A 13-Step Software Marketing Plan Strategy [2023]

As the demand for technology arises, so does the need for digital marketing. Did you know that 83% of shoppers who visited a store in the last week, say they used online research before that?

And tech shoppers spend 74% of their time researching online versus 26% offline? This means that your online presence is crucial for your company’s profitability.

Your primary goal should be to build great brand awareness, through improving brand visibility, providing excellent customer experience and ensuring your services can be easily found through search.

Software Marketing Plan: 13 Strategies for 2023

1. Set Your Goals
2. Define Your Target Market
3. Spend to Earn
4. Focus on Multiple Channels
5. Contribute to External Online Communities
6. Educate Your Clients
7. Create a Solid Website
8. Invest Time and Efforts in SEO
9. Get Featured in Industry Websites and Rank Lists
10. Use Simple Language
11. Be Unique
12. Invest Efforts Into the Research Process
13. Collaborate with Tech Influencers

1. Set Your Goals

No matter if your business model is B2B or B2C, the first thing you need to ask yourself before you start drawing up a digital marketing strategy is “What do I want to accomplish”?

You might want to attract more customers, increase your brand’s salience or promote a new software product you just developed. Whatever your purpose is, defining your goals and putting them into writing will increase your possibility of success.

An action without a goal leaves you with no idea where to go. Having a detailed digital marketing plan is a great way to know what to focus on.

2. Define Your Target Market

Your target market is the group of people to whom your product or service is most relevant and who are more likely to benefit from it.

Based on your target market you will choose the right tactics to drive more traffic to your sales funnel. When promoting a product, your new software platform or interface, you should know not only who will use it, but also who will be the buyer.

For software development companies, and particularly for those focused on B2B, defining the target market can be more complicated because usually the end-user is not the actual decision-maker.

In such cases, your marketing activities must be directed towards users, influencers, buyers and C-suite executives. For that purpose, you will need to create buyer personas, write targeted content and design landing pages according to their expectations and demands.

You need to adapt your approach and communications to the audience you wish to target. The effectiveness of your marketing activities strongly depends on defining your ideal customers as accurately as you can by conducting deep research. While doing so, you should focus on the following segmentation criteria:

• Demographics (Age, Location, Gender, Income level, Education level)
• Psychographics (Personality, Attitudes, Values, Interests/hobbies, Lifestyles)
• Behavior – purchasing patterns such as price sensitivity, brand loyalty
• Business segmentation – business size, nature of business, structure, etc.

3. Spend to Earn

Do not be afraid to spend. Spend and you will earn. Digital marketing is the new trend for attracting mass consumers.

Allocating some of your budget on display ads, paid search ads, or social ads can help you reach your target market and achieve high conversion rates.

Awareness of the brand is established. Thus, potential customers will come to your website for further information on their specific needs.

4. Focus on Multiple Channels

There are different social media channels and each one has pros and cons. Most businesses nowadays strive to be active on as many platforms as they can manage, but the truth is that you need to find which social media sites your users get information from.

When it comes to software development, and particularly B2B companies, you have to pay attention to which platforms your target audience seeks business advice from.

LinkedIn is the most relevant B2B social media channel. It is business-oriented and connects professionals from various industries and networks who both offer or look for solutions for their business.

Facebook and Twitter are great platforms for engaging with your potential clients and followers and promoting your content.

YouTube has become the second search engine after Google, making it a great platform to post your video tutorials and webinars on.

TIP: Never ignore comments and reviews, even if they are negative! Try to understand and solve the problem which the user experiences.

5. Contribute to External Online Communities

This is a great chance to increase your company’s exposure and to demonstrate professional knowledge and skills in your industry.

This is especially true in the software development and deep programming field, where people are always willing to learn and practitioners are often seeking advice on online communities and forums.

Additionally, you should engage in guest blogging and link outreach. Your company can offer content to be cited on another blog and in return for publishing a guest post on your blog.

Alternatively, you can offer to have your content be linked to from an external website dedicated to the software development industry.

You can also contribute to different groups on social media such as LinkedIn or Facebook groups related to the industry you work in. Тhis way, you can get involved in conversations with professionals who can later become your partners or clients.

6. Educate Your Clients

Creating and distributing problem-solving content such as “How to” tutorials and “Best practices” guides is definitely a must for your digital marketing strategy.

Every business aims to stand out from the crowd and beat the competition, which is why companies would invest in a new software product.

Understand what problems your prospects face and how your products can solve them. Then create educational content which can be distributed through social media, website landing pages, or email.

In return, you will be able to collect valuable information about your followers like their contact details, which is a great starting point for your email marketing strategy.

Email marketing is the perfect chance for you to get to know your customers better. Acquiring a customer’s email address opens the door for you to send out promotional messages from your brand.

It helps to start a conversation or to keep clients up-to-date with your latest products.

Related: 6 Ways to Strengthen Your B2B Content Marketing Strategy [Part 2]

7. Create a Solid Website

Your website is a good place to showcase your business and your unique selling proposition, as well as product videos and client testimonials.

When visitors go to your website, they are looking for information regarding your company and offerings, so give them what they are looking for.

It’s essential to improve the speed of your website, give it a mobile-friendly layout and post relevant content. You can include pricing pages, so you can differentiate between people who visit your website only to find out the price and clients for whom price is the main purchasing factor.

Software development companies often have the technical know-how of building a website. But there’s a lot more to a website than the code itself.

It’s about the corporate brand, web design, user experience, and numerous marketing techniques tailored for conversion rate optimization and increasing the traffic from organic search and social media.

Price and product have always been important factors for marketing. But nowadays, the customers’ experience can play an even more significant role.

The data shows that 86% of buyers are willing to pay more for a great customer experience. So, focus on creating experiences for your customers that can make them happy.

8. Invest Time and Efforts in SEO

Effective SEO (Search Engine Optimization) strategies aim to increase organic visitors to your website or blog which would later be converted into leads, provided that you have followed the steps so far.

Allocating enough time to strategic business development and SEO at the same time is hardly ever accomplished by anybody. You would probably not have the time to develop the additional expertise yourself.

However, your SEO goals can be achieved if you assign this task to dedicated employees/agency and monitor the following steps:

• Make sure your website can be found by the search engines.
• Make sure your website loads fast. Page speed is important both for Google ranking and user experience.
• Make your website mobile-friendly.
• Make sure your website has a reliable and updated sitemap and site structure.
• Pick the right keywords for your content.

SEO may be tricky to master as a beginner, but it pays off in the long run. The most straightforward thing you can start with is to identify which keywords will bring prospects to your site.

You can use keyword research tools, like Ubersuggest or Semrush, to understand what words and phrases your target market uses when searching for information or products that your business provides.

Related: How to Create the Perfect WordPress Structure for SEO

9. Get Featured in Industry Websites and Rank Lists

There are various industry platforms where your firm can be mentioned and classified among other companies. Platforms such as Clutch, UpCity, GoodFirms, Top Developers, Techreviewer, etc. perform analysis based on customer feedback to create useful industry rank lists.

There are different ways of categorization – location, industry, field or proven skills. Having your company listed there builds trust and strengthens your credibility in your industry.

For instance, DevriX has received numerous awards and recognitions.

How do you get ranked by those industry platforms? You need to register and verify your company on those platforms. Then, after setting up your profile, you can submit client reviews and gather more references.

10. Use Simple Language

In software development, as in any other industry, there are specific terms which you, as a professional, should know and use.

However, your website visitors are likely to be unaware of their meaning. If you use too many of those, your audience may be unable to understand and relate to what you are communicating.

TIP: In order to check if your message can be understood by a broad number of users, show the text to someone, you know has no experience in software development, and evaluate their response.

If that person did not understand what you are relating to her/him, it probably means the language you have used is not clear.

Another thing you can do is create a short questionnaire based on the description of a product or service on your website, and then see how many of the questions have been answered correctly.

11. Be Unique

Merely providing valuable and attractive content to your customers, competitors, industry influencers, and practitioners is not enough anymore. You need to find a creative way to present it, as well.

In the software development industry, this can be done by posting daily videos, explaining how your product will make your client’s lives easier, or how it will improve their working process, how your company differentiates itself from the competitors, sharing tips and tricks on how your products can be used and more.

The main reason why videos are becoming a preferred content format is the fact they are visually appealing and make the information easily digestible.

12. Invest Efforts Into the Research Process

To support each of your decisions or furthermore to understand what stands behind your target audience’s behavior and what drives the attention of the decision-makers in your industry, you need to do deep research.

Studying your customers, your target audience, your competitors, and the trends in your industry will give you a better understanding of the current market situation and help define your strategy.

13. Collaborate with Tech Influencers

The marketing world is very competitive and noisy. People are exposed to many kinds of advertising daily, and if you want to be heard, you have to find the right voice. A great strategy to leverage is to collaborate with tech influencers.

Influencers play an important role in any field. They are the ones who invent terminology and buzzwords, and ultimately define the market space.

As a hot source of useful information and expert opinions, they can help you effectively engage your audience and support them through their decision-making process.

According to Topal, there are six types of tech influencers you should consider collaborating with:

• Analyst firms
• Innovators and early adopters
• Independent analysts
• Tech bloggers and authors
• Trade press
• Leading IT vendors

Each group requires a different approach and uses various digital channels to provide a different degree of authority and different perspectives.

To get the most out of your partnership, be clear about your objectives and the target audience you want to reach, find the right tech influencer match, understand their medium and plan ahead.

Conclusion

Even though implementing digital marketing strategies in your software company can be challenging and time-consuming, you should try to persist.

Remember, your closest competitor might be preparing a good digital marketing plan as well. Make sure that yours is better and that it helps you map out the actions you are going to take to put your company in the limelight.

Since we started as a tech company, the need for a strong marketing strategy became apparent as we were growing. This is why we’ve spent years designing an inbound marketing strategy tailored and tested in-house for software development companies that care about their digital presence.

If you’re interested in learning more, don’t hesitate to get in touch. ⬇️