4 Effective (and Easy) Marketing Ideas for Technology Services Companies

In the increasingly competitive world of technology services, it’s important to create marketing campaigns that get attention. But your expertise is technology, not marketing — with so much on your plate already, how can you be expected to manage a marketing campaign as well?

In reality, digital marketing is a lot easier than it sounds. Automation tools help 80% of marketers to get more leads and 77% to get more sales. The best part is that these tools are available through channels you already use, like your social media pages and email marketing providers like Constant Contact.

To use those tools, of course, you need some effective marketing ideas for technology services companies. That’s the part that feels overwhelming to a lot of business owners, but don’t worry — there are lots of accessible ideas out there. Here are a few tried-and-true marketing methods to get you started.

1. Lead collection ads on social media

In the tech services world, you need to have conversations to land potential new customers. You need to be able to check in one-on-one with a potential user and explain how your solution is the best one to meet their needs. That means you need people’s contact information.

You can do that easily on Facebook using a lead ad. These are ads that feature a description of your solution’s benefits and a call-to-action (CTA) button that encourages people to sign up for your email list or buy your product.

In a lead ad, that button takes people to a form where they enter their contact information in exchange for something useful. Maybe that’s an informative email, a downloadable guide, or a free demo — whatever will provide value to your customers.

You can create effective ads easily with Constant Contact’s lead ad tool. No design experience is necessary.

2. A welcome email series

About 91% of people who receive welcome emails open them, and almost 27% click on a link in that email. Pretty impressive, right? It gets better. The overall open rate for technology marketing emails is just under 10% and the click-through rate is less than 8%, which means welcome emails present a huge opportunity for engagement.

So why are welcome emails so effective?

When someone joins your mailing list, they’re asking to hear more from you. If you can get in touch while they’re thinking about you, you have a better chance of getting follow-through.

It’s easy to automate a welcome email using Constant Contact, and you don’t need to stop there. You can craft an entire campaign starting with those initial messages.

First, use the process of subscribing someone to your email list to categorize them based on their interests. Assign each person to a premade group — known as a “segment” in marketing lingo — so you can send them relevant messages. This is easy to do using email services like Constant Contact.

When you send the initial welcome email, thank the customer for joining and invite them to learn more. You can even set it up so that signing up for your email list qualifies the recipient to get something for free, like a printable checklist or guide.

Be sure to schedule a follow-up email for a few days later, to hold your new lead’s interest. In this message, provide more information. Let them know how they can follow you on social media. Point them to your blog and YouTube channel if you have them.

A strong example of a second email in a welcome campaign, taken from our technology marketing guide. Using simple, clean design elements, it encourages further engagement without asking too much of new subscribers.

After that second email, plan to send another message every month or so. These emails should tie back to the person’s interest in your product.

3. Personalized “drip” emails

Did you know that 80% of customers prefer to buy from companies that personalize their experiences? By segmenting your audience into groups, as you learned about earlier, you can send out sequences of personalized emails. These sequences are known as drip campaigns.

With a drip campaign, a segment of your audience gets a particular message, perhaps calling their attention to an upcoming promotion. Each person’s response — whether they open the email, click through it, ignore it, and so on — determines what kind of message they’ll get next and when.

Drip campaigns are great for technology services companies. You can start with an overview of a particular feature and then drill down into details when people communicate interest, or offer information about a different feature if they weren’t interested in the first one.

4. An explainer video series

You know what pain points your tech solution can address, but your potential clients might not. By producing and sharing a themed video series, you can get the attention of people who have a problem that you might be able to solve.

First, create a YouTube channel for your company so that people can subscribe. You’ll host your videos here. Then, come up with a topic for your first series.

Finding a topic

Your topic should be:

• Relevant and timely for your audiences
• On-trend for your industry
• User-focused and not sales-y

Make sure you stay focused on a problem the user has, not on your product. Video content targets people who are just learning about your company, and they’re generally not invested enough to sit through multiple sales pitches. You can weave in product and feature mentions naturally as appropriate.

Making the videos

There are several types of videos that work well for tech service companies:

• Business advice videos featuring your solution
• How-to videos 
• Expert interviews featuring industry thought leaders
• News updates from your industry
• Problem-and-solution videos, showing different ways of approaching an issue

You can combine different video types into a single series, as long as they all center on a similar topic of interest. You want people who find one of the videos in the series to seek out the rest.

Use a similar visual style for each video. Consistency matters when you’re getting people familiar with your brand.

Promoting your videos

You can promote your video series using all of your regular marketing channels, including email and social media. Create an automated email series to promote new videos and share each one to your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn pages if you have them.

When you post your new videos to social media, use the video description to invite comments and shares. Remind people that someone they know might be interested in your solution.

The takeaway

Now you have some concrete marketing ideas for technology services companies, and you know how to use them. Want to learn a little bit more before you jump in? Check out The Download, our complete guide to technology marketing. Give it a read and let inspiration strike.

What do you think you’ll do first? Do you have an in-house expert you can interview for your inaugural video? Or will you focus on creating your first series of welcome emails? It doesn’t matter where you start, as long as you get yourself out there!