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5 Digital Marketing Tips for IT Support Companies

Only companies with a professional team and paying attention to investments in marketing can achieve recognition in the IT market. The specifics of marketing IT services (consulting, software development, product maintenance, IT support solutions) is that the slightest mistake can undermine the reputation of an IT company and lead to an exodus of clients and partners.

The task of a B2B digital marketing company is to build a strategy and adjust the marketing funnel with minimum investments to attract traffic and increase conversions.

  • Services become more complex from year to year.
  • Target audience portrait changes dynamically (the usual cycle of “portrait change” is 3-7 years).
  • Cycle of transactions lengthens due to the complexity of services and the large number of offers on the market, which the client tries to study one way or another.

Today, marketing of IT services is conducted at three levels:

  • Strategic: selection of markets, specialisation, pricing policy, production planning.
  • Tactical: promotion of the company as an experienced developer and reliable partner.
  • Operational: implementation, realisation, and maintenance of services image.

The promotion of IT support companies is associated with the peculiarities of the IT domain – confidentiality and complexity. This article discusses IT support companies’ marketing and digital marketing Sortlist tips.

The success of top IT companies depends on effective marketing strategies that highlight their expertise and commitment to confidentiality, ensuring they stand out in a competitive landscape while addressing clients’ unique needs.

Specifics of the marketers working in IT support companies

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There is a shortage of marketers who understand IT topics. IT support services cannot be sold as house cleaning services (on social networks) or clothes (on marketplaces). Knowledge of marketing laws and tools does not help an average marketer who is far from the IT market.

To sell successfully, marketers must understand the product, know the terminology, have a “keen eye”, and understand the target audience’s needs. They also must understand the interconnections regarding the technical operation of products and support services. IT support company marketers must understand the return on each channel used and build a sales funnel based on the most effective tools.

Ideally, good specialists should have a technical background and expert skills, work with similar products and services, be able to create competent and interesting content and use their touchpoints in marketing communications. Such specialists will understand the reaction of potential customers and adjust the promotion.

Marketing professionals must not only understand where to direct traffic to get leads but also rely on connections, use non-standard techniques, and cooperate with other market players. They also must create expert content in all formats with a clear message – our IT support service is the best solution for your problem. IT support marketing should work not only for the short-term but also for the strategic goals to maximise the impact. Bottomline marketing and lead generation for IT services is complex, and finding specialists that fit your needs can be difficult. If your search for a capable marketer fails, consider partnering with a lead generation company specializing in business development for IT services.

How does an IT support company marketer differ from a traditional one?

Traditional marketers can create cool texts, work perfectly in Google Ads, and advertise on social networks, bringing a lot of leads. But the peculiarity of IT support companies is the duration of achieving visible results from 3 months to a year. 

A professional will see the result only over a long distance. That’s why marketers of IT support companies must be interested in what they are doing and be motivated. Such experts will not give up before the time. Because of this, IT support company marketers must seek a constant balance between the ambitious plans (including the speed of achieving the goal) and the team’s efforts (the result of which can be seen significantly later and does not always depend on the invested effort).

For the owner of an IT support company, ideal marketing is a way to reach a new level of income. For potential clients, IT support marketing generates the need to improve their business by purchasing IT support services. But to make potential clients want to buy an IT support service, it is necessary to gain their trust and surround them with expert articles, videos, and testimonials of those who have already solved their problems.

Building a marketing strategy for an IT support company: unit economics and metrics

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When creating a marketing strategy for an IT support company, it is necessary to conduct an audit. It will be the basis for making better decisions, increasing the effectiveness of IT support services promotion, and reducing marketing costs. This will require systematising objective assessments of the IT support company’s marketing goals and functions, all procedures involved, and the competencies of marketers. As a result of the survey, the factors and mechanisms of strategic control that form the basis of marketing planning are formed.

It will be necessary to analyse:

  • Services
  • Channels of Lead Generation
  • Competitors

To get results, you need to understand how to measure the effectiveness of unit economics. It operates with metrics that provide an objective assessment of marketing campaigns. Given that business is evolving, two metrics are always considered – strategic (impact of long-term initiatives) and tactical (advertising performance in a short period). 

Overall financial metrics help evaluate the profitability of investing in certain marketing strategies:

  • ROMI (Return On Marketing Investment). Suppose your IT support company invested $200,000 in advertising and attracted customers who ordered your services for $400,000. Consequently, each $1 invested in advertising brought $2 of profit. This means the advertising paid off, and the investment was profitable for the company.
  • CR (Conversion Rate). It is the number of visitors who take a certain action.
  • Conversion to sales. It is the % of those who purchase your IT support service (it should be understood that the percentages vary from company to company). 
  • CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). Knowing the cost per customer optimizes the management of the budget set aside for marketing and advertising. For example, your IT support company invested about $5,000,000 in marketing during the year and attracted 500 customers. The cost of one customer is $10,000.
  • LTV (Lifetime Value). It is the company’s income from the client for the entire interaction time. The metric shows how much it costs to attract and retain each client. For example, buying a monthly IT support service costs $5,000, and the client brings the company $50,000 annually. If LTV exceeds CAC, it indicates the stability of the business and the possibility of increasing marketing expenses to attract more clients.
  • ARPPU (Average Revenue Per Paying User). It is an indicator to assess the value of the service. The higher the indicator, the more solvent your consumers of IT services.

Thus, it is possible to evaluate whether marketing is bad or good by operating with unit-economy indicators and seeing concrete results (usually not earlier than in a year). Bad marketing can satisfy only immediate goals and not provide growth opportunities, while good marketing works for the future.

In the B2B sphere, even one deal with a customer within 6 months can recoup all the costs of promoting it. This means that you should look at marketing indicators from the point of view of trend changes. Marketing can be unprofitable in months, quarters, and sometimes even years (relevant for startups). But you need to see the trend in sales, subscriptions, deals at the approval stage, and growth of the client base (or mailing list base). If this happens, you should not look at losses at the moment. Morally, it’s hard, but that’s how it works. Determining the achievable point when you want marketing to start bringing you a profit is important.

And until that point, you can’t give up. It is necessary all the time to continue developing promotion channels, be closely engaged in analytics, and accumulate experience on how best to launch an advertising campaign. Just like in clothing production steps—where fabric selection, cutting, and stitching must align perfectly—your marketing efforts need to be streamlined and strategic. Next, let’s discuss our digital marketing tips for IT support companies.

Start with fundamentals: Google Ads, SEO, and PR

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In most cases, a combination of the 3 main mechanics works for IT support services:

  • Google Ads. It gives a quick return. It is possible to receive the first requests 3-4 weeks after the launch, but it requires significant advertising budgets.
  • SEO and content (case studies, infographics, guides, etc.). Organic promotion often gives higher conversion rates with constant work on semantics and good traffic. However, it begins to bring results only after a sufficiently long period – from 6 months minimum. The more competitors, the more effort and costs for optimization you need. In this case, you can parse the actual topics of competitors and pages with the highest traffic to form your search engine promotion plan. Given the high cost of commercial traffic, it is better to scale sales and increase conversion rates through informational traffic.
  • PR (industry platforms, business publications, interviews). Identifying the places where the interested audience gathers and posting press releases is necessary. You can use platforms oriented to professionals like GitHub, Quora, and Hackenoon. This will help you form an image of an expert and interest potential clients.

It is also necessary to pay attention to the microconversions. This way, you will avoid losing customers due to a lack of information about them and their activities and adequately assess the quality and performance of traffic. Microconversions can be transitions to the application, the website, or specific pages, clicking certain buttons, doing some actions, etc.

Pay attention to customer retention

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Attention retention is a challenging task. To get one lead or sale (depending on the niche), on average, 1,000-10,000 transitions or 50-500 people (depending on the service and type of traffic) are required. With such traffic volumes, retargeting works well for warming visitors and keeping their attention (especially if advertising will run for a week to a month). In the first stages of launching digital ads, we recommend focusing on the most marginal service in order not to be atomized and maximally testing the basic retargeting.

The target audience should know that your IT support company works without fail, satisfying the needs for which it was created. In today’s digital age, effective social media management can play a crucial role in ensuring this message reaches the right audience, fostering trust and engagement. This attitude directly affects the growth of profits.

Let’s imagine that there are 5 competing companies offering similar quality IT support services in the same price category. You can sell potential clients a solution only by understanding the customer’s fears and desires. The customer will choose the company whose marketers have found a clear and attractive message, created a “legend”, formed an emotional connection, for example, through mascots and bright visuals, and showed how the problem is solved.

For example, case studies are great for customer retention. They demonstrate the client’s pain points, the problem, ways to solve it, the resources required, the benefits of using your service, and the amount of effort, money, and time spent. 

Test as many marketing ideas as you can

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Testing various marketing ideas allows you to optimize your efforts, mitigate risks, and stay adaptable in a dynamic business environment. For instance, leveraging tools like CPQ software can streamline complex processes, enabling IT support companies to deliver more personalized and efficient solutions to their clients. It’s a valuable approach for improving your marketing effectiveness and achieving long-term success.

Diversifying your marketing efforts across multiple channels and strategies can help you reach a broader audience and reduce your reliance on a single traffic source or leads. To build an effective IT support services marketing strategy, you should:

  • Research the market/buyers/competitors
  • Understand the pain points and needs of the target audience
  • Optimize the website
  • Select tools and services for forecasting, planning, measuring results, and building communication
  • Create a huge amount of content with a well-developed semantic core
  • Increase social media presence
  • Utilise opinion leaders
  • Invest in professional PR
  • Build your brand in the IT market – which you may start by creating a logo design.
  • Maintain the interest of existing customers through post-sales contact
  • Integrate new technologies

Marketing of IT support services is often built through testing mechanics, and no one is immune to mistakes. You have to try many marketing strategies before the best ones are chosen based on the results of analysis and feedback.

Sometimes, it’s enough to identify the simplest channel, target audience, and lead generator that will drive traffic to the website. Using pixels and retargeting, you can lead potential clients through a chain of up to 100 touches before they mature to order a service.

Pay attention to semantics

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You should research semantics to understand how users search for solutions to their pain points. It seems simple – you need to find the most popular queries and work with them. But is it really that simple?

Companies not used or poorly involved in SEO and Digital PR should emphasise semantics. The semantic core is the foundation. For instance, by identifying the demand in search for tiny homes for sale in Maine, it’s easy to build everything else – PPC, targeted advertising, and marketing idea sets. You can discover interesting niches with great budgets, low search frequency, and no competition. This approach not only enhances your SEO but also opens up new opportunities for unique offerings.

Suppose a potential client is looking for an IT support consulting service. It means that he has already received maximum information from colleagues, has not found a suitable solution, and has gone to study the offers on the market. But the Google search is imperfect. In some IT topics, it shows only 5% of the real demand. For example, in the city N, 500 companies have problems with IT support, but only 5 companies are really looking for a solution, going to Google.

That is why the search engine remains the best basis for your decisions. If you study the search intelligently, you can understand niche queries and segments, develop marketing ideas on semantic blocks, and launch PPC to catch everyone interested in IT support.

Well-calibrated semantic blocks are great for PPC. They become hypotheses for targeting. They act as topics for YouTube videos. The better a marketer understands IT topics, the more clearly he or she will select semantics-based ideas for testing and research.

Embrace CustDev for your advantage

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Any sales model when launching an advertising campaign is necessarily tested in practice. This is easiest to do by getting feedback from potential or current customers. CustDev involves interviewing potential customers found through specialised services or running ads to gather an audience for surveys.

The Customer Development (CustDev) approach, popularised by Steve Blank in the context of startups and entrepreneurship, is not limited to early-stage companies but can also benefit IT support companies. It is especially a great approach when an IT support company develops new products, services, or solutions.

Entering foreign markets requires launching a larger-scale CustDev, conducting surveys (including paid ones, with a bar from $100-150 per interview), and using the client’s ready-made expertise regarding the target audience and key metrics. It is important to find out what attracts/repels the service, why they buy it, and what questions arise in the process of selection and use.

Having marketers on the team who know how to work with international platforms such as LinkedIn, Medium, Xing, YouTube, and Quora is a must for working on foreign projects. These platforms gather the right audience, giving great reach and responding well to content as a warming element.

Conclusion

As the IT industry advances, adapting and fine-tuning your digital marketing approach is crucial. Digital marketing offers a wealth of opportunities for IT support companies to thrive and expand their reach in today’s tech-driven world. By implementing the 5 tips outlined in this article, IT support businesses can effectively navigate the competitive landscape, engage with their target audience, and establish a strong online presence.