“We love working with technical companies, they are one of Mogrify’s key customer bases. The people are smart, super passionate about what they do, and are solving business problems that many people would be completely stumped by.”
“We admire information technology companies. The computer programmers, network engineers, systems analysts, solutions architects and business consultants know so much and are very enthusiastic about data, systems, analysis, cloud computing, servers, AI, Predictive Analytics, IoT, project management and are solving issues connected with business processes, security, storage, remote access, systems integrations, platform development and so much more that the majority of organisational leaders don’t understand, and wouldn’t have the time to try and unpick, even if they had the interest!”
Confused? We just showed you two opening paragraphs about why tech companies are great. One that (we hope) would make you want to meet, employ and quite frankly, hang out with tech crew.
The second is more detailed and more technical, and after a while we suspect you zoned out because, well, the specific technical language may not be as captivating for you! (Unless you’re a business owner at a technology company of course!)
We DO love working with tech companies. But we’ve noticed that some of them tend to talk to their own customers and prospects in the second way and not the first. Nothing wrong at all with getting technical. But you’ve got to choose when you do it. And first up, in most instances, you must connect in a simple way, about how you can help businesses and people.
What does your buyer need from you?
You know the literal answer to this, and yes it’s probably a particular platform or system. But you need to consider where your buyer is at in their journey. Read more here about Mogrify’s Buyer R.A.C.E.R. – a simplified, easy-to-remember version of the Buyer Journey that we developed.
Solving problems and opening up possibilities
The best content is the type that explains how technologies solve problems and create positive possibilities, but not in needlessly technical language.
For example, the Principal of a school who is in charge of implementing new technologies. They probably don’t care about how the tech works, all they want is to provide the best educational tools for their students and staff. Their concerns are not “systems integration” and “bandwidth”. They are “quality of education”, “staff job satisfaction”, and “a culture of learning”.
They don’t want to know that Azure has better security protocols and user management than AWS. They want to know how it will get students into online learning, be cost-effective and easy to use.
Hone your messages to suit your buyer
Know who you are targeting. A CTO will of course have a lot more technical knowledge than a Head of Human Resources or Office Manager. As this article points out: “When writing to a CTO, the focus is on business use cases and addressing the bottom line.”
But no matter who your target audience is, each of them will:
- have problems that need solving
- need to present a case to their team and their superiors
- want assurances that your product can help them
- want confidence in you as a person and your ability to relate to them
Content is more than words
Content doesn’t just mean blog posts, we also want you to focus on your videos, case studies, product brochures, whitepapers etc. There are forms of content that you can introduce some ‘tech talk’ in, such as an animated explainer. We find these are a great form of content that forces you to distill a technical idea into a 60-second video, and the illustrations help the viewer understand some of the technical content in a visual way.
Product brochures are also content pieces that can afford to have technical content enclosed. However, these brochures are usually shown further down the Buyer R.A.C.E.R, so the reader is more inclined to want to know about the technical details by that point.
Listen, watch and ask
A ‘set and forget’ approach is a waste of time and resources. You need to evaluate how different campaigns and content types perform so you know what is resonating with your buyer personas.
We are not saying don’t have a technical page on your site, as you could get a solution architect from a potential lead come across the page and find value in it. Having an automated marketing software such as Hubspot means you can see who is visiting what pages on your site, and assign that person to a buyer persona – easily keeping track of where they are in the Buyer R.A.C.E.R and what they are interested in.
Content marketing is a team sport
If you are a technical person in charge of creating your companies’ content, make use of the other people in your company such as the marketing team, sales team, product managers and product development team. They will all have unique insights into what content would work for each buyer persona. Ask for input. Especially valuable are those who are out in the field with customers. What are they wanting? What are they frustrated about?
Read more about why it’s so important to engage your whole team in this process.
Always bring it back to your buyer and what they need
When in doubt, bring the conversation back to your buyer. What is their pain point? How can you help? If your content is buyer-focused, educative, informative and answers real questions you won’t go wrong. Being technical for the sake of being technical, or because it is easier to write about, won’t bring you the business and the results you need.
To get an overview of how effective your marketing content and strategy is currently, and see how you compare against other companies, take our quick (and free) B2B online Marketing Assessment.
