The 12-step guide to marketing for technology companies

Did you know that 80% of all tech startups fail? Fierce competition and the ever-changing tech landscape make it extremely hard for tech businesses to survive beyond their first year of operation.

On the brighter side, this means that 20% of them make it. Not just because they have better products than the rest but also because they learned how to beat the competition with powerful marketing strategies. And when you’re competing with the rest of the world, you need excellent marketing to stand out. 

To help you navigate through all the industry-specific challenges, I created this guide on setting up a successful marketing strategy for your tech company. 

But let’s start with the basics. 

What is technology marketing?

Technology marketing includes all the strategies and practices for promoting and selling technology products or services. This refers to everything from hardware, such as computers and smartphones, to software, applications, and operating systems. 

In recent years, technologies like artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and cybersecurity solutions have also entered the tech marketing game.

Technology marketing is different from marketing products in other industries because of the complexity of the products and the constant evolution of the tech landscape. These two aspects force marketers to find creative ways to educate their audience, while navigating the evolving market.

Now, let’s dive into the 12 key steps to set up your tech company’s marketing strategy.

1. Perform a thorough market analysis

One of the most common mistakes companies make is not doing their research well enough. Many tech founders come up with an idea for a business, thinking it’s so good that it will change the world.

Unfortunately, the reality isn’t so romantic.  And there’s a lot of work between having a great idea and actually changing the world. Or even just maintaining a successful business.

When it comes to tech solutions, the market is already very well established. This means that the trial and error of other tech startups can teach you a lot about what works and what doesn’t in the real world. 

For example, you might think of a new AI solution to help architects visualize future buildings and apartments. With a simple Google search, you’ll learn that over a dozen solutions are already doing something similar. 

This doesn’t necessarily make your solution useless. It just means that you have to dive deep into what the competitors are doing and find your unique solution. Whether you deliver a faster or cheaper solution or have a completely unique feature highly desired among architects – that’s up to you. 

But you’ll need good research to find out what makes you stand out before you start with any marketing efforts.

2. Understand the product

The reasoning behind this one is pretty simple. How are you going to create engaging marketing messages and campaigns if you don’t even understand the product? 

That’s why all your marketing team members need to grasp the technical details and features of the technology to effectively communicate its value to potential customers.

But this can be tough with complex and technical products. 

Here are a few things you can do to help your marketing team understand the product:

• Set up a thorough onboarding process for new joiners
• Organize regular product training sessions
• Go over product demonstrations with the sales team every once in a while
• Create an open culture where everyone is encouraged to share their knowledge

3. Segment your target audience

In technology marketing, your target audience can be everyone from individual consumers to large enterprises. Plus, they can also be either tech-savvy users or less familiar with technology. 

That’s why segmentation is crucial to tailor messaging to different customer needs and levels of your audience’s understanding.

Here are four ways you can segment your audience:

1. Use demographic data – Segment your audience based on demographic factors like age, gender, income level, education, occupation, and family size. This will give you a basic understanding of who your audience is and help you tailor messages that resonate with specific groups.
2. Consider psychographic profiles – This involves segmenting based on lifestyle, values, interests, attitudes, and personality traits for more personalized messaging.
3. Behavioral segmentation – Segment your audience based on their behavior, such as purchase history, brand loyalty, usage rate, or response to previous marketing efforts. This will help you create highly-targeted strategies, like offering special deals to frequent buyers or re-engagement campaigns for inactive customers.
4. Geographic segmentation – This segmentation is based on location, including country, region, city, or even neighborhood. This is useful when location influences your customer needs or preferences. 

4. Involve all relevant stakeholders

Setting up a successful tech marketing strategy will require you to involve multiple stakeholders, including those outside your marketing team. You’ll need technical expertise, support from the legal team to ensure compliance, and the involvement of your sales team to help support your sales funnel.

But involving this many different stakeholders with slightly different objectives in mind can be chaotic and time-consuming.

One way to overcome this challenge is to implement a centralized marketing review platform where stakeholders can come together and discuss all assets in context. 

With Filestage, you can create a dedicated project for each tech marketing campaign, invite various stakeholders, and even divide them into separate review groups to keep all feedback focused. 

This way, you’ll make sure each tech marketing activation that gets published is a collaborative effort of all relevant stakeholders.

5. Educate your target audience

Did you know that companies that take a data-centered approach to marketing experience a 15–20% higher return on investment?

Because many tech products are complex, education is an important component of any technology marketing initiative. This often involves creating content like blogs, webinars, whitepapers, and tutorials to help your potential customers understand the benefits and uses of the product.

And if you create data-centered reports with novel industry knowledge, you have a better chance of getting your content in front of your target audience. Instead of getting lost in the piles of “marketing fluff” already living on the internet.

6. Emphasize innovation

The biggest flex in the technology space is definitely talking about the level of innovation that comes with your product. 

That’s why many successful tech companies still have a tendency to express how much innovation went into developing their product. 

You can do it by mentioning the latest technology used in your products, by showcasing some revolutionary breakthroughs, or by educating your audience about the importance of innovation.

Source: influence.digital

7. Build trust and credibility

One more byproduct of selling complex tech solutions is the importance of building trust and credibility among your target audience. Topics like data security, privacy, and the reliability of your product should be at the forefront of your marketing strategy to make sure your audience understands the quality of your offering.

You can also achieve a higher level of trust and credibility if you find a way to convince your audience to try out and see your product in action before purchasing it. For a SaaS company, this can be done as part of a product demonstration or by offering a free trial period. 

Another great way to build trust is by sharing customer testimonials where your satisfied customers talk about the specific aspects of your product or service that worked well for them.

8. Engage in digital-first marketing

Technology marketing is typically digital-first. That’s because most tech companies’ products are also digital-first. So it makes sense that most tech companies are speaking to at least somewhat tech-savvy audiences that frequently use digital channels. 

Here are the main digital marketing channels where you should promote your brand: 

• Social media – You can use lifestyle platforms like Instagram or Pinterest, professional platforms like LinkedIn or X, or more youthful platforms like Snapchat or TikTok. By learning where your audience likes to spend their time, you’ll be able to find the right platform for your business.
• Search engines – You can either invest in paid ads or develop a powerful content marketing strategy to make sure your content positions high on various search engines.
• Email marketing – Whether it’s newsletter marketing or through targeted email campaigns, you can use email marketing as a powerful tool to deliver targeted content to various segments of your audience.
• Content marketing – Since technology marketing relies heavily on educating potential customers, content marketing can be a helpful tool in achieving this goal. Create educational blog posts, webinars, or podcasts to educate and engage your audience.

9. Solution-oriented messaging

Technology marketing is often accused of being too technical or selling “fluff.” This isn’t surprising, considering the complexity of the products being sold. 

For example, if you’re selling software that simplifies a complex manufacturing process, you’ll have a hard time finding the right balance between being overly technical and too broad in your messaging.

To overcome this challenge, you can think of specific use cases and problems your potential customers encounter daily. Then, think about all the solutions your product can provide. 

Will your solution help them increase productivity, reduce costs, enhance security, or all of the above? 

10. Come up with relevant product launch strategies

For every new tech product you release, you’ll need a powerful launch strategy. In other words, you need to get your current customers excited about the new product and inform potential customers about your latest innovation. 

To make sure your product launch campaign is successful, you have to get to know your audience, find out where they like to hang out, and craft powerful messaging. 

Here are four essential elements of every product release marketing strategy:

• Pre-launch teasers
• Press releases
• Launch events
• Coordinated campaigns across multiple channels to create buzz

11. Review all your content before it gets published

Once you’ve decided on the type of content and messaging you want for your next tech marketing campaign, it’s time to review all the content. 

Did your copywriter misunderstand some important product details in the messaging? Are there any typos? Or do you still need to decide which visuals will best complement the copy?

Whatever the case, you need to have at least one review round before publishing your content. You can use Filestage and invite as many reviewers as you need to collect their feedback. 

All you need to do is upload your assets to the platform and generate a shareable link for all internal or external reviewers. Then sit back, relax, and watch their feedback come straight to you!

12. Make data-driven decisions

Did you know that 78% of marketers say that marketing analytics tools are some of the most important tools in their martech stack?

That’s because technology marketing relies heavily on data analytics to measure campaign effectiveness, understand customer behavior, and make informed decisions. This includes tracking metrics like conversion rates, customer acquisition costs, and return on investment (ROI).

Here are some marketing tech solutions that can help you make data-driven decisions:

• Google Analytics – This web analytics service tracks and reports website traffic, user behavior, and conversions to help you understand and optimize your online presence.
• Semrush – This all-in-one digital marketing tool provides SEO, content marketing, competitor analysis, and PPC insights to help you  improve online visibility and performance.
• HubSpot – This comprehensive inbound marketing, sales, and CRM platform helps you attract and engage customers through data-driven campaigns and automation.
• Intercom – This is a customer messaging platform that offers live chatbots and email marketing tools to help you improve customer engagement and support.
• Mailchimp – A popular email marketing service that allows you to design, send, and automate email campaigns while also providing analytics to optimize performance.

Three great examples of marketing from top technology companies

Seeing how some of the biggest tech brands organize their marketing efforts is always a great source of inspiration. 

Here are the three tech marketing giants and what made their marketing efforts successful.

1. Apple

Apple’s powerful marketing transformed the brand into something much bigger than “just” a tech company. Today, Apple is synonymous with a particular lifestyle, a luxury everyone craves, and the company that brings us the latest technological advancements.

Here are just a few things that make Apple stand out:

1. Their advertising campaigns are emotionally charged
2. They strengthen their brand with a consistent look across all the company’s products
3. They offer a straightforward yet unforgettable brand promise
4. Their friendly, monochrome logo is globally recognized

Want to see what else Apple does to position itself as the leading tech company? Check out our Apple branding article and read the story about the world’s most powerful brand!

2. HubSpot

Turning technology and software companies into recognizable brands isn’t easy. Many software companies struggle to differentiate their B2B marketing efforts from competitors. But one company seems to have figured out how to attract and convert qualified leads with a seemingly simple strategy.

HubSpot, a comprehensive CRM solution, started an industry blog that evolved into one of the most successful blog pages regarding marketing, sales, and customer service. Now, there’s hardly any marketing topic that you can Google without having one of their blogs pop up.

One thing that they perfected on their blog is guest submissions. Basically, anyone can write a blog article for their trendy blog. The catch? You must follow a long list of criteria to fit their brand guidelines. And the result? An infinite stream of great content from sales and marketing experts worldwide. 

Not only does this help HubSpot bump up its Google positioning, but it also helps build a highly-desirable hub for all marketing professionals to get featured on their blog. The upside is that most of the people trying to get featured on their blog are also their desirable customers. Talk about win-win!

3. Google

You know a company is doing a great job when their brand name makes it into the dictionary. And Google did just that. You’re not going to hear anyone say “Safari it” or “Yahoo it,” but you’re definitely going to hear everyone saying: “Google it.” And this happening was far from a coincidence. 

Google successfully positions itself as your go-to search engine and an ecosystem of efficient and innovative products and services that simplify our daily lives. 

Plus, their strategic use of data-driven insights from Google Ads to personalize advertising shows their expertise in using their platform for maximum impact. 

Final thoughts

Regardless of industry trends, every technology company needs to find its unique approach to delivering successful key marketing strategies. Hopefully, this 12-step guide will help you find your tech company’s voice.
Plus, if you need a specialized marketing review and approval solution to help you get there, make sure to try Filestage for free →