The competition at the software market is fierce, and it’s becoming hard for companies to stand out from all the others out there and attract their target audience.
That’s why software companies must focus on the strategies that work.
Read on to learn more about the digital marketing strategies that can help you stay ahead of the curve, gain and keep your competitive advantage.
Understand the market
Begin with answering two fundamental questions – who purchases your software, and why.
As for the answer to the first question, you need to get as many details as you can on your target audience – companies or individuals that would be using your software.
Try to determine the personal and professional characteristics of your prospects, as well as their values, interests, habits, desires, needs, and pain points.
With this information, you can create buyer personas and tailor your marketing and advertising campaigns to address their needs better.
As for the second question, you need thorough research of the market.
Only then you can define your unique value proposition, or clearly state the benefit you offer to your customers, and that sets you apart from all the rest.
Have a great website
Your website is like your cyber office, so use it to make a great impression on your potential and current customers.
To the persons who are thinking about investing their money into your software, your site needs to show just how professional, credible, and trustworthy your company is.
To accomplish it, provide a great user experience to anyone who visits it. For starters, this means several things:
- Make your website clean and straightforward, so that it is intuitive and easy to navigate.
- Mobile traffic accounts for half of overall traffic, so your website needs to be fully functional on mobile displays.
- Your website should load fast, as 53 percent of mobile users will leave your site if it needs more than 3 seconds to load.
- Offer relevant and useful content to educate and inform your potential and current customers.
- Include your customers’ reviews and recommendations, as they are an important driver of conversions.
- Use SEO to rank well in searches and be visible to your target audience. This means that you should include relevant keywords on each page, and use them in page’s title, meta description, URL, and image alt text too. Backlinks to the relevant websites in your industry will boost your SEO rating.
Use your content to generate leads
To bring more prospects to your website and turn them into your loyal paying customers, you need a good content marketing strategy. Your goal is to create high-quality content, optimize it for search engines, and promote it on your social media channels.
Begin with working on your blog. Make sure each one of your blog posts adds value to your prospects by tailoring it to their needs depending on their relevant traits, and their position in the content marketing funnel.
For those who are at the top of the funnel, you’ll need content that grabs attention, and you can achieve this by solving their pain points. Prospects that are in the middle of the funnel need more informative and educational pieces. In contrast, those who are at the very bottom need pieces of content that highly focus on your software and its benefits, which will convert them to purchase.
Also, when creating content, aim for diversity. The brain understands visuals 60,000 times faster than text, so make sure to add illustrations, photos, and infographics in your posts. Video is the most popular type of content, so include it in your campaigns too.
Podcasts, webinars, guest blogging are also great ways to generate leads you can nurture afterward.
Automate digital tasks
Software companies can see many benefits from using various automation solutions that can significantly save their resources, but at the same time, bring their business to a whole new level.
A cloud-based solution Erpag can help you automate your MRP system, sales, inventory, and purchasing, successfully integrating with your other tools so that you can connect and streamline all your business processes. It can automate your CRM and presales, generating leads and opportunities, and converting them to sales orders. You can use it to create a simple to use B2B portal and make it possible for your resellers, agents, and customers to make their orders from anywhere.
You can also consider email automation tools, and send email campaigns that are segmented and personalized to fit your customers’ needs—making your digital marketing campaigns more efficient or maybe find marketing agency for your needs.
Stats claim that email marketing brings 38$ for 1$ spent, so it’s quite a cost-effective way to market your software.
Use the power of reviews and referrals
Online reviews highly influence consumers – 93% of customers say that online reviews impact their buying decisions. A high number of your customers would trust online reviews as much as they trust personal recommendations they get from their friends and family.
The good idea is to start a referral program, and don’t rely on accidental recommendations only. You can begin by actively asking for recommendations and referrals from your satisfied customers.
A discount or a giveaway credit they can use in their next purchase is something you can offer in return for their referral.
Even the giants used those practices before they turned great – PayPal used to give away money for a referral, while Dropbox gave free storage rewards both to brand advocate and their friends.
By following the strategies above, you’ll attract more potential customers, get more conversions, and improve your bottom line.
Jolene Rutherford is a marketing specialist – turned blogger, currently writing for technivorz.com. Interested in digital marketing and new technology trends. Love sharing content that can help and mean to people.