3 Tactics for Growing Your Tech Firm in 2015
As the New Year approaches, now is a great time to reflect on your business’ growth over the last year and start making plans for 2015. Whether your goal is to continue on the same trajectory, scale your current efforts, or try something completely new and innovative, there are a number of marketing activities, that when implemented correctly, can become the driving force behind the future growth of your company.
#1: Pilot new top-of-the-funnel marketing programs. It sounds obvious that more leads = more business, but it can be easy to get bogged down in the day-to-day and forget the importance of piloting new marketing programs to fuel your sales funnel. From email marketing to search engine optimization, tech firms have a multitude of tactics at their disposal for uncovering new prospects and engaging early-stage leads.
If you have an in-house marketing team, challenge them to pilot new activities or think differently about their current ones. If you don’t have a team in-house, look for a marketing partner that can help you determine the best programs to pilot that align with your budget and business goals—and then help you implement and manage those activities.
#2: Leverage technology.
You can use technology to enable new activities or to streamline existing ones. As a tech firm, you’re likely already using technology in virtually every department of your firm. But are you using it to its greatest potential? And are you using the right mix of technologies to support your sales targets?
Every company has their ‘must have’ sales & marketing technology. For most, this includes a CRM and an email marketing system. Ideally, it also includes a content management system to be able to manage the website without leaning on technical resources. And for many, that covers the bulk of what you need to succeed. But there are many decisions to make when choosing a platform, and a seemingly endless (and growing) number of plugins and tools to integrate and enhance these systems. From email tracking tools like Yesware to website lead conversion technology such as BrightInfo, the landscape is tremendous, and while it can be overwhelming, it is important for whomever is involved in marketing and sales within or in support of your organization to be constantly evaluating new technologies that can help advance your goals.
#3: Better enable your sales force.
Marketing’s role in supporting sales should go beyond the basics of lead generation and well-written collateral (though those are important, of course). Marketing can help sales in a variety of ways, and organizations who are willing to invest the time and resources can yield significant value.
- Content that Converts
Marketing creates content. Customers and prospects digest it. By understanding the topics and types of content that help accelerate sales cycles or make Sales more efficient, marketing can mindfully create a content plan to fill informational or educational gaps that can help enable and shorten the sale process.
- Customer insights
From good, old-fashioned market research and win-loss analysis to new technologies that enable rapid, digital access to market insights, marketers can help salespeople glean new insights into their target buyers that help them engage them more efficiently and productively. When expanding into new market segments or launching new products or services, customer research is a must-have. But dedicating even a few hours a month to customer insight activity can yield surprising benefit.
- Company insights
For firms who are successfully tracking customer and prospect activity metrics online, marketing can help surface individual behaviors and organizational patterns to help make Sales more efficient. Knowing which of your prospect accounts have engaged with your firm most via web, social, and email can help a salesperson prioritize their time.
Making the decision to focus your marketing efforts on growing your business is a long-term commitment, but with the right resources and expertise in place, it can prove to be a very fruitful undertaking. By leveraging and integrating the right technologies, expanding and/or optimizing your current lead generation programs, and creating processes and materials that support your sales team, your business will be on the right track to a bigger and brighter New Year.