Marketing in the tech industry – how to outrun the competition?

Two are the critical factors for success of the technology firm – R&D and marketing. But in many sectors, the technology firms are competing on applications of similar technologies and marketing their achievements becomes critical for their competitiveness.

Nevertheless, most of the companies are focusing on digital lead generation with their core or only marketing tool. And while lead generation is very important in certain stages of the company’s development, it is related to consistent organizational resources, sometimes including significant financial outflow.

Depending on the business goals and the development stage of the technology company, the organization must manage a mix of marketing communications tools in order to achieve the highest levels of effectiveness and efficiency of resources. Which are these marketing tools, available to the technology firm?

1. SEM and SEO
2. Content marketing
3. Social media
4. Marketing automation and e-mail
5. Media relations
6. Corporate events
7. Corporate reputation management
8. Brand management

In this part of our series, let us take a look at the biggest asset of all – brand equity.

Brand management is a function of marketing that uses techniques to increase the perceived value of a product line or brand over time. Effective brand management enables the price of products to go up and builds loyal customers through positive brand associations and images or a strong awareness of the brand.

Why do tech companies need strong brands?

Although discussed here last, brand management for the B2B technology firm must be one of the most critical marketing investments. Too many times, especially in the case of startups, but not uncommon with medium sized and even global internationals, marketing priorities are the lead generation marketing campaigns while difficult to manage or measure concepts like the corporate brand are neglected.

There are different reasons for this, the primary being lack of brand management talent and organizational expertise, senior management ignorance about the purpose and benefits of the brand, fear of major long-term investment with difficult ROI measurement and control or simply lack of financial resources. Often senior management makes the totally wrong, or actually nonexistent, choice of investment between lead generation marketing campaigns or corporate brand development. There cannot be such choice as both communications strategies must work together for the business success of the organization.

The current global pandemic crisis will pose further brand-related problems and complex issues for the senior management to address. These will include such questions as to what our business mission will be after this crisis, will our brand values evolve or how should be preserve our core brand tenets in this environment and lastly – how much should we invest in our brand efforts and how to optimize them in business environment, characterized with very limited financial resources.

Corporate brand equity investment, especially for B2B firms, brings significant benefits for the organization:

1. Lead generation or product marketing thrive on the shoulders of strong brands.
The well-positioned corporate brand is what could be the difference between successful and unsuccessful deal. The members of the purchasing committee will feel more safe with known and established in the industry brand.

2. Great corporate brand reduces risk and uncertainty.
The established corporate brand brings much important level of assurance in the other party that the purchased products or services will perform according to the agreed upon specifications. One of the distinguishing characteristics of enterprise tech projects if their complexity and difficulty to clearly first convince and then ensure that at the end of the project the results will be according to the agreed upon. A well-established corporate reputation can go a long way into limiting this risk for the purchasing organization.

3. Brings value for partners in the supply chain.
An established corporate brand can help the organization build easier and more productive partnership with resellers and service organizations along the supply chain and could even command better deal terms with them, if the corporate brand is with positive positioning in the industry.

4. The corporate brand brings differentiation to the offering.
Most tech industries are commodities industries. The offerings are mostly similar in their characteristics and benefits for the user. Therefore, the thing that brings differentiation in such commodity environment is the corporate brand.