So what do you think the most important element of technology company marketing is?
Some would say the product or service is most important. Elegantly designed software that performs its designated task is super important. An efficient process that allows organizations to optimize their IT performance and spend is also critically important. But if nobody buys it, who really cares how good or bad it is?
Some would say that your Unique Value Proposition (the answer to the question, "why should someone buy my solution in light of all the alternatives available?") is the most important element of technology company marketing. This is getting a lot closer to what I think is the most important element.
But your Unique Value Proposition is probably not all that unique if you're not focusing your marketing on a specific niche or target market. Even the largest enterprise players have divisions that focus on target markets. So in my opinion, the most important element of technology company marketing is focus.
Why is focus so important to technology company marketing?
The short answer to that question is that focusing your limited sales and marketing resources on target markets that understand and appreciate how your differentiation provides value is the only way you will succeed.
As the owner of a small business, I get sales pitches every day for just about every business service you can think of. The ones that turn me off quicker than any others are the ones that boast about their business relationships with enterprise organizations like Microsoft and Amazon.
For an SMB inbound marketing agency, how could you possibly think that your relationship with Amazon resonates with me? What it really shows me is that you haven't taken the time to do any research on me and are just throwing s#!t up against the wall.
Let me contrast that with a pitch I got from someone who focused on me:
"I just came across Rapidan Inbound while working on a new sales and marketing system for a client. It looks like you’re trying to sell more of your inbound marketing programs. From the outside, it seems your company shares some similarities with a few of our clients.
You can and should be focusing on a limited number of target markets in your business. Find industries, company sizes and geographic locations in which you have experience and expertise. When you target these markets, your Unique Value Proposition just might actually be unique!
How to use focus in your technology company marketing
There are 3 main ways to use focus in your technology company marketing.
- Use focus to qualify your leads against your ideal customer profile so that you're only using limited sales and marketing resources on prospects that are likely to buy from you, that you can help and that will provide you with a reasonable profit margin when they are customers.
- Use focus to create targeted content like videos, blogs and webinars that will educate your target buyers and help them progress through their buyer's journey.
- Use focus to create a feedback loop of continuous improvement so that you can adapt your services and approach faster than your competition that isn't specializing.
One of the paradoxical things I've learned in my business is that the more narrowly I focused, the more opportunities I created and the more my business grew. So stop trying to be all things to all people and focus your technology company marketing.
