How Technology is Redefining Marketing Strategies for IT Businesses

Authored by Sameer Danave, Senior Director Marketing, MSys Technologies

Digital transformations enable IT companies to redefine their marketing strategies, thereby opening new avenues of growth and opportunities for the entire sector.   

Digital transformation is sweeping through the IT world. Gartner research reveals that 91% of tech companies are already engaged in digital initiatives, while 89% have adopted a "Digital-First" approach to power their performance. Further, 87% of business leaders regard digitalisation as their top priority to scale, expand, and win over new clients. Digitalisation has emerged as a new Strategic Imperative capable of transforming the business fortunes of IT firms. But do you know how digitalization is helping IT firms in their marketing outreach? Well, the IT sector uses digital tools to create, communicate, and deliver superior value to their target markets. Technology is a game changer for the IT industry, from meeting customer needs to streamlining value chains and offering personalized experiences.

Customer Centricity: Digital Transformation Success Mantra

Exercising customer centricity is at the heart of successful digital transformation. Despite the overwhelming support for digitalization, Prophet's research revealed that 41% of businesses needed to comprehensively research their customers, rendering their digital initiatives ineffective in yielding desired results. Further, with 50% of firms acknowledging that enhancing customer experience and satisfaction are key drivers behind their digital transformation, the lack of information on customers' tastes and preferences can blunt the edge digital tools bring. Research indicates that one bad customer experience can dissuade up to 86% of consumers, so companies must invest in a holistic customer experience. The importance of Holistic Customer Experience is underscored by various reports suggesting that firms delivering on the Experiential Front can garner 1.6X and 1.9X higher customer satisfaction and average order value than competing propositions.

Data-based Marketing Model: Digital Analytics Role

Data analytics is a formidable tool to help IT companies develop, implement, evaluate, and recalibrate their marketing strategies. From understanding consumer needs to analyzing competitive positioning and evaluating marketing campaigns, digital analytics can help IT firms deliver superior experiences to target markets. Data-based decisions also help drive personalization throughout the customer touchpoints, which is a crucial factor in market expansion, spurring growth, and increasing profitability. Building targeted marketing campaigns, evaluating their reach and impact, and integrating feedback to evolve the value chain are other significant areas where data analytics can help marketing teams dynamically adjust their efforts vis-a-vis the changing business environment.

Marketing Tools: Backbone of Digital Transformation

Digital technologies are purpose-built to simplify interfaces, automate systems, and elevate efficiency in the marketing domain. As Prophet's research confirms, 54% of digitalization efforts aim to modernize customer touchpoints to evoke positive sentiments among the target consumers. By integrating CRM, AI-driven data analytics, and market automation, IT companies can easily deliver a personalized experience while establishing a strong relationship with their clients. Another crucial benefit of digital transformation is its agility and resilience to the entire business structure. With 60% of the firms likely to include the Term "Composable Business" in their business objectives by 2025, the importance of agility couldn't be overemphasized. In particular, agility in marketing enables IT firms to proactively develop new products aligned with the changing preferences of consumers, helping them achieve a competitive edge and keep it intact for a longer period.

Upskilling and Reskilling: A Strategic Imperative

Access to digital tools might only be enough if IT firms have a digitally skilled workforce to leverage the technology. If the marketing department doesn't know how to use digital tools to their advantage then the investment in digital initiatives might not turn out to be productive. To that end, IT firms need to adopt a multi-pronged approach that focuses on the current talent pool's upskilling and reskilling requirements. While hiring fresh talent, the focus of HR teams must be on selecting prospects who demonstrate significant proficiency in data analytics, digital marketing, and digital modelling along with other new-age innovations.

Customer Experiences: Key to Leadership Position

Statista report pegs the global customer experience market to reach $29 bn by 2028 with digital technologies bringing new growth opportunities to the marketing discipline. Digital tools such as LiveChat, Chatbots, and AI-powered Customer Service are already playing a key role in enhancing customer engagement and satisfaction levels, thereby converting them into a loyal base for the company.  Gartner's research found that 56% of CEOs acknowledge the role of digital in enhancing their revenue, and digitalization in the IT sector is likely to remain focused on improving the customer experience going forward.

Conclusion

Digital transformations are redefining marketing in the IT sector, and it is time to use new-age technologies to deliver superior customer benefits. IT companies can stay ahead of rapidly changing consumers' tastes and preferences by building agile operations, exercising customer-centricity, and integrating data analytics. The CMO's role has never been so crucial, as marketing teams are now responsible for handling technology innovations and customer concerns for better growth and profitability.

 DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and Adgully.com does not necessarily subscribe to it.