don't call us, we'll call you

In business technology buying process, 75% of influencers and 80% of decision-makers said that they are the ones to find vendors (through research) rather than responding to a campaign [source: MarketingSherpa]. Outch.

Which shows without a shadow of a doubt where the marketing effort needs to be invested: your technology company must be visible and found in those channels and places where your prospects could be searching for vendors such as yourself. 

For those active, control-obsessed, results-driven marketers, this might sound terrible. I do many direct marketing campaigns, myself, and expect results from each of these. But if the moment and the path are not in my hands, what else is there?

Actually, lots and lots of harder and smarter work. The outcome that you're after is called Attention.

Whitepapers

Your prospect would buy from a company that can educate him. I find this to be the most challenging part of the content creation job, as it requires constant education, jargon-learning, trends research, interaction with industry specialists.

Articles in specialized media

Your company's name and its achievements should be constantly heard in your industry environment [in the good way, of course]. Press releases worth publishing must be issued periodically. Depending on the marketer's relationship with the journalists, contributing articles will also be part of the media exposure, and these are my favorite, in terms of credibility and objectivity. Blame it on my education in journalism.

Speeches in vertical events

Positioning professionals from the company as specialists in their respective fields reflects well on the entire organization and shows that your company holds valuable human capital.

Awards and certifications

Have an industry-specific, well-known and opinion-valued institution assess your products, services, cases. Be competitive and gain awards and rankings, as they speak more credibly about your quality than your sales force ever could. I remember how, when starting locally the  subsidiary of a major regional business group, we had plenty of arguments to position: dominant provider in the home market, huge experience of over 60 years, large multi-country base of clients... But then the group received THE certification from the European Central Bank. That certification has then saved something like 60% of the introductory-phase duration.

Brand awareness

Volumes can be written here and tons of money can be spent on events, associations, publications.  Every type of task described in this post generates brand awareness. Unfortunately, brand awareness campaigns started having a negative meaning, since this very vague gain is being overused in reply to the lack-of-leads reproach. "This campaign didn't generate anything" / "Yes, but we were going for the brand awareness".

To mitigate the pressure on results, I hereby acknowledge that the only true metric for these efforts is the number of inbound leads.

SEO, SEM

Your company's website is, undisputable, the main channel for harvesting demands. Bring organic and paid traffic for your website and publish fresh content often. Good ranking in search engines make sure your company is there when the technology buyers conduct their research.

Clients references

Technology purchases involve significant investments and not-so-short periods before becoming functional and producing outcomes for their business. Instead of holding its breath and praying for the right outcome, the client can gain trust in the your services' quality thanks to your other successful projects described in case studies and testimonials.