15 Marketing Strategies for Software Development Companies

Software development companies are facing the challenge of competing against newer market players and improving the user experience.

Whether they sell software as a service or a product, marketing gives a sure chance of standing out from the competition.

Thus, they need to transform their marketing strategy and do so in a way that gives their customers a top-notch experience with the company.

Differences between Digital and Traditional Software Marketing

Digital and traditional software marketing greatly differ in how they approach prospective customers.

Traditional software marketing is all about selling directly to an individual customer who has already expressed interest in the product. Traditional marketing includes things like direct mailings, print ads in magazines and newspapers, sponsorship of events or organizations where there's an audience for your product, etc.

It mostly relies on the use of brochures, flyers, and other printed materials. This type of marketing is great for getting your name out there and making people aware of your business, but it’s not as effective for conversion rates or ROI.

Digital marketing works by connecting with your target audience, creating a buzz around your product, and getting people to buy it.

It involves:

• creating strategies that focus on social media
• centering around search engine optimization (SEO)
• building email lists. Or alternatively, using tools such as ZoomInfo or alternatives to build those lists.

In digital marketing, you're trying to reach as many people as possible in order to get them interested in your product.

This can be done through various ad campaigns, experimenting with user-generated content, which is one of dominating trends now, and multiple digital means of communication.

Below, there are fifteen ways software development companies interested in building proper marketing strategies need to approach it in 2023.

Strategy #1: Confirm Your Business Goals🎯

Software companies rely on marketing to drive unit sales and profits. If a company doesn’t have the resources to create a result-oriented strategy or an adequate budget, the company risks long-term revenue and customer loss.

Merely having a marketing plan is not enough to ensure financial success. Set your business goals around specific targets that include:

• the audience you want to reach
• time and terms of prospective achievement
• tracking and analytical tools you are planning to use.

As a side note, even a marketing strategy with strategic goals and a solid budget plan can be a failure if it is not followed by effective sales efforts.

Strategy #2: Analyze and Define Your Target Market⚖️

Statistically, those who are most in need and most likely to profit from your product or service are known as your target market.

It will determine what to select as the best strategies for increasing traffic to your sales funnel.

Besides, when promoting a product, your new software platform, or interface, you should be aware of:

• the intended users
• the potential customers.

Because the end-user is typically not the actual decision-maker, defining the target market can be more challenging for software development organizations, particularly for those focused on B2B.

Regarding these factors, you must focus on segmenting the audience and targeting:

• users
• micro and macro influencers
• top managerial levels.

Strategy #3: Get Personal and Tell a Story📕

Naturally, most software developers tend to focus on the technical part of their services. They concentrate their promotional efforts around the tech sides that they can offer to their potential consumers.

However, deploying this strategy is highly unlikely to boost the attention of the audience or distinguish among an army of software developers. Can you come up with something truly unique?

One of the few ways to get your company noticed is to get personal. Tell the potential clients your story and help them resonate with it. Show how special you are since you are a company with history, not just another company with a dozen certified experts.

Strategy #4: Work Out a Social Media Strategy👍🏻

Working out a social media strategy helps a software company directly connect with its users.

While it may be easy to write tech-filled posts on LinkedIn, Reddit, or Medium, you need to go further to master the rules specific to this particular platform. Luckily, almost every platform now offers marketing tools to help you find potential clients.

Take advantage to offer more to your target audience. You may find an untapped source of clients looking for your services.

Social media is an integral part of any marketing strategy, regardless of the nature of your business. With the exponential growth of numerous social media and networking platforms, developers get a great opportunity to find the majority of their clients there.

It can be done through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Twitch, Reddit, Discord, or LinkedIn which remove any filters getting in the way.

Be ready to curate your content not to be tone-deaf for the platform audience.

For more on how to develop a social media style, we recommend a great read from Hootsuite.

Strategy #5: Invest in SEO🧙🏻‍♂️

Without SEO, your marketing strategy is unlikely to achieve significant goals. Today, high visibility on search engines is the key to success.

Professional SEO services can help you do it. No matter how small your company is, with the right approach to SEO, you can outrun older and more experienced competitors.

It’s important to note that SEO doesn’t work quickly. You would have to wait for the first results to show and be ready to change the strategy midway.

It’s also necessary to appreciate that there are all sorts of strategies and tools to get to grips with. For instance, even something as simple as the domain you choose makes a big difference to search visibility. So for software development firms, understanding the basics of .io domain extension options is a must. It’s as much about pleasing search algorithms as meeting customer expectations.

Strategy #6: Go Local🔊

In the world of software development, there is no shortage of competitors. It's a crowded field, and it can be hard to stand out. But if you're willing to put in the work, you can get the results you want.

One of the ways to do it is to focus on the markets that are close to you geographically. Even though software developers can work remotely, the majority of people still find it appealing to see what local companies can offer.

That’s why it’s important to get to know the local preferences of the target audience when drafting your marketing strategy.

Strategy #7: Refresh Your Website⚡

If you want to get conversions with your marketing strategy, you need to have a place where your clients can learn about your company. That place is, of course, your website.

If you think you are investing sufficient effort in your website, you aren’t. There is always something you can do to make it better.

Make sure to offer valuable information on your website and keep it updated on a regular basis. Create a positive image of your team’s skills by welcoming consumers with valuable content and appealing design.

Strategy #8: Run PPC Advertising🔊

The PPC advertising model works well for both awareness and conversion rates. It’s also much more cost-effective compared to traditional marketing because you only pay to run ads when a customer clicks on one of your ads (hence the name, pay-per-click).

For higher efficiency, you can use online advertising with Google Adwords and Facebook Ads, which allows you to:

• target specific keywords that are relevant to your business
• reach customers who are particularly interested in what you have to offer (rather than just anyone who might see your ad while browsing online)
• implement PPC management strategies to optimize ad spend, maximize ROI, and continually refine campaign performance.

Strategy #9: Email Marketing📩

The most potent technique to educate your customers about new products and promotions is email marketing.

Aside from careful trimming of your email list, it's effective to build your email marketing strategy around creating:

• video-based content (reels and shorts are preferred formats)
• interactive and static infographics (this will be the best and most appealing way to introduce data-rich content)
• customer-focused material to maximize the effectiveness of your reach.

To increase the click-through rate, try to include one clear CTA per email. Just make sure to use SPF verification before sending these mass emails to avoid ending up in spam.

Strategy #10: Existing Customer Re-Marketing💳🎁

Remarketing implies activities aimed at contacting previously engaged customers in an effort to reconnect and work with you again.

The reason behind the success of this strategy is simple: selling to an established customer has a larger chance of accomplishment than selling to a new one.

Since they already know what you do, there's no need to convince them! What you should be doing is reminding them of the advantages of your product. If they like what they see, they will stay with your company, which means more money in the long run.

For positive business outcomes, you will use the data that you have about your clients to attract them back to your website.

You can do this by tracking their behavior on your site and showing ads to them based on their interests and browsing history. By doing this, you can increase sales and get more leads from current customers.

Strategy #11: Original Video Content 🎬

At the moment, video is one of the most effective ways to promote your business online. According to Video Marketing Statistics Report by Social Shepherd:

In a survey, 86% of marketing professionals reported that they used video as a marketing tool.

It's also an excellent way to reach out to new audiences at a low cost per view.

Whether it's an instructional video or an introduction to your company and its mission statement, video content will help people understand exactly what it is that you do without having to read tons of text.

Videos are engaging and can help potential customers learn more about your product or service. If you're not sure where to start, consider hiring a videographer or following the tips on the production of your own tutorials and success stories.

Strategy #12: Do Guest Blogging and Influencer Marketing💹

The IT industry is growing with no intention to stop.

People always search for information online. Be one of the contributors. Search for potentially useful websites and offer them guest posts. If you strive for traffic growth and conversions, grow your own community by creating your presence on guest platforms.

Another strategic direction relates to developing influencer marketing. Rather than searching for the biggest followers' number, you need to focus on collaboration with those influencers who can deliver design-forward branding and highlight your service and product strengths.

Strategy #13: Track for Success⌛

To maintain motivation and enhance productivity, software developers’ companies can give time tracking tools a try.

Taking this approach is promising as it helps:

• meet project deadlines without fail
• prevention of burnout by setting unblurred boundaries on work time and life.

Besides, regardless of the company size or its location, time tracking is a valuable instrument for delivering data-crunched reports and assisting:

• in getting accurate data on project completion time
• in timely and hassle-free payroll processing
• in creating an unbroken workflow in any work mode (remote, hybrid, onsite).

Strategy #14: Be Exclusive for Your Customers🌟

Ensure that your customers have a pleasant experience when interacting with your business.

Overall, demonstrating exclusivity to your customers implies the implementation of various marketing scenarios.

You can show exclusivity by giving your customers special access through limited-time offers or invitations only available by signing up for mailing lists or joining social media groups hosted by yourself or a person authorized by a company.

You can also offer early access or discounts on new software products before they're released publicly (if possible). This helps build loyalty among customers because they feel valued when they receive these types of offers from companies where they've already invested their time and money.

Strategy #15: Always Research Your Processes🔍

Using a variety of tools for building successful marketing strategies, you need to conduct ongoing in-depth research to back up each of your decisions and to better understand what motivates the behavior of your target audience and the decision-makers in your sector.

This way, you will have a better awareness of the state of the market and be able to develop a fail-proof strategy built around the specific needs of:

• company consumers
• target market
• rivals
• industry trends.

Conclusion🔔

Software development companies have to take a special approach to their marketing efforts due to fierce competition. Their main goals are:

• raising brand awareness
• increasing visibility online.

Taking a strategic approach in the directions we listed above can help software companies tag themselves as experts in their field and grow their reach exponentially.