Why Your Tech Company Needs a Content Marketing Plan Right Now. These are the CTOs and tech team members who vet the product before they buy. You, as the tech marketer, need to reach both of these groups and everyone else in between. You need to put the work in and figure out what’s going to work best for each person you’re targeting. Getting Started: Creating Buyer Personas This brings us to step one in building your content marketing plan: Creating buyer personas. Sit down with your team and think through the five or ten people on the customer side who are involved in the purchasing decision. For each of these prospects, build a persona that includes: Job title and role Demographics: age, experience and years in role Work life details: size of the team, responsibilities, pressures and pain points Goals and motivators Communication preferences: email, phone, social media Watering holes and influencers Building the Content Marketing Plan With the buyer personas in place, you’re ready to start building your plan. Channels: In addition to the channels you’re targeting for the Awareness stage, you’ll start to reach prospects in other places like your company website and blog. They may also have subscribed to your list, so you can start reaching them through email marketing. Content types: Prospects will want to learn how your solution worked for other people like them.
As a B2B tech marketer, you share a lot in common with your prospects and customers. Maybe you came into the job with a thorough understanding of the product or service you’re marketing. More often than not, you had no experience with it. I’ve been there. You have to ask the right questions to learn about that technology quickly so you can sell it. The goal is to understand enough to know what you’re talking about (or at least look like you do) when you’re in front of the customer.
The people you’re marketing to are in the same boat. Some of them will be tech savvy and know all about cloud computing or marketing automation or whatever technology you may be offering. These are the CTOs and tech team members who vet the product before they buy. But you’ll also be selling to the business owner who will be using the product. That business owner might be the CEO or some marketing guy or girl with only a smattering of experience with technology. You, as the tech marketer, need to reach both of these groups and everyone else in between.
If you don’t have a content marketing plan in place to reach all of these people, you’re essentially dead in the water before you even start. You’re not going to get lucky and strike the right chord with each of these buyers from diverse backgrounds. You need to put the work in and figure out what’s going to work best for each person you’re targeting.
Getting Started: Creating Buyer Personas
This brings us to step one in building your content marketing plan: Creating buyer personas. Sit down with your team and think through the five or ten people on the customer side who are involved in the purchasing decision. This shouldn’t just include the ultimate decision maker who holds the purse strings; you want to consider everyone involved in recommending, reviewing and influencing the purchase.
For each of these prospects, build a persona that includes:
- Job title and role
- Demographics: age, experience and years in role
- Work life details: size of the team, responsibilities, pressures and pain points
- Goals and motivators
- Communication preferences: email, phone, social media
- Watering holes and influencers
Building the Content Marketing Plan
With the buyer personas in place, you’re ready to start building your plan. You’re NOT ready to start creating content yet. When we work with B2B technology companies here at Scribewise, we recommend that clients build their content marketing plan by viewing their buyer personas through the lens of the sales funnel. In other words, the buyer’s journey; today’s sales…
COMMENTS