How To Market Your Software Development Company?
When it comes to online marketing in today’s digital landscape, it’s sometimes hard for software development companies to make themselves stand out from the crowd, especially when competing in today’s highly-competitive tech industry.
In fact, in the United States, there are roughly 20 new tech companies founded each year, that reach $100 million in revenue. So as a software development company, especially if you’re a new startup and just getting yourself established, it’s hard to compete with companies like these that are dominating the market.
But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to make your name known in the online world. So what is the best marketing strategy for developers to build an online presence?
Keep reading and in the following article, I’ll explain 7 of the best digital marketing strategies for software development companies.
Digital Marketing Strategies For Tech And Software Companies
Know Your Audience
When it comes to digital marketing, the very first step in any campaign is to learn about and study who you’re trying to market your company to in the first. So as a software development company, your target audience is going to be people who are interested in technology and other tech-related information, products, and services.
Therefore, when it comes to implementing any form of the digital marketing strategy for your software development company, these are the people to who you’re going to market your services. But it doesn’t end there. In fact, the more you’re able to learn about your target audience, the better you’ll be able to create content that they find valuable.
On the other hand, if you’re planning your strategies for an audience that isn’t actually interested in your company’s products or service, you’ll quickly start seeing your digital marketing efforts go bust.
Start Your Programming Blog
There’s no doubt about it: if you’re not blogging in today’s busy online world, you’re going to have trouble making a name for yourself in any industry. Think about it, why else would all of the world’s biggest tech companies be running and managing blogs? It’s because blogging works!
In fact, blogging is one of the easiest ways for software development companies to attract, engage, and delight their potential customers. That’s because companies can hone in on the specific type of information their target audience is looking for, and then tailor their own blog posts specifically to what their audience wants.
Better yet, when a solid blogging strategy is implemented and promoted via a similar social media strategy, tech companies can reach even larger target audiences than ever before. Here’s an example on how to create an engaging blog post for your tech company.
Create a Social Media Marketing Plan
Another extremely effective strategy to help build your brand’s online presence is to get active on social media.
There are literally billions of people that use social media every single day. In fact, in 2019, there are reportedly 3.48 billion social media users worldwide, which is up 9%, or 288 million new users from the numbers in 2018.
In other words, if you’re not actively trying to engage with your potential audience members on social media, you’re missing out on a huge chunk of the pie. So as a software development company, you need to get active on social media by creating and sharing valuable content with your audience. All of which will help establish your company as a thought-leader in the industry.
Then, once you’ve established yourself as a knowledgeable and reputable expert on social media, you’ll naturally start generating buzz about your company, its content, and its products and services.
Invest in Paid Social Media & Google Advertising
When it comes to digital marketing, there’s no quicker way to grow your brand’s influence than by using paid advertising.
Today, paid advertisements on social media and Google represent one of the most profitable digital marketing strategies for software companies. That is, of course, if you know what you’re doing. As a tech company, your job is to learn who your target audience truly is and then craft targeted ad copy to promote it via paid advertisements on the platforms of your choice.
So for example, if you’re a B2B tech company, you’ll be targeting other tech companies as your audience, which are more likely to be active on platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn.
Whereas, on the other hand, if you’re a retailer, selling tech products directly to consumers, your audience might be more active on platforms like Twitter, Instagram, or Pinterest. In the end, the more you learn about your target audience, and their wants and needs, the more successful your paid ad campaigns will be.
Create An SEO Strategy For Your Software Development Company
SEO, or search engine optimization, is the process of optimizing web pages, blog posts, and other content to improve the site’s overall visibility on search engine result pages. (SERP)
So as a tech or software company, you’ll need to focus both on off-page optimization and on-page optimization. On-page optimization includes optimizing your headlines, HTML tags (title, meta, and header), images, and overall website structure.
The next task is to perform keyword research and find keywords that your target audience is already searching for, on Google or on other search engines. There are many free tools available, such as Google’s Keyword Planner, that you can use to do this. When trying to find the right keywords to use for optimizing your website, you’ll want to find keywords that have high search volumes and relatively low search competition.
Then, by honing in on these keywords and crafting your website content with them. you’ll be able to start generating completely free, organic traffic for your website in order to promote your products or services
Create A Lead Magnet
Lead magnets are the number one method for building and growing lists of pre-qualified business leads. Essentially, a lead magnet is when a company offers some form of digital content in exchange for a person’s email address or other contact information. In most cases, this is a free, downloadable ebook. However, it can also be a premium, gated blog post, video, checklist, spreadsheet, etc.
Either way, the idea is to offer something that is valuable to your audience, in order to get consumers to willingly offer you their contact information. By doing this, you’ll be able to generate a list of people who are interested in what you have to offer as a tech company. This brings us to our next point: you can then use this list to run an effective email campaign.
Here’s an example of Lead Magnet
Get Started With Email Marketing
Once you’ve put together a lead magnet, you’ll start collecting a list of email addresses that you can use to directly market your company’s tech products or services.
According to Oberlo.ca, about 81% of small businesses rely on email marketing as their primary method for acquiring new customers, and in 2020, the average expected return on investment (ROI) is roughly $42 for every $1 dollar spent.
The reason that email marketing is so effective is that you’re able to market your products and services to people who have already expressed interest in your company when they willingly gave you their email address. This makes it significantly more likely that they’re going to interact with your brand in some way, potentially paying for a product or service and becoming a new customer.
What happens next?
Finally, it’s important to understand that when it comes to digital marketing, you need to keep your target audience in mind above everything else. And as a tech company, you’ll need to align your digital marketing efforts to people who are interested in technology, More specifically, to the people who are interested in your tech products or services.
In the end, learning as much as you can about your target audience will help you craft your digital campaigns specifically to meet the needs of your audience. And by doing this, you’ll be able to better plan your strategies, ensuring that your company’s digital marketing campaigns are a success.