Implementing Digital Marketing for IT Industry
Introduction
Implementing a “Digital Marketing for IT industry” has been quite an interesting topic for us. Partly because, we find it intriguing and mostly because, “Hello! We love doing digital marketing to businesses in the B2B scale”.
A pretty familiar subject among marketers, Digital Marketing has been creating a revolution for quite some time now.
Therefore, our strategy towards this write-up is pretty simple. We’re going to help marketers prune up their digital marketing strategy to help them spend their marketing budget wisely.
Let’s get started.
CHAPTERS
History of B2B Digital Marketing
How has B2B marketing been perceived over the years?
The concept of marketing was once a linear approach to the audience. An ad was run on the TV and if customers found it interesting, they buy the product. There’s never really been concepts like Cost Per View, Cost Per Acquisition, ROI etc.
Today, however, thanks to the dynamics of the internet, customers and brands are coexisting on the same level.
Contemporary marketing has graphically changed its concept from linear to a resonating approach. This holds true for B2C and B2B marketing.
Buyers today, are far more empowered with information than before.
From the evolution of computers in 1981 by IBM to Artificial Intelligence empowered machines, technology has played a predominant role in revolutionizing B2B marketing over the years.
Given below is an infographic on a few disruptive trends in the era of B2B marketing, that has paved its way to what it is now!
Digital Marketing for IT Industry
As you can see from the above infographic, technology has created an immense power in expanding the concept of marketing to peers. However, despite these amazing innovations, digital marketing for IT needs skill and strategy.
The right digital strategy, empowered with the right framework, can accelerate your business growth immensely. The first step to establish a digital strategy, is to start by identifying your buyer persona.
Identifying your Buyer Persona
What are Buyer persona and how can you use them for marketing for your Business?
Buyer personas or marketing personas are fictional, generalized representations of your target audience. They are useful for marketers in categorizing their customer according to their age, gender, designation, interests etc. This categorization helps you identify tailor-made strategies that can suit these personas.
How critical are these Buyer personas?
Personas help us in planning overall strategies for marketing, sales, product/services etc. It’s an ideal way of having a deeper understanding of your audience, their interests and critical in driving content creation, video marketing, sales follow up, and really anything that relates to customer acquisition and retention.
How can you create a buyer persona for IT industry?
A buyer persona for IT industry must include the following points while researching:
- Background – Job Description | Hierarchy (Executive, Manager, Director etc.)
- Demographic – Gender | Age | Location | Income (Range)
- Identifiers – Demeanor | Communication Preference
- Goals – Primary Goal | Secondary Goal
- Challenges – Primary Challenge | Secondary Challenge
- What can we do – How can you convince your persona to achieve the goals?
- Marketing message – Solution for reaching out (Crafting a content)
- Elevator Pitch – Sell your solution to your persona!
What goes into the “Broth”?
What techniques are most useful?
The IT industry is a platform that strongly witnesses rapid changes in innovation. Therefore, the most important concern before we create any marketing strategy is to ensure that your digital “department” is constantly aware of the upcoming trends.
In general, however, the basic ingredients of this broth, is simple, straightforward and the obvious.
Digital Marketing for IT Industry (The Basic)
Search Engine Optimization – 93% of online experiences begin with a search engine. It’s a concept that started materializing in the year 2007 and the last decade has seen a spur of businesses battling to reach the top of Google with related search keywords! It’s a relatively old technique that plays a crucial role in businesses in the IT industry.
PPC Advertising – While SEO is for the meticulous, PPC Campaigns are for the fast-paced. It’s a faster form of advertising that brings your brand on the top of the search engine.
Its one of the widely used techniques to gain traction into the website. Infact, you would be surprised to see how most popular companies in the IT industry still come up with PPC Campaigns to be on the top.
Content Marketing: Content marketing is one of the most widely used forms of Digital Marketing technique for the IT industry. It has multiple objectives and can be used in every step from building awareness to increasing visibility, generating brand loyalty, nurturing campaigns, lead generation and conversion.
In fact, content marketing generates 3X mode leads and is 62% cheaper than traditional marketing. Great content is simply adapting to interesting, quirky and smart writing. This technique encompasses all forms of projection – websites, blogs, social media, emails and case studies. Your content needs to be engaging and relevant to your buyer personas. 88% of B2B marketers are using content marketing, and those who aren’t using it to its full advantage will fall short to the competition.
What’s the new recipe?
New Trends for implementing digital marketing for IT Industry
Influencer Marketing In B2B Marketing
Influencer marketing for B2B sector is quite different from B2C influencer marketing. For instance, companies like Oracle, Infosys don’t look for celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan or Kamal Hassan to influence their brand to the public. Instead, they opt for a reliable, savvy and authoritative resource with a reputation to act as their brand’s voice.
For instance, this article on how Deloitte used Artificial Intelligence to help in recruitment served as a strong testament to implementing Influencer marketing in B2B marketing. You don’t have to stick to top MNC’s but also to strong powerful designations for customer testimonials and case studies help to influence decision making.
For instance, here are few of Hubspot’s Client Testimonials.
Their client testimonials are given by professionals with a higher, authoritative and convincing designation. This drives your users (decision makers) to trust in your brand, having seen that their peers do too!
Collaborative Business Partnerships
Today, businesses are taking a collaborative turn towards partnering with peers who can contribute to accelerating their growth. Business partnerships are done keeping in mind that frameworks and ideas can help each other grow. However, the trick is not in combining business of the same genre but from different practices as well.
For instance, PayPal has established more than 25 strategic partnerships across the sector in a span of 20 months. They have partnered with financial networks, issuers and acquirers; with major retailers, marketplaces and technology companies. They have also partnered with leading social sector organizations like the Red Cross and public sector players such as the Indian government.
Podcasts and Webinars
According to the latest Podcast Consumer report by Edison Research, the percentage of people listening to podcasts week over week and month over month is on the rise. Although a new form of marketing, Podcasts are still growing. Based on accumulated data and research to date, Bridge Ratings projects podcast ad spend to hit over $500 million by 2020.
You see, when someone follows a podcast, they end up following this podcast for weeks and months at a time, as it plays out in a series. Throughout this time, the podcaster is educating his or her listeners on a specific topic, forming a relationship with them and building a foundation of trust. People (yes even those behind businesses) buy from people they trust.
Content Marketing + Lead Generation
Creating consistent, valuable content to attract leads is no longer optional. While this is an obvious and wide-spread marketing activity, there are a still some ways you can stand out where other businesses are falling short:
Social Selling for Brands
Business always love LinkedIn! It's a platform that has over half a billion registrants, and majority of the decision makers under a single hemisphere!
Did you know according to LinkedIn Statistics:
- 40 million of these members are decision-makers for their companies
- 61 million are senior level influencers
- LinkedIn is the most used social network for Fortune 500 companies
LinkedIn for B2B marketing continues to grow as it has always been for the last couple of years. The platform provides a WORLD of opportunity and with Social Selling, there’s all the more reason to go on the platform.
LinkedIn is seen as the most effective networking site to accomplish this.
Here are some social selling metrics according to LinkedIn:
This is a prime example of working with the tools you have! You are more than likely already on the site as an individual, networking and building relationships. Use this time to build a leads list and then work them into your sales funnel.
Video Content
The HubSpot State of Video Marketing in 2018 survey found that 81% of businesses use video content as part of their marketing strategy. Of those who don’t, 65% say they plan to use it this year.
And with 74% of business people saying they’ve made a purchase after watching another company’s video, it’s no wonder why video should be on every organization’s radar.
From explainer videos to webinars to behind the scenes footage, there are many ways your team can successfully implement video in 2018 and beyond. Still not convinced that video marketing is a powerful strategy, take a look at 100+ video marketing stats you need to know in 2020.
Long-form Content
Buzzsumo and Moz teamed up to see what types of content gets shared they found that 85% of content published on the web contains less than 1000 words.
This means that everyone is doing the same thing! Therefore the smart way to get your content noticed is to be a part of the other 15% and write content that’s more than 1000 words. It’s time for marketers to think outside the box and write content with some depth and backed with research.
Email Prospecting and Drip Automation Mailers
The next thing that’s most successful after long form content is prospecting emails of your target audience. At Spinta Digital, implementing Email prospecting and Drip automation mailers has been one of the most successful digital marketing straggly for the IT industry.
An intelligent drip campaign is essentially an automated email campaign with auto-responders, emails that are customized according to the user life-cycle. Drip mailers play an integral part in implementing marketing automation technique as it is a series of pre-written emails written based on every user’s assumption and potential reaction to your brand.
Email prospecting, on the other hand, is the ability to collect your prospect’s (your potential target audience, based on the buyer persona) email id and drive them into a drip campaign to nurture and convert them thereafter!
Account-Based Marketing (ABM)
87% of marketers say that Account Based Marketing, leads to the largest increase in ROI.
This is widely due to the effect of personalization and a concentrated approach that businesses can have for convincing your targeted audience. When it comes to spending your time with ABM, you are using your energy and time to sell a personalized pitch to a customer that you know is perfect for your business. This means, your chance of getting lost in the sea of requests, is close to zero.
Implementing Virtual Reality In B2B
Virtual reality is a game changer for businesses! It allows you, as the marketer or sales rep, to be present while the client moves through this unique sensory experience. They can ask questions while testing and visualizing the product that you can answer in real-time.
The experience can help to squash any hesitations or reservations right away, allowing your clients to make a more immediate and educated guess.
Programmatic Media Buying
Today, more and more ad bidding is done through programmatic buying, which uses computer algorithms to analyze data and automate the purchasing of desired digital advertising space.
Programmatic media buying simplifies the process of digital advertising and speeds up the process as well.
Reports suggest that ad spending for Programmatic media is rising at a rate of 20% per year. An eMarketer study shows similar projections through the end of next year:
This type of ad buying and targeting allows for more detailed analytics, increased personalization (there’s our favourite term again) and, therefore, more precise audience targeting.
Employee Advocacy For B2B
Any post shared by an employee that reflects his or her organization technically counts as employee advocacy.
As mentioned above, businesses don’t need celebrities to publicize but honest, strong efforts from individuals.
To make a brand appeal to its clients, businesses these days have started encouraging their employees to rep their brand and showcase it to the world, essentially using these employees as marketing, sales and recruiting assets.
The most common type of employee advocacy involves employees taking to social media (LinkedIn) to share content from their organization with their own networks.
Sales & Marketing Alignment
In the last couple of years, we are looking at a more unified objective towards combining marketing, customer relationship and sales into a single package.
A relatively new trend, this is now seeing marketers getting more involved in lead nurturing activities (refer content based lead generation and ABM for more).
The results from a global LinkedIn study found that 79% of companies admit their sales and marketing teams collaborate. On top of that, 58% said this collaboration helped in retaining customers and 54% said it helped increase overall financial performance. The fact is, both teams’ goals must align for the overall organizational goal (to make money) to be realized. There’s no other way around it.
How has Spinta Digital helped IT companies in B2B marketing?
At Spinta digital, we craft our Digital marketing strategy for IT companies in a well-researched, customized approach. Every business that comes to us, have different goals and agenda. Therefore, our strategy to enforce digital marketing for IT companies varies based on their requirements.
Following this write up, we will be showing you some of our renowned IT clients and how our strategies have helped them in achieving their desired results.
Spinta Digital: Case Study
Digital Marketing for IT industry
Redington Cloud: Cloud Solutions Company (India)
Redington cloud is a one-stop cloud services company in India offering cost-effective cloud solutions including application integration, cloud security with best practices.
Their mission is to help organizations to adopt cloud seamlessly by providing cloud consultation and managed services.
Sales Challenges faced by Redington Cloud
- Redington’s sales teams faced a diminished ability to reach out to prospects via cold calling.
- Cold calling was not only inefficient but also diminished the chance to reach the real decision makers.
- Although clients increasingly do their own research online they were unable to reach out to Redington due to diminutive branding.
- Failing to showcase a thought-leadership by leveraging relevant content to their clients.
- Sales reps from Redington often dealt with inaccurate information and failed to reach the right decision makers with the right message.
Solutions provided by Spinta Digital: Social Selling & Lead Generation
Spinta Digital’s lead generation services helped Redington Cloud identify their primary target audiences by matching their data points.
Our predominant contribution was in assisting them to promote Microsoft Azure towards the right target audiences.
To start with the process, we split their target audiences into segments to reach out to them with more personalized messages.
Campaign Goal
To position and promote Microsoft Azures the referable could solution for SAP clients. To get this started we divided our campaign into two segments.
- Targeting direct SAP end clients to adopt using Microsoft Azure as the cloud service provider.
- Targeting SAP implementation partners to become channel partners to Redington for Microsoft Azure.
Our KPI’s included:-
Conversation Samples
Final Results
CRG Solutions (India)
Corporate Renaissance Group (CRGroup), is an internationally recognized business consulting firm, a certified partner and implementer of Microsoft Solutions for Business, developer and reseller of top business systems.
Headquartered in Canada, CR Group has been helping businesses transform the way they work by effectively implementing business processes and technology solutions.
As the primary certified partner and implementer for Alteryx analytics platform in India, their mission is to help companies improve financial and operational performance and increase efficiency by designing comprehensive enterprise-level dashboards; business intelligence solutions; shared services strategies; and employee performance management programs.
What was their Objective?
As the primary certified partner and implementer for Alteryx analytics platform in India, CR Group found it primitive to increase their brand presence via “Breakfast Event”. Their primary objective for the breakfast event was:-
Brand CR Group as a leading solutions provider for Alteryx in India.
Prospect and reach out to Analytics professionals (primary target audience) across Mumbai who would find this event interesting.
Prospect and reach out to Head of Technology, CTO’s etc. (secondary target audience) who can be a part of this event to learn more about what’s trending in Analytics.
Reach out to HR Managers, (tertiary target audience) who can pass the message to their Analytics team and invoke their interest to attend the event.
Service Provided: Email prospecting & Drip Automation
Experts at Spinta Digital devised a simple, yet significant way to bring in traction to their Breakfast event.
First and foremost, we analysed their key points:
Presenting the Alteryx Analytics Platform which enables data preparation, data blending, & advanced predictive analytics, in hours, not weeks or months.
A chance to meet and build interesting peer-to-peer conversations around Analytics.
Opportunities to learn from the experts about “Thrill Of Problem Solving“.
Keynotes on empowering Data Analyst.
Using Alteryx to prep and build advanced data models.
FREE ENTRY passes for attendees.
Seeping these KPI’s in mind, we sketched the following plan:
- Formulate a mail prospecting plan that helped us reach out to qualified target audiences based on their data points.
- Draft messages that are unique and helps these audiences understand the prominence of this event.
- Email automation to invite attendees and keep them in track before the course of the event.
Our Results
Syngco (UK)
Digital Marketing Strategy from Spinta Digital
Our major contribution was indulged into expanding their domain into the digital space including – Web Solutions, Lead Generation, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Content Marketing and Email Marketing.
Web Solutions
We were first and foremost entrusted with providing web solutions for Syngco. After a detailed discussion with their management, we understood their objectives and how they want to convey their platform to the audience. Our web experts finalized on using “Joomla” to create their website. At its root, we always believed that Syngco’s website should carry the following characteristics imperatively.
- Easy to navigate user interface.
- Legible content that helps users understand what the sector is all about.
- Neat and tidy outlook to help users navigate around
- Proper contact forms and latest updates on what’s happening on the banking and finance sector.
Lead Generation
Our next agenda was to embark on the lead generation domain for Syngco. Keeping in mind their main goal – to collect users interested in IT Service, we strategized a Linkedin marketing solution that could help embark them in this journey.
Our team of executives handled the following spectrum of Linkedin Marketing.
- Individual profile monitoring on LinkedIn.
- Online reputation management of profiles and company prospectus on LinkedIn.
- Private interaction with leads to expand business via LinkedIn.
- Market the sector through articles on LinkedIn Pulse.
- Share news, updates and corporate stories via Slideshare.
Search Engine Optimization
Spinta’s team of SEO analyst were entrusted with the optimization of Syngco‘s website.
Our team performed the following.
- Keyword analysis for IT Service cloud service and digital marketing.
- Generation of SEO optimized content to go with the website.
- On-Page SEO optimization for the web page.
- Off-Page SEO optimization for the brand.
- Bookmarking and directory submission for the brand.
Social Media Marketing
- Designed infographics and other social media posts that was to be shared in their platforms.
- Handled online reputation management for Syngco on social media channels.
- Managed the following social channels – Facebook, Twitter, SlideShare and LinkedIn.
- Developed selective and relevant hashtags like – #syngco, #IT service etc.
- Managed their Google+ profile.
- Handled client interaction and response to queries on their Facebook page.
- Sharing seasonal greetings and events online with relevant hashtags.
Content Marketing
- Integrated blog for Syngco to enable content marketing.
- Composed SEO optimized content to help drive traffic through online mediums.
- Distributed content in various platforms including – Scoop.it, Medium, Pulse and Visual.ly.
- Worked on Guest Post submission.
- Provided backlinks for SEO generation process.
Email Marketing
- Emailed leads grabbed from LinkedIn profile monitoring.
- Sent weekly updates on Finance and Trading to users.
- Distributing blogs through email marketing
- Softwares used – (Mailchimp and Send Blaster).
Syngco has been one of our major clients. Their constant feedback and interaction with our team have helped us deliver our results on time and with precision. Interacting and working for them has been an absolute delight for our team.
Net Access (India)
About Net Access
Net Access India offers a variety of professionally managed IT infrastructure services. Backed by leadership and expertise of more than two decades, Net Access offers the industry’s broadest portfolio of technology solutions and professional services to both large enterprise clients, small medium business customers across multiple industry verticals.
The Challenge
When we first met Net Access, we understood that they needed a website which was responsive, rich in keywords and enriched with a user-friendly interface. Spinta Digital’s web development team delivered just that. We understood their requirements and delivered a website that corresponds to their requirements.
Our Goal
To understand the problems faced by their existing website and to create a responsive website solution for Net Access Group.
Our web design team made sure to:
- Improved functionality and usability, including a mobile-responsive design.
- Easy navigation that would reduce the number of clicks to key sections of the site.
- SEO optimized web content.
- Social media integration on the platform.
NEXT
Conclusion
We have put together a holistic approach to how Digital Marketing can be carried for IT industry. To learn more, visit our link – Spinta Digital: Digital Marketing Services
