Chances are if you work for a technology company, your current marketing strategy resembles the old saying “if you build it, they will come.”
While the best product sometimes beats out competitors by simply being amazing, it no longer works for most businesses.
Technology is rapidly becoming a saturated market. There’s a new technology solution launching every day, and businesses have to differentiate themselves from competition more than ever.
There’s no better way to differentiate your technology company than by having a strong brand strategy. Having a solid brand strategy benefits technology companies not only by helping to aid in awareness but keeping marketing consistent to its customers.
So how exactly can your technology company cut through the clutter and reach their customers? Well, here are four solid branding tips that will help your technology company:
One – Know Your Customers Motivations
This may seem obvious to you, however, most companies don’t truly understand what motivates their customer to purchase their product. Is your customer driven by fear, such as the fear of losing all of their customer data? Is your customer driven by a sense of accomplishment, such as to increase productivity among their employees?
Understanding a user’s motivation is crucial. Once you realize what your customers need, you can help change their behavior.
So how do you begin to understand customer motivations? Simple. Ask them! Focus on gathering qualitative data on your customers by conducting individual in-depth interviews, surveys, and focus groups.
Two – Know Your Brand Promise
Almost all successful technology companies have a brand promise. A brand promise is the value or experience your customers can expect from you. It’s the reason why customers choose your brand. Let’s take a look at some brand promises from other technology companies:
Microsoft: Our brand promise… is to empower people to achieve more. Because we believe in what people can make possible.
Apple: Think Different.
In creating or adjusting your brand promise, I recommend that you keep it simple,honest, and memorable. Your brand promise should be inspiring and create an emotional connection between your customers, company, and products.
Three – Know How To Communicate
I think the biggest issue tech companies face today is communicating with their customers. Despite more access than ever to customers, brand messaging often gets lost because it fails to establish clarity, trust, or innovation.
When it comes to being clear, think about how your audience is understanding the content? Is your website full of technical jargon and specs? If so, then that might be a big source of miscommunication. When marketing high-tech products, you should make messaging easy to understand and make sure your unique value proposition is clear throughout.
Trust is also important no matter the industry, but even more so for tech companies with the recent influx of privacy and cybersecurity issues. If a customer trusts you, they will be more likely to buy from you. You could build trust by being transparent, consistent, and providing proof of your competence.
And to be innovative, you should be ready to demonstrate that your company is offering something unique and fresh. Technology is rapidly changing, and innovation is essential to compete in today’s digital age. A way to communicate your company’s innovation is by allowing the people behind the innovation to tell a story. Feature your engineers, data scientists, and developers on your company blog or feature them on social media. This will foster a sense of innovation internally and also show customers that you prioritize creating products and solutions for their needs.
Four – Know How To Be Agile With Your Branding
Most technology companies use the agile methodology for their product development, but did you know you could apply agile to your branding too?
Branding in technology companies, particularly with startups, are used predominately online. This means there are more opportunities to tweak and adapt your brand over time based on data from all of your marketing channels.
For example, you can find out what colors truly work for your target audience by constantly testing different color schemes on ad campaigns with A/B testing.
No matter what, your tech company’s brand image should stay aligned by adapting to changing market requirements and business needs.
Hopefully, these four tips will help you to develop a strong brand strategy for your tech company, I know they have for mine.
