How IT Companies Can Attract Customers Through Effective Social Media Strategies
With increasingly more consumers shopping online, it has become a challenge for online businesses to stand out. At the core of most successful online businesses is clever marketing. Internet or online marketing is the practice of using web-based channels to spread a message about a business’s products or services to its target market. This type of marketing is the best way for new businesses to attract new customers, to stand out among the ocean of competitors and to effectively increase leads and sales.
By ANASTASIA STEFANUK
Online marketing allows you to keep your business open around the clock without paying your team overtime to do the work. This is also convenient for customers, as they can browse your online store at any suitable time and place orders when they are ready.
Online marketing can be done in a variety of ways or combined for an even more effective outcome. It can include levering clever web design, using search engine optimization (SEO), investing in affiliate programs or paid search, and making use of social media or email marketing.
But not all businesses can use the same type of marketing and expect the same outcomes. For example, a clothing retailer will get better results utilizing social media marketing campaigns, while a financial business will be more successful using paid search strategies on search engines. A lot of research needs to be done to find a suitable online marketing strategy for your business.
Specifically for IT companies, it can be difficult to attract new customers and prospects through some digital channels, including social networks. Let’s explore why.
Why it Is Difficult for IT Companies to Advertise Through Social Networks
Social networks are interactive platforms that facilitate the sharing of information, ideas and other forms of expression through digital communities. It has become a powerful method for businesses, big and small, to advertise their brands or products in interesting ways.
Because it is such an interactive tool, businesses enjoy gaining traction on advertising efforts fast and getting feedback from customers and potential prospects immediately. But even with all the benefits social networks have for advertising, many industries struggle to gain from it.
IT businesses are one sector that may find it difficult to utilize social networks as part of their advertising strategy. But why is this?
- Consumers buy based on emotion
Social network users are typically attracted to brands and products that stimulate their emotions. They want to see content that they can interact with and that offers value to the time they have spent on a platform. When it comes to IT businesses, it may be difficult to include an emotional perspective in the content posted. This can lead to users clicking away from the content or avoiding companies that are too technical.
- Finding a target audience
Most users use social media as a relaxing pastime. Therefore, it may be difficult for some companies to find their target audience on social platforms. As a result, it may take some time to build up a following and to get that audience to interact with the advertising content produced. For example, if you have an IT outsourcing company, offering software development Ukraine, your target audience will be people from other countries and not those in Ukraine. The audience may also include business owners or managers and not necessarily general employees.
- Social networks thrive on compressed content
Social networks work based on using shorter snippets of content to attract users fast and to get the message across efficiently. With IT businesses, this can be a challenge, as the products and services offered are often complex and need to be explained in detail. This can make it challenging to express on social networks.
But even with the challenges social networks pose to IT businesses, it is possible to use it effectively. Proper research needs to be done and certain aspects need to be considered before any IT company can successfully launch a social network strategy. Let’s explore some companies that have been successful with this kind of marketing and the strategies they have followed to ensure a positive outcome.
Successful Cases of IT Companies Thriving Through Social Network Marketing
Some leading IT companies around the world have found ways to boost their businesses on different social media networks. Let’s explore a few examples:
Databricks
Databricks is a data and artificial intelligence (AI) company that specializes in creating innovative solutions for complex business problems. They have a strong social media presence, especially on Facebook, and use it to grow their audience and to increase leads and sales.
With any form of marketing, it is important to offer value to customers. With this post, Databricks promotes an online summit they offer for free. This is an excellent way to share information about your brand, products or services efficiently to a large group of people. Their choice to offer the event for free means that more people will sign up to attend.
Before consumers make purchases, they typically do research. With this post, Databricks shares a success story from one of their biggest clients. Not only does this increase trust with people, but it also showcases their experience in their specific field. It is a clever way to position yourself as a leader in the industry.
Mobilunity
Mobilunity is a nearshoring company that specializes in offering dedicated software development in Ukraine teams for businesses around the world. They have been successful with sharing knowledge around IT outsourcing, boosting their services and growing their teams through LinkedIn.
With this post, they offer interesting information about how IT companies in Ukraine are growing in the global IT sector. As a nearshoring company, this is a clever way to boost their own business, without coming across as too aggressive. They offer value to readers in a simple, but effective way.
With any type of advertising, it is important to position your business and its team as experts. With this post, Mobilunity talks about the successes of their staff and how they’ve gained new skills and knowledge in the IT outsourcing field. This increases trust with customers and potential prospects.
Microsoft 365
Microsoft 365 is a division of Microsoft, offering a suite of products aimed to make business processes smoother. They have a strong social media presence and use it to boost new products, gain new customers and offer valuable information.
This post is effective because many people can relate. They offer expert tips for staying productive when working from home. During the pandemic, many people will find this useful and will click through to the article. This is an easy but incredibly powerful way to offer value while advertising a brand or product.
Snowflake
Snowflake is an IT startup built for the cloud for businesses’ data and all their users’ data with near-unlimited scale, concurrency. They make use of different social media platforms to educate their audience about their products and to promote their brand.
With this post, Snowflake shares information about a new partnership. Social media is a great platform to do this, as it gets the information out quickly and allows consumers to share in the news. With the post, they also offer a free session that educates consumers about the new partnership. This allows them to click-through to the site.
Freshworks Inc.
This company specializes in creating software for businesses to improve their internal processes. They use social media to promote their information sessions, advertise their products and answer their customers’ questions.
With this post, Freshworks offers information about new products launched in different areas. Not only does this create awareness with their audience, but it also creates interest for new prospects. By posting this information, their following can stay up to date around the new product, ask important questions and share it to a wider network.
From the above examples, it is clear that there is room for IT businesses to add social networks to their marketing strategies. Done the right way, it can help IT businesses to create awareness about their products and services, easily interact with their audience and share information that can position them as experts in their field.
How IT Companies Can Attract Customers Through Effective Social Media Strategies
With around 3.80 billion social media users around the world, businesses can no longer afford not to make use of these platforms as part of their marketing strategy. But whether you’re simply thinking about launching your first social media campaign or have been experimenting with it for a while, there’s always more you can learn to improve your strategy. For IT businesses, it is specifically important to follow certain guidelines to ensure a positive outcome.
To help, explore the below tips designed to help you maximize your social network campaigns across each of the most important development and implementation phases.
- Create an audience persona
It is important to find out who your target audience will be on social media before you launch a campaign. Audience personas are a detailed view of the demographics of your audience. This can include their interests, needs and behavior, and will give you a better idea of how to structure your campaign.
- Create specific goals
You have to consider what type of results you want to achieve with your campaign. Do you want to build awareness around your business, brand or products? Do you want to gain website traffic? Or do you want to improve leads and sales?
- Do research
Not all platforms will work for all types of businesses. Therefore, it can be beneficial to do some research around which is best for your industry and unique business goals. You also have to consider what type of content your target audience would want to see, as well as the details around your posting schedule.
- Creating content
For your IT company, you will require a mix of content to be successful. Therefore, you’ll need to develop a process to generate this content and maximize its worth. This can include a mixture of visual, emotional and informational content.
Visual content: Social media users are typically highly focused on visual posts, including those with images and videos. Studies also show that these posts usually perform better than text-based posts. As an IT company, you can utilize images and videos to explain your products or services, to showcase your expertise or to offer solutions to users’ problems.
Emotional content: As mentioned before, emotional content resonates most with social media users. Therefore, you can add a more personal angle to your posts. This shows that your businesses are not only focused on gaining leads and sales, but also have an interest in your target audience and their needs.
Informational content: This includes content that offers value to your target audience. It can include a question and answer sessions, explanatory videos, infographics and other educational self-help posts.
Tracking analytics
It is incredibly important to constantly track your results. This will help you to tweak your campaign if need be. Most social media platforms offer their own tracking tools, however, it is useful to find your own tools to measure your results. It is also key to track website visits. This can be done with Google Analytics and will show you how successful your social media marketing campaign is to gain traffic to your most valuable online asset: Your website.
As with any form of marketing, it is important to try different methods to find the right platform and approach for you. What may work for your competitors may not work for you, however, it is essential to experiment. Experimenting can include:
- Evaluating channels
- A/B testing
- Evaluating responses
- Comparing outcomes
Following this process can help you to identify channels that are most effective and beneficial for your specific niche. It may take a few weeks or even months to identify the right strategy for your unique business, but mapping out the basics is the first start.
Conclusion
Online marketing is essential because it affects the way consumers make purchasing decisions. Increasingly, consumers use social media on mobile devices to find out information about products and prices before making any purchases. Utilizing effective online marketing allows you to build strong relationships with customers, build trust and increase leads and sales.
By doing your own research and studying examples of successful social network campaigns, you can gain valuable insights that you can implement for your unique IT business. Find unique ways to market your business online and see how your business grows in the coming months.
