The truth is, scaling any business to the next level is quite a challenge.
It’s even more overwhelming for small IT companies with a tight budget.
That being the case, we’ve rounded up growth marketing strategies that small information technology businesses can leverage to acquire more customers and leads.
Before then, here’s a quick overview:
You don’t need to break the bank to drive growth.
Instead, spend your energy on activities that will translate into a positive ROI for years.
Below are the four lean-and-mean growth strategies for any IT business that wants fast-track growth without blowing the budget.
Prioritize Organic SEO
Search Engine Optimization is a tried and tested growth marketing strategies IT companies can leverage.
So, be sure to create optimized, high-quality content to help you get your SEO plan off the ground. Sure, you can use paid ads to give you a boost. Still, the real value is when you top Google’s ranking organically.
Why are we insisting on organic SEO as a way of growing your IT business? Well, because numbers don’t lie. Here are some stats by Brightedge Research.
Organic traffic stands at 53.3 percent on average across all industries.
Combined organic search averages at 76 percent in B2B.
B2B companies generate double the revenue from organic search than any other channel.
Organic search is quickly outpacing the growth of other channels.
Indeed, these stats are remarkable.
However, the question is, how can you make sure that you get your share of the pie?
As a rule of thumb, organic SEO gives the desired results by having a vigorous content marketing plan.
Put differently: you must generate content that targets keywords your target audience is looking for on search engines.
Here are a couple of SEO best practices you should keep in mind as you set out to produce content for your IT business.
Create a List of Keywords You Want to Target – Start by having a list of all the keywords you want to rank for or are currently ranking for. Be sure to include monthly search volumes and organic as well paid competition. Also, monitor the movements every thirty days and note the Month Over Month growth.
Use Search Rank Tools – Leverage platforms such as SEMRush to track keyword stats and changes. These tools will also help you discover trending keywords and topics that may be interesting to your audience.
Side Note: Organic SEO involves more than creating high-quality content. It would be best if you got technical elements, such as alt tags, meta descriptions, and meta descriptions correct.
Your off-site SEO has to be on point as well. It includes getting backlinks from high quality and authority websites.
Focus On Content Marketing Strategies
Organic SEO alone won’t help grow your IT business if you don’t have content.
Do you know what this means?
Well, it implies that content marketing should be at the core of your growth marketing strategies. While content marketing for IT companies is competitive, there are plenty of opportunities to reach and convert prospective buyers.
Why content marketing?
For starters, content marketing is incredibly beneficial to your IT brand. It builds trust, reputation and, most importantly, offers an assessable return on investment.
Here’s what you need to do to benefit from content marketing.
Develop A Content Strategy
Do you know that only 43 percent of B2B marketers have a documented content marketing strategy?
The thing is, content marketing changed drastically, especially to the pandemic. If there’s one thing, this epidemic taught marketers is that a good content marketing strategy should be agile.
So be sure to develop a plan that can evolve to handle external and internal changes.
Create A Content Calendar
Design a content calendar that outlines the keywords to target every week, month, and so on. Your calendar must also include buyer persona, buyer stage, and goals.
You’re better off with a calendar that covers what you’ll do in at least ninety days. It should indicate the posting frequency and parameters.
Outsource Content
Make no mistake about it –we’re not saying that you should write content.
However, as an IT company seeking to establish its presence in a super competitive industry, it makes perfect sense to outsource content.
Look.
You need to publish content regularly to make your business discoverable. Therefore, you should consider hiring a content creation company to help you churn out enough to give your business the front print it needs to grow.
Besides, working with a content writing service gives you access to experts who understand your industry. That way, you can be sure that you’re generating SEO friendly content and material that your audience will love to read.
Further, a professional writing service can help you brainstorm and help package your brand’s message in a language that your leads will understand.
A Solid Distribution Plan
Content creation is one piece of the puzzle. You must distribute the content to ensure that it reaches the targeted audience. In other words, without distribution, your content will not generate traffic. Some of the content distribution channels you can leverage include social media, third party websites, and email marketing.
Once your content marketing plan is up and running, you’ll start to see your traffic and keyword increase. You’ll also get more conversions.
Engage With Organic Social Media
When used correctly, organic social media is an excellent channel for small IT businesses to drive growth. But, you’ll need to develop a social media marketing strategy that outlines the channels you’ll use, the posting frequency, and what you’ll post.
We’ll break it down further:
Channels
Which channels is your target audience likely to hangout? LinkedIn is arguably one of the best social media marketing channels for B2B IT businesses. Twitter and Facebook are great too.
Even though your audience is likely to be on traditional platforms, you consider other emerging channels such as TikTok.
Posting Frequency
You must post frequently to make any meaningful gains on social media. The idea is to drive as many conversions as possible on these ever-volatile platforms. Remember that it takes time to win on social media, so consider using a marketing automation tool to schedule your posts.
What To Post
You can’t just post anything. Ideally, you want to post that solves your target audience’s pain point. So, make sure that your original content. On top of that, make sure that your articles are accurate and factual. Also, it doesn’t hurt guest posting on reputable tech publications and relevant industry groups.
The primary purpose of posting on social media is to create engagement. Think of it as a way to get more followers, likes, shares, and comments.
Side Note: Be sure to respond to people who interact with your content on social media. Replying to comments or tweets makes it easy to start conversations with your audience and, by extension, nurture stronger relationships.
Deliver Value Right To Your Audience’s Inbox
Email marketing is undoubtedly one of the best growth marketing strategies for IT brands to experience a positive return on investment.
More specifically, you’ll make an impressive return of $42 for every $1 you spend on email marketing, according to Digital Marketing Association (DMA).
And you don’t have to spend beyond your budget with email marketing. Still, you’ll need an email automation tool to enable you to set up drip-campaigns and autoresponders.
Here’s how to deliver value to your prospect’s inbox and convert.
Ensure that the info is as relevant to the recipient as possible. We recommend that you segment your list as a way to help you personalize your emails.
Make sure that your subject lines have a hook to entice subscribers to open the emails.
Be sure to use well-thought outcall to actions and place them where your prospect is in the funnel.
Side Note: Use the performance of your email marketing efforts to improve and tweak your overall campaign to achieve even better results.
The Bottom Line
Indeed, growing an IT business to profitability isn’t the easiest of things.
Still, you can outperform your competitors if you have a well-curated marketing strategy. And the beauty of it is that you don’t have to burn through your wallet to experience a positive ROI and dominate your industry.
The tips outlined above are practical and will lead your IT company to a path of significant growth. It is essential to note that these tactics may take a little while before they start to yield the expected results, so put in the work and be patient.
Not sure how you will implement these strategies?
Not a problem!
At Growth Generators, we remain at the forefront of making sure that your IT business succeeds. That being so, we’ll develop and implement a growth marketing plan that suits your brand and business model.
We’ll even create content that will generate organic traffic and convert your business.
If you’re ready to start your marketing campaign, contact us today, and one of our team members will attend to your needs.
Get started today and put your IT brand where it should be – at the TOP!