The IT Services market is booming! This means the competition is fierce for IT companies, but with the right digital marketing strategies in place, you can expect real growth.
To effectively execute any digital marketing program, you must know your audience. But this is especially true in digital marketing for IT companies, considering the level of competition you’re up against.
After all, Statista estimates that overall worldwide IT spending is forecast to increase by 8% between 2023 and 2024.
During this time of increased spending and growth in the IT industry, it’s become more important than ever for tech companies to run digital marketing campaigns that hit the mark so they can thrive amongst the competition.
Before we dive into the 9 tried and tested digital marketing strategies for IT companies, we are going to dip into 3 unique factors to consider when digital marketing to IT decision makers.
3 unique factors (and tips) to consider when building digital marketing programs for your IT company:
1. IT professionals are a well-educated, intelligent audience.
In 2023, 64 percent of surveyed business leaders in the IT industry globally reported that they were currently targeting candidates with an undergraduate degree (Statista).Many IT professionals have formal education in computer science, information technology, engineering, or related fields. This provides them with a strong foundation in technical skills and problem-solving abilities. When you’re at the stage in your IT digital marketing efforts where you are developing marketing content and need to write copy, keep this in mind.
Tip: Cater your writing style to tech-savvy readers:
- IT professionals are comfortable reading and understanding complex topics. As such, ad copy can be longer and more technical than advertising norms in other industries. Don’t get me wrong: ad copy should still be succinct, and you should distil complex ideas into concise language. However, your approach should also include technical references and longer sentence structures.
2. The IT field is an extremely male-dominated sector,
with women accounting for only 14% of tech leadership in 2023 (Techopedia). There is fortunately a push for gender diversity in tech roles, but for now we have to face the fact that it’s a predominantly male audience seeing and experiencing your IT digital marketing strategies.
Tip: Design for a male-dominated field
- Use darker, bold, and neutral colours such as blue, black, grey, and green. On the other hand, veer away from lighter, pastel, or warm colours such as pink, purple, teal, or gold.
- When selecting imagery, use visuals that emphasize functionality, technology, and practicality. Alternatively, women tend to prefer visuals that emphasize lifestyle, relationships, and aesthetics.
- Note: want to be creative and stand apart from the competition here? Then throw caution to the wind, and instead of catering your advertising to the majority of the crowd (men) – it could be worth testing out a campaign catered to the 14% of female technology leaders, or the crowd of non-binary and transgender folks in the IT field... just sayin’!
3. The IT field thrives on innovation and forward-thinking.
Use digital marketing to highlight how your product or service is at the cutting edge of technology. Pay attention to trending topics and use industry-specific language or terms that resonate with IT professionals.Tip: Be creative with your digital marketing, and try new things:
- Try out experimental campaigns that push the boundaries of traditional digital marketing. This could include interactive websites, unexpected messaging or gamification.
- Stay updated with emerging digital marketing platforms and technologies, such as marketing with Intent data. Being an early adopter can give you an edge.
With the IT industry growing at warp speed and 66% of companies planning to increase their IT budgets in 2024 (Spiceworks), effective digital marketing for IT companies is more of a priority than ever.
For a bit of inspiration, take a look at our 9 powerful digital marketing strategies for IT Companies:
1. Brand Awareness: ABM-targeted LinkedIn Advertising
This is a great option if you have a specific list of accounts (net new or existing customers) that you want to promote your IT solution to, via social media marketing. We have over a decade of hands-on advertising experience on LinkedIn's social media platform, and several LinkedIn certifications. Your LinkedIn Message Ads, Sponsored Ads, Carousel Ads, or Text Ads will be developed with quality messaging catered to an IT target audience, and stand-out design that makes your brand pop with potential customers.
2. Brand Awareness: Competitive Takeout Google Ads
Looking to displace some of your competitor’s business and gain additional potential customers? Build a series of google ads targeting specific IT keywords and competitor sites. Your IT solution or service will show at the top of the search engine results page (SERP), giving you the one of the greatest advantages online.
3. Brand Awareness: Sponsored Emails and Display Ads
Send a sponsored email to reach a wide audience of engaged IT professionals. We pair this up with Display Ads to drive your brand home to your ideal customer profile (ICP).
4. Lead Generation: New Territory Introduction Packages
Want to expand your territory and reach a wider geographical audience? Send your prospects a complimentary introduction package that includes a small gift paired with your company’s case study, IT solution brief, or brochure.
5. Lead Generation: Content Syndication with Intent Data, followed by Nurture Emails
This is our most popular digital marketing strategy for IT companies, and for a reason: it works. With content syndication, we will use your content to attract a guaranteed number of leads (targeted with intent data). These MQL's are then progressed down the funnel with a series of nurture emails.
6. Lead Generation: Digital Door Openers paired with Outbound Calling
Offer your prospects or customers a gift which they can claim by booking an introductory call with you. The gift could be something nominal (such as a Yeti bottle). By selecting the right offer and sending it with the right message to the right people, we’ve seen impressive success rates. For example, in one of our digital door openers 10.5% of targeted individuals that saw the offer went ahead and booked a call.
7. Lead Progression: Email Newsletters leading to a Content Hub
Maintaining an active email newsletter is a great way to stay top-of-mind with IT professionals, clients and prospects, and make sure they remember your company name when the time comes that they need your services.
8. Lead Progression: Personalized Customer Appreciation Packages
Send your most valued customers a nominal gift (either a digital gift such as a gift card or a physical gift such as a pair of wireless earbuds). Pair this with a message expressing your gratitude to have them as a valued client. Along with the gift and message, include an offer and your message. If you already know what system(s) they are on and what they purchased from you in the past, this could be a great opportunity to introduce them to new functionality or enhanced features.
9. Lead Progression: Interactive Quiz to Educate and Upsell
Most people love to test their knowledge with a good challenge! That’s why interactive quizzes produce such positive feedback and reviews. These can be used to educate your own internal teams, or to educate your customers about your IT services and solutions. They are fun, creative, and you don’t come across IT quizzes often so they get a lot of attention when we roll them out.
What did you think of these 9 digital marketing strategies for IT companies? If you liked some of the ideas, don’t forget to subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter; The Tech Marketer’s Brief.
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