Many exciting trends in marketing this year that have helped IT companies stand out from the crowd.
Whether these trends take the more traditional approach, such as software trends, or have helped IT businesses resonate more with their customers, they've often given companies the breakthrough that they needed.
1. Authenticity
The concept of authenticity is about connecting with people on a human level. People respond better to tech companies that have strong values and consistently relay statements and marketing tactics that align with those principles.
Don’t wait to advertise that the lead character in your video game is a strong, independent woman until the #InternationalWomensDay hashtag is trending #1 worldwide on Twitter.
People are perceptive and can read when a company is taking advantage of a situation for profit. This type of approach can turn potential leads away from your company.
Think of your brand like a person. When people are inconsistent, that lowers trust, so focus on creating a brand that stays true to itself at all times. This will in turn create trust and facilitate loyalty in your brand.
2. Video
Videos are rising rapidly as a popular way to present targeted marketing content and there are numerous ways to take advantage in the tech industry.
Videos can be used to create user guides, illustrate best practices, give commentary on industry trends, show off the capabilities of software, present customer experiences with your software, show simulations, and more.
Videos get the point of your content across both faster and in a much more impactful way while also showing a trend towards increasing ROI for businesses who incorporate it into their marketing.
Videos should also be incorporated into landing pages to help convert leads.
3. Content Marketing
People are attracted to educational content and not the self-promotion of your business. The goal is for your tech company to be seen as an authority on the content it releases.
This content should contain valuable knowledge that is both relevant to your customers as well as your software offerings.
One way to approach this would be to create a blog to address common software issues and quick fixes, which may also help free up your support team a bit.
Make it easier for your customers to find this blog to find with relevant, long-tailed keywords similar to how the average person would use a search engine to search for a solution.
The bottom line is that in order for users to give up their information, such as their email address, they want something worthwhile in return, and educational content that suits their interest is what will keep them coming back for more.
4. Analytics
Big data, marketing automation, and similar software all dwindle down to providing valuable analytics insights for your IT business. Analytics has three main schools of thought: descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive.
Descriptive analytics helps your company to look at past data and describe what has happened, which can be crucial to troubleshooting both your software and your marketing approach.
Predictive analytics is used to determine the likelihood of future events, for instance, whether your customer base would be interested in a potential software offering.
Would it be worth the risk to spend time and money creating a prototype of this software for user testing? Then, lastly, there’s prescriptive analytics, which focuses on coming to an optimal solution.
It answers the question: What is the best possible approach to creating this software, given the constraints and requirements expected of your customers?
Analytics tools and methodologies are crucial for answering these questions and gaining an edge against the competition.
5. Innovation
Innovation is the best advertisement for a tech company. Artificial Intelligence is a hot buzz word in the tech world with its ability to be used to learn and predict customers' preferences, giving an unprecedented personal customer experience.
Many companies are racing to present A.I. in the best light because popularizing an innovation highly anticipated by customers can create one of the greatest competitive advantages.
The more valuable, rare, and difficult this innovation is to duplicate, the greater this advantage will be. Many top companies can certainly attest to this, but remember that technological innovations don’t just come from stretching the limits of technology in ways that are best suited for fictional countries like Wakanda.
It's often just a matter of improving quality for your customers, like taking an industry standard process and making it run smoother or developing software in a way that is less costly to produce.
Don’t forget that great ideas could also be hiding amongst your customer reviews. Although they may not understand the practicality of how to make their idea work, they’ve interacted with your software heavily and often have strong ideas of how it could be improved.
