By Kaci Antoine, Content Specialist
It’s time for IT marketers to expand beyond traditional formats and embrace more innovative ideas for capturing attention online. Strategies like personalization, video marketing, and leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and automation can help IT marketers connect with their ideal audience and generate qualified leads.
Find out how Ironpaper can modernize and improve your IT marketing efforts.
Content personalization
Personalization is no longer optional in digital marketing. Ninety-nine percent of marketers agree that personalization helps advance customer relationships, making it a strategy you can’t afford to ignore.1
Personalization requires listening to your customers and prospects and responding with content tailored to their business, pain points, and goals. You can do this by surveying or interviewing customers, tracking what content leads at different stages of the buyer’s journey engage with, and opening communication between sales and marketing. You can then leverage that information to match your messaging to the buyer’s journey continuously and directly.
99% of marketers agree that personalization helps advance customer relationships.
-Evergage
Automation software
The most common use of marketing automation is email, with 65% of marketers using email automation, but it has many other uses that can be equally — if not more — useful.
For example, chat has the second-highest customer satisfaction rate of any service channel and is a great candidate for automation.2 Chatbots can be automated to provide several impactful services to your website visitors, including:
- Asking survey questions or soliciting feedback from customers
- Providing additional information about your product or service
- Redirecting prospects to relevant pages on your website
- Collecting basic information before connecting a lead or customer to a chat agent
An automated chat feature can free up time your salespeople or customer service agents might otherwise spend answering repetitive questions and provide a way for leads to connect with you 24/7.
Social media management, landing page personalization, paid ads, lead nurturing, and more can all be automated to enable higher volumes of lead handling and better lead generation efforts.
Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing involves working with social media personalities with large followers in your target market — and it’s not just a strategy that works for B2C marketers. When asked to rank the ROI of working with influencers, 70% of B2B marketers indicated that it provided a high ROI.3 Influencers can create brand awareness and interest in your product, drive website traffic, and generate sales leads. It can also take some unexpected shapes for B2B companies.
For example, a subject matter expert (SME) from your company writing a blog post published on a third-party website is a type of influencer marketing. Readers of that website see your brand affiliated with one they already know and trust, increasing the likelihood they’ll be interested in your product.
Testimonials from high-profile clients, using industry influencers to promote events, and engaging influencers to be ambassadors for your brand all fall under the umbrella of influencer marketing.
Video marketing
Video marketing is a great way to reach customers and engage them on various channels. They can be especially useful for complex products that require buy-in from non-technical stakeholders since 94% of marketers say video has helped them increase leads’ understanding of their product.4
Here are a few ways IT marketers can leverage video marketing:
- Leverage explainer videos to answer frequently asked questions
- Host live videos or webinars with industry leaders to bring value to your viewers
- Showcase the features of your products through video case studies or product demos
Video is an engaging medium, and IT marketers can use it to their advantage to market their products in a way that buyers connect with.
Storytelling strategies
In the IT industry, too much complexity can breed frustration and disenchantment among customers. Brand storytelling helps make products and services relatable and memorable, making them easier for customers to connect with and understand.
Buyer-focused copy is one way to incorporate storytelling into your marketing strategies. Instead of focusing on your product, features, or benefits, buyer-focused copy communicates positive outcomes in the context of your buyers’ pain points and business needs.
Marketers can also incorporate stories into their campaigns through video testimonials, case studies, and interactive website design.
IT marketing looking forward
These five trends represent ways digital IT marketers can effectively engage with their buyers, and we expect these trends to continue developing and changing over the coming years. Marketers have more tools and data at their disposal than ever, and these strategies can help you begin to make use of the most beneficial strategies.
Sources
1Evergage, 2020 Trends in Personalization, 2020
2Zendesk, Zendesk research: customer satisfaction
3HubSpot, B2B & B2C Instagram Marketing Trends of 2022 [Data from 500 Marketers], April 18, 2022
4Wyzowl, Video Marketing Statistics 2022 (https://www.wyzowl.com/video-marketing-statistics/)
