DIGITAL MARKETING IN TECHNOLOGY

THE ROLE OF DIGITAL MARKETING IN TECHNOLOGY

Digital marketing in tech companies; not easy to define in a few words. The term digital marketing on its own covers a huge span of marketing job roles and areas of specialisation, let alone when you combine this with the specific needs of marketing within technology.

It is heartening to see the strides that have been made in B2B marketing for technology and it will be here we focus in this article; covering the primary areas of marketing that fall under the “digital” hat.

Digital marketing is now recognised as moving beyond simply “a website” or “a social media platform” and companies are embracing its full potential, not just new digital channels to improve the RACE framework for their customer journey, but the full scope from devices, to digital media, to data to the potential offered by the ever-expanding martech stack.

DIGITAL CHANNELS

Tech companies have always taken an omni-channel approach to their RACE framework, heavily relying on offline channels in terms of face-to-face events for their demand generation in particular. However, the advent of COVID-19 has forced B2B technology companies to adopt a new approach to their demand generation strategy as face-to-face events that had been the lynchpin were put on hold. Alternative digital marketing channels are now a regular feature in a B2B marketing strategy for tech companies, and a fresh approach is being taken to SEM, PPC and social that may have previously been underutilised.

SEO

It is impossible to underestimate the importance of SEO to a strong digital marketing strategy in the tech industry. With high levels of competition, your website is key and ensuring that it has high levels of organic visibility, is constantly enhanced from a customer experience perspective and is technically and structurally optimised is an essential task. It is not unusual therefore to find an SEO expert in a B2B tech marketing team as more companies discover the benefits of bringing this role in-house rather than outsourcing as may have traditionally been the case.

MARKETING DATA

The tools available that provide the metrics for tech digital marketing campaigns are constantly improving – whether Google’s improved reporting between the G-suite channels, particularly Adwords, Analytics and You Tube.

In digital marketing, data comes from all directions and platforms; from the G-suite, social media platforms, CRM, email marketing etc. Tech companies need the ability to collate all of this valuable marketing data into one place in order to full analyse the results of their actions and draw insights to inform their future strategy and execution plans.

MARKETING AUTOMATION AND EMAIL MARKETING

Thanks to the longer sales cycles in B2B tech, traditional sales pipelines are less effective. It is usual therefore to find martech experts in B2B tech marketing teams who specialise in marketing automation tools that enable the nurturing of their prospects and support the sales team.

Utilising tools such as HubSpot, Marketo or Eloqua, marketing teams in tech are also engaging in more sophisticated segmentation in their email communications and specialists within these fields are a common feature of digital marketing teams in tech today.