputation, work off negativity, and practice posting video reviews.

The coverage of clients when promoting an IT-company is also conducted at offline events (seminars, mitaps, conferences). In order to push the client to choose a particular solution (company), it is necessary to demonstrate their effectiveness.

Setting a goal and using competitors’ experience when promoting IT companies

The company’s management should have a measurable, specific and achievable goal, for example, to increase traffic by n per cent or to increase the conversion rate of the website by a specific percentage, to get a certain number of leads every month, etc. In order to realise the intended goal, it is necessary to develop a content strategy, set benchmark KPIs, create a recognisable image of the product (brand), and select working mechanics and promotion formats.

Any promotional activity starts with analysing competitors and the market. The IT field implies a general technological savvy of both sellers and buyers. Competitors, in order to promote themselves, have previously conducted market research and have strengths and weaknesses, and work with the identified triggers of the target audience. By analysing the experience of competitors, you can avoid mistakes and use ready-made solutions tested in practice.

IT company’s search for “its” client for fast promotion

As a rule, it is not an easy task for IT companies, as the audience is quite diverse. Some people choose products, others decide to pay for them. The majority of consumers and users do not want to know anything about how “it works” at all. What they want is to get a concrete result that solves problems and simplifies life.

The success of an IT company’s advertising depends on the accuracy of the customer profile. Content, the list of services, sales texts, and blogging in social networks are based on knowledge of the client’s needs.

Different pages are provided for different groups of clients. The product must be adapted to the needs of a particular segment of the CA! To persuade, you will need to think through a communication strategy, choose effective advertising channels, and create a clear marketing plan in accordance with the tasks of informing, persuading or reminding.

Contextual advertising is set up taking into account the segmentation by types of services and niches, by queries of different frequency, with giving the keys a commercial tone. Remarketing is set up for potential customers.

Advertising an IT company alone is not enough for high sales. You have to find an approach to a potential client. Details are important: the commercial offer, the welcome letters, the promptness of technical support. It is necessary to position a person, to create triggers that he will not be able to forget.

Tools for promoting an IT company

Having correctly set goals, a promotion strategy is developed. The key promotion tools for IT companies are SEO, PPC, social activity, and profile events.

The role of SEO in promoting IT companies

The better a company’s website is, the higher the client’s trust. It is difficult to achieve perfection, but it is necessary to audit the site, analyse competitors, collect semantics and improve the structure. Through internal and external optimisation, ranking increases.

SEO helps to increase traffic through conversions from the most conversion channel – search engine. This is why it is so important to be at the top of the search results for certain queries. The advantage of the channel is an increase in the number of interested users, brand awareness, and a reasonable cost per conversion.

• It is necessary to optimise the site, make it interesting for search engine robots and attractive for users. For this purpose, the structure of the site, usability, technical characteristics, link profile and methods of information presentation, quality content are improved.
• Having the collected semantic kernel, new service pages are created, ready-made business solutions are demonstrated in the blog, which testify to the competence of specialists and their expert level.
• Work on expanding the structure of the site improves ranking, increases the flow of interested users, increases conversion. High-frequency and general queries in IT-theme – evil! To attract leads, queries are detailed and different landing pages are created.
• Tidying up a website is impossible without internal optimisation. Search engine robots evaluate the site by technical parameters, which include the absence of broken links, competent SEO layout, correct addresses, mobile version of the site, loading speed, ease of navigation, etc.
• Content is the basis of promotion. To make the information available for perception will help a few rules. The text is written by a specialist-aitishnik, and makes it readable copywriter. Interviews and videos are the best formats for increasing expertise and loyalty. Consumers may not be able to read the text, but they will remember the numbers and facts. The quality of content affects the promotion of an IT company. Content should be published not only on internal platforms (website, blog), but also on external ones (thematic portals, mass media). The clearer the texts are, the better the position of the site in the search engine.
• External optimisation takes into account the number of mentions and links to the materials of the site, located on other resources. The authority of the site depends on how often it is talked about and referenced. Crowd-marketing, links from social networks, video content, industry directories, catalogues, ratings are working tools for obtaining quality links.

How the level of social engagement affects IT marketing performance

Activity in social networks is needed to build a loyal audience, promotion. In order to gain a foothold in the market, IT companies need the trust of potential customers. The width of coverage of social channels determines the stability of users’ sympathies.

There are a lot of platforms oriented towards specialists – developers, programmers, creatives. Presence on them creates an image of an expert, attracts leads and target clients.

• Working on Q&A services requires time expenditure, but it gives a good result for building up the reputation of an expert.
• On business portals, company profiles are posted, specialists are sought, and the “weight” of the brand is built up.
• On information platforms, industry articles are published, which work on the company’s recognisability.
• Directory sites for selecting developers allow you to advertise yourself, promoting yourself on the international market.

Support of the IT company’s activity in profile communities

IT companies use profile communities (seminars, conferences, exhibitions, webinars, courses). Participation in them as an expert, speaker works for promotion, makes the company visible on the market.

At offline and online events, business partners are found, customer contacts are established, valuable experience is gained, expertise is built up, information about the development and promotion of competitors is tracked, and the brand is strengthened.

Advertising of an IT company should take into account that services and products in this sphere have a high price. To achieve promotion goals, it is necessary to analyse growth points, select channels that bring maximum profit.

POST AUTHOR

Petr Dzyuba

IT marketing expert