Marketing framework for Tech & IT companies

Most tech and IT firms are competent enough to produce good quality work for their clients. But good-enough skills aren’t sufficient to get buy-in from prospects. Especially when there is a ton of competition, and buyers view your firm as yet another replaceable vendor.

A well-positioned firm is capable of communicating their key differentiating factors without pitches, estimates or proposals.

Most firms struggle with marketing decisions — their necessity, timing, alignment and quality. That’s why we focus on three primary areas of marketing for IT & Tech firms: positioning — to make your firm less interchangeable; service offerings — to simplify, prune and focus your value; and lead generation system — to have a continuous flow of inbound leads.

If you are the principle of a Tech or an IT firm that strongly believes in doing the best work for your clients who gladly pay premium for deep expertise — you’re at the right place at the right time.

Firms winning less than 55% of bids/proposals perform below average.

The top challenges of Tech & IT firms

Principals of tech & IT companies report the following top challenges in their businesses:

  1. Profitability pressures due to increasing competition and commoditization
  2. Attracting better talent for key technical roles
  3. How to motivate existing employees to put in their best effort
  4. Staying up-to-date with the latest tech yet focused
  5. How to stand out from other alternatives from buyers’ perspective
  6. Making smarter strategic business decisions faster
  7. How to qualify prospects to get better paying clients
  8. New business development issues
  9. Diminishing profit margins due to clients’ demands and expectations
  10. Planning and executing on new ideas and innovation

Take a look at our marketing solutions developed specifically for professional services firms to tackle the aforementioned challenges.

See solutions

Differentiated IT & Tech companies get better clients

Buyers of IT services get bombarded with copy-paste emails, text messages and offers from tech companies daily. Be it SEO services, cybersecurity, managed IT services, tech support, cloud management, web development offers or try-us-out-for-free deals. Your prospects need an expert not a deal.

Well-differentiated IT & Tech firms have more leads, better prospects and qualified clients. A path to a compelling differentiation starts with positioning: what business you’re in, who is the target market and how you serve your clients differently.

If the company isn’t at the top of food chain in the marketplace, claims of being great at everything tech is the wrong approach to marketing. Well-positioned firms emanate deep expertise in one or several adjasent categories — never in everything.

When your firm becomes less interchangebale it can become more compelling by offering limited number of pre-packaged solutions. These two parts set the stage for the third part — lead gen system.

To get better clients you need to have a constant stream of inbound leads, good lead-prospect conversion rates and a way to qualify prospects.

At the end of the day you don’t want your people to be busy with tons of work, you want to be selective, command a price premium and feel comfortable with the way things develop.

Profitable IT & Tech firms have one thing in common — more choice

Firms from the IT and tech industries have different paths to sustainable businesses. Some focus on ads and SEO, some — on networking and word of mouth, some — on sales reps and cold outreach. This doesn’t always result in comfortable level of profitability.

One thing that all profitable tech firms have in common is a surplus of clients. This allows them to say no more often. Less pursuit of distractions disguised as opportunities. Less wrong-fit clients. Less pitching, estimating and cold-calling. As a result — higher profit margin.

To be able to charge a price premium for the work, a firm has to be well-positioned in the marketplace. It has to have clear and focused menu of offerings. It has to have a perpetual lead gen system in place.

When the demand for your IT firm is higher than your capacity, you’d be able to raise your fees. Hiring more hands on deck isn’t necessarily the path to a more profitable and comfortbale level of business.

Company culture will help in many unforseen ways

Great talent is attracted to great culture. The culture at an IT or Tech firm cannot be forced on people. Really good specialists will be leaving in droves when their values and expectations aren’t met.

Higher salary only works up to a certain threshold. More benefits don’t work on zealous tech nerds. Best people in tech are motivated by challenge, freedom, acceptance and community.

When a Tech & IT firm can clearly articulate its mission, vision, values and purpose; when it embraces them — it begins to act in a culture-forming manner that attracts better-fit candidates.

Even Tech and IT firms with great culture can’t reduce the turnover to zero. But at these firms employees rarely decamp, on contrary — they do their best to reciprocate by finding a suitable replacement.

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