6 Marketing Strategies Technology Companies Can Leverage to Grow Leads

Are you struggling to attract new clients to your technology company? You're not the only one. In fact, 65% of businesses say generating traffic and leads as their biggest marketing challenge.

Without leads, how will you grow your business?

It's not enough to just put up a website and wait for your phone to ring. As a technology company, you know know firsthand how software and technology can help business both in good times and and bad. But perhaps when it comes to marketing software and methodologies you're still new to the game.

With the right set of inbound marketing strategies and tech stack, you can attract new customers, boost your brand, and start growing your business. Inbound marketing makes it easier for you to attract the right customers, at the right time, allowing you to save yourself a lot of time and money. 

Ready to give your business the boost it needs to stand out from the crowd? Keep reading to learn all about inbound marketing and how it can help!

What is Inbound Marketing?

First, it helps to get a better understanding of the inbound methodology.

Inbound marketing creates unique, customer-focused experiences to attract consumers to your business. Outbound marketing tries to reach a broad audience with a broad message. Inbound marketing, on the other hand, tailors the content to what your target audience is actually looking for.

Interruption tactics such as cold calls & spam email can disrupt the buyer's journey. As a result, you risk frustrating consumers and losing potential leads. Inbound marketing instead focuses on building a connection between you and the customer.

With inbound marketing, you're not just pitching a product/service; you're offering education and a solution on their terms. Showing customers you're there to help can turn you into a dependable, long-term resource. As a result, you're likely to land and retain more customers, making it easier for you to achieve long-term growth. 

The Stages of Inbound Marketing

In order to create an effective inbound marketing strategy, you'll need a broader understanding of the inbound methodology. Inbound marketing is designed to:

• Attract leads
• Engage consumers
• Delight your audience 

Here's how it works:

Attract

It's not enough to bring people to your website. Instead, you want to focus on the consumers who are most likely to convert into customers. Inbound marketing strategies make it easier for you to focus on your target audience. 

To attract those visitors to your website, you'll need a strong content marketing strategy. Your content can include:

• Blog posts
• Videos
• Infographics
• Ads
• Quizzes

As you attract visitors to your website, make sure to analyze the results. Which pieces of content appeal to your audience the most? Tools like Hotjar can provide great insight into traffic behavior and help you make the most of the user experience.  

Engage

Once you attract leads with your content, you'll want to get them actively engaged. Engagement will help you forge that connection with your audience.

You can use interactive content such as quizzes or polls. Bots, live chat, and conversion tools such as forms can help, too. 

As you engage your audience, you'll gather data that will help you personalize the user experience. 

Then, you can better appeal to your audience and boost engagement. 

Delight

Once people are engaged with your brand, you'll want to delight them into converting. Content that's memorable and worth sharing can even help you attract more customers. Focus on customer support and offering rewards in order to delight your audience.

In addition to showing them the value you have to offer, this will also encourage future up-sells and cross sells, improving their life-time value. 

The Benefits of Inbound Marketing

As you start developing inbound marketing strategies, it's important to understand why you're making the effort. Here are a few benefits of inbound marketing that can help support your technology company's long-term growth.

1. Easy to Measure

You can't make informed decisions without data. Otherwise, you'll risk losing money.

For example, with offline resources you cannot easily determine how prospects found your product/offering.

However with the right technology in place you can track:

• Sessions
• Query data by page
• First/Last page seen
• Referral traffic sources
• Impressions
• Bounce Rates
• Dwell times
• Clicks
• Conversions
• And more

2. Builds Your Brand

Building brand trust is essential if you want to turn one-time customers into loyal fans. With high-quality content, you can show them your expertise and ability to help solve their challenges.

With loyal customers, comes greater profitability, new customer acquisition is generally substantially more expensive than selling to existing customers.

This enables you can focus more of your marketing budget on attracting fresh leads for your technology business. 

3. It's Non-Intrusive

Outbound marketing methods interrupt the buyer. For example, no one wants to receive a sales call in the midst of a project deadline. 

Seventy-two percent of consumers expect B2B companies to personalize communications. If you don't, it's likely the consumer will look for someone who better caters to their needs. As a result, more companies are using inbound marketing strategies that prioritize personalization. 

Adding a personal touch to your marketing methods will help you tailor your communications to the individual buyer. To accomplish this goal, you'll first need to break your target audience into buyer personas.

After all, no two buyers are alike.

You'll need to learn (or make assumptions) about your target buyers demographics and behavior patterns when it comes to acquiring your particular product or service. Then, you can use inbound marketing methods that don't interrupt their day. Instead, inbound marketing materials appear when the consumers need them most.

For example, if someone searches for a solution to a particular challenge on Google, you can appear as an organic listing. The content you post can answer their questions or provide a next step to help them in their buying process.  

Either way, you're not interrupting them with tactics like cold calling and spam.

Instead, you're appearing while they're in search of an answer. Since the consumer is already looking for solutions, you're more likely to convert them into a lead, assuming you have a strong title, meta description and call to action.

By using non-intrusive inbound marketing tactics, you can appeal to the buyer on a personal level. Appealing to their needs shows empathy, which can help you build brand trust as you grow your business. 

4. Better ROI

Inbound marketing strategies are cheaper than outbound marketing strategies. You can spend thousands on billboards, print ads, conferences, etc. without knowing their effectiveness.

With digital inbound strategies, you can quickly and easily see which web pages, blogs and landing pages are actually driving revenue for your company. 

Marketing Strategies for Technology Companies

Now that you have a better understanding of inbound, let's discuss a few of the marketing strategies you can utilize for your own tech business.

1. Content Marketing

Content marketing is essential for a strong inbound marketing strategy. Your content will tell consumers you're relevant, knowledgeable, and available. As a result, you can generate brand awareness, trust, and loyalty over time. 

In order to create an effective content marketing strategy:

• Organize a content calendar and stay on schedule
• Choose the type of content you'll create (blogs, videos, infographics, quizzes, etc.)
• Share your content on social media
• Adapt your content into different materials
• Post guest blogs to reach more customers

Make sure to complete customer and keyword research beforehand. What problems are your customers facing? What solutions are they looking for? 

Understanding your audience will help you create content that appeals to their interests.

Video Content 

Google is now ranking video content higher than text-based content, too. Videos bring animations, graphics, footage, text, and audio all together. As a result, videos are able to create an immersive experience that other forms of content lack.

If you want to bring in more leads this year, try utilizing some of the latest video marketing trends. For example, more people are using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to experience brands firsthand.

Companies like Amazon, Sephora, and Ikea are already using these technologies. Their smartphone apps allow consumers to test-drive products straight from the comfort of their own homes.

If you want to attract more inbound leads, try using videos. Make sure the content is relevant to what the consumer needs or wants. The better you know your audience, the more likely you'll create content that appeals to their interest. 

2. Websites/CMS

Where are you putting all of the content you're creating? For an effective inbound marketing funnel, you'll need to utilize your website.

First, make sure your site is mobile-optimized. Google uses mobile-first indexing to determine search rankings. As more people use their phones to find answers, you're bound to attract more mobile visitors.

Make sure your website also:

• Represents your company brand
• Has an "About" page to inform visitors about your business
• Features an easy-to-use blog
• Allows social sharing
• Collects analytics

Make sure to prioritize the user experience, too. For example, your navigation should appear organized and easy-to-use. Pages should load quickly as well. 

Don't forget to add lead capture opportunities such as forms across your pages!

3. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

On average, B2B researches complete 12 online searches before they engaged with a company's website. Search engine optimization (SEO) allows you to attract visitors based on what they search for online.

SEO also makes it easier for you to attract consumers most likely to become customers.

Here are a few tips for a strong SEO strategy:

• Determine who your customers are (demographics) and how they shop
• Choose the right keywords (use Google Keyword Planner, Trends, and Ahrefs)
• Optimize your website
• Use SEO tools to optimize your content
• Collect data

More people are searching online using voice assistants like Siri and Alexa. As a result, more companies are adapting their SEO content for voice search. Make sure to keep up-to-date with the latest SEO trends.

The stronger your SEO strategy, the higher you'll rank on search engines like Google. The higher you rank, the more people you'll attract to your website. Then, you can engage and delight them into becoming customers. 

4. Email Marketing

Emails are a great way to keep consumers informed about your business.

To create a strong email marketing strategy:

• Determine which features you'll need
• Choose the right platform (we recommend HubSpot)
• Create a template
• Encourage sign-ups
• Segment your subscription list
• Create a drip campaign

You can offer website visitors exclusive content, such as an ebook, to attract subscribers. Then, you can send emails with attractive content to generate more sales. 

5. Social Media

There are now over 223 million social media users above the age of 12 years old in the country. Social media can help you find, attract, and engage your audience. You can also use social media to post the content you've created.

Here are a few tips:

• Create accounts on all social media platforms (to claim your brand)
• Focus on the platform where your audience spends most of their time
• Create a social media calendar
• Focus on engagement (respond to comments and concerns)
• Review analytics 

You can also work with an influencer in your industry to attract more followers and build brand trust. Leveraging an influencer's audience will help you build credibility with your own. 

6. Pay-Per-Click

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising allows you to create ads on Google and social media platforms like Facebook. To create a PPC strategy:

• Choose a platform
• Pinpoint your target audience using demographics
• Complete keyword research
• Craft campaigns and ads
• Develop a negative keyword list
• Review the data and optimize as needed

It's important to adjust your PPC campaigns regularly. That way, you can jump on new opportunities and avoid wasting your budget.

When someone clicks on a PPC ad, they'll likely arrive at your website. For a stronger PPC advertising strategy, make sure to optimize your site with user experience in mind. If people are frustrated when they visit your site, they'll leave without converting on the page. 

Ready to start attracting new leads and growing your business? These inbound marketing strategies can help you appeal to your target audience! Once you appeal to their interests, you can get them engaged, then delight your audience into becoming customers.

Over time, the trust they have in your brand will turn into brand loyalty, allowing you to retain your customers for years to come!

Eager to start making the best marketing decisions for your software or technology company? Contact us today to get started!