In businesses today, there is no longer a specific buyer for new software solutions. More employees than ever now bring software tools they think could be useful to their company’s decision makers. As a technology company selling software as a service, your buyer pool just got a lot larger. These “anonymous buyers” across businesses can be harder to target and doing so requires a broader marketing and advertising strategy than you might have employed before. Let’s take a look at how to allocate your marketing resources to best grow your brand awareness and ultimately, grow your business.
Invest in Broader Brand Campaigns
Many technology businesses don’t aim to build a share of voice within their market segment. But share of voice and share of market are correlated, so the more people are talking about your software solution, the more growth you can expect. To build this share of voice, invest in broader, brand awareness campaigns.
With the uptick of “anonymous buyers” for software solutions, it makes sense to cast a wide net with your advertising. Your buyers could now be anyone and you don’t want to miss any potential opportunities. Aim for a 50/50 split between tightly focused, lead generation campaigns and overall brand awareness campaigns.
Create Quality, Un-Gated Content
The usefulness of keeping content offers gated to only those willing to trade an email address is waning. 81% of buyers today say they avoid filling in contact forms, and 60% of buyers say they aren’t comfortable sharing contact information with someone they haven’t worked with. This trend is only being sped up with the rise of anonymous buyers, who might be more casually software shopping as compared to someone assigned to the task based on a specific job function.
By sharing high-quality content freely, you can establish your brand as an authority within your space and help new leads find you online. When businesspeople see you as the expert in your field, when they need a new technology solution, your name will be top of mind.
Your content offers can include industry thought leadership, topical content like tech industry news, how-to guides and other evergreen content, and customer or client success stories. If you’re a SaaS company with a free version of your software, you could build a community for those trials members where you and others can offer tips and advice. This is a great way to nurture those leads with great service and convert them into paying subscribers.
Be Active on Social Media
Having a presence on the social media channels that make sense for your business is important. Most B2B companies should be on LinkedIn and Facebook. Use your organic social media to promote your high-quality content in bite sized increments by following the 80/20 rule. 80% of your content should be educational, entertaining or useful, while 20% can be self-promotional, sharing your software’s specific solutions.
Organic social media can also include being active in groups or forums where your potential customers spend time and sharing your thought leadership by joining in discussions and answering questions. Remember, organic social media posting is a long game, and it takes time and patience before you see traction.
Using paid social media advertising is also a great way to put your solution where your anonymous buyers might be spending their free time. While paid social media can be just as much as or more than a paid search advertising investment, it helps build brand familiarity in another channel, amplifying your reach to even more qualified leads.
Utilize Email
Great content marketing goes hand in hand with an email strategy. Email is great because it’s a direct line to your customers and leads, is a channel you can fully own and it has a low barrier to entry. Create a biweekly or monthly email newsletter to share your latest and greatest content offers. As more prospects sign up for your email lists you can also send them automated drip campaigns to provide useful content and help to convert them into customers.
This can be a great tool if you use a free trial or a freemium model for your software. Use your email list to wow your trial users with your excellent customer service and resources to retain them as full subscribers.
By focusing on building overall brand awareness, creating great content and distributing that content where a wide demographic of people will see it, you can gather more qualified leads and better nurture them into customers. If you need advice on marketing your software solution, reach out to our team at B&Y. We can help you put all these ideas into action.