Marketing of technology or technology-driven products/services, especially to the businesses, is substantially different than marketing of other goods and services. It is based on the combination and aggregation of technical depth and business understanding, with appreciation of decision making patterns.
Business audiences consume information driven marketing and base their decisions on realizing value under complex contexts. The technology buying process has many participants, and multiple roles and personas are involved. A marketer has to identify right message for right person at right time. These could be users, end-customers, stakeholders, IT professionals, developers, reviewers, etc. Hence, technology marketing needs to have a focus on valued information and communication to influence decision making.
Digital trends harbinger significant changes in the market and the product, and at the same time necessitate change in how technology is marketed. The important realizations include increasing consumerization, importance of audience centricity, use of data and analytics, social media and changing preferences of capital and operational expenditures.
Digital capabilities leveraged by technology marketers would allow them to understand their audience better, contextualize their messages and make reasoned and relevant argument about value. Digital abilities around gaining insights about concerns and preferences of users of technology, stakeholders and decision makers, allow technology companies to design and present their products better as well as engage deeper with their customers. Marketers would use targeted digital tools helping users compare, assess, and try their technology offerings. The tech marketers’ arsenal for customer engagement will have to expand to include rich new media options, involvement possibilities, and tools for smartly addressing relevant concerns of right audience at right time.
Understanding customer persona would leverage social media, data analysis, and other emerging digital capabilities. Account relationship would transform as tech organizations participate in their customers’ businesses in a much deeper way, allowing them to address their customers’ concerns proactively, and also transform the way technology products and services are packaged, marketed and sold. Technologies for IoT, analytics, social and behavioral data would mean that technology marketers would be able to partake in and influence the outcomes relevant to their clients in a much more involved manner.
Digital transformation of sales teams on field will help technology marketers to deliver right information, content and options to customers at right time and capitalize the opportunities. Analytics, tools and data that drive sales are getting sophisticated in transforming the digital era. It helps technology marketers to gain better customer insights, improve supply chain and power campaigns, and promotions of technologies. With rising use of mobile, social and cloud among consumers, technology vendors are empowering partners with automated targeted tools and marketing collaterals.
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