Marketing outsourcing company with a focus on content marketing is a crucial differentiator. Content marketing is critical for marketing technology products and related service organizations. Technology companies often tend to follow a technically driven product strategy. They often under-emphasize the need for an effective marketing framework. They often miss a framework that adapts the organization’s direction of growth to match a constantly evolving market. So, most of these technology products end up battling a low sales volume. This may be due to insufficient market focus, a disconnect with the preferences and challenges of their target audience. An in-depth analysis of the technology life cycle will be missing. Its relevance to the possible challenges faced in terms of marketing to the desired audience is essential to arrive at a nuanced marketing strategy. This will catalyze the sales of these products.
The technology product life cycle
The broad categorization of the phases of a product’s technology lifecycle includes R&D, Ascent, Maturity, and Decline. This technology lifecycle should ideally be measured in relation to its commercial gain right from its research and development phase until the phase of gaining financial returns from the product during its “vital life”.
So, why do certain technology products end up having low sales? What are the possible solutions?
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Extraneous market research
Many startups are the result of their founders’ inspiration to resolve a need through a unique technological solution. Ideally, every such unique idea should be viable from a business point of view and needs to be validated through market research. Unfortunately, a common error made by startups is that they blindly believe in their theoretical technology roadmaps instead of focusing on the market need roadmap. In many instances, a market research is performed, but the exercise is often incomplete manipulated data extrapolating false-positive insights. These misleading analytics result in low demand generation, low sales, and premature closure of the business.
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Over-optimistic marketing plan
Startups with an optimistic marketing plan is always a great sign, but the plan needs to be holistically fortified with an enthusiastic team and an objective micro and macro goals that systematically takes you down the road to your goal. Some budding startups lag behind in this aspect and land up overestimating at the planning stage and drawing flak at the implementation stage.
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Undifferentiated products
Organizations get excessively involved in the technicalities of product manufacture and miss out on determining the differentiators that separate them from competition and give them a unique positive identity in the market. Producing products with hardly any unique value proposition in a mature market would eventually drive the company to produce replicas, leading them to extinction in the market.
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Weak strategy and market focus
Having determined the value proposition, positioning, and differentiators, organizations would still have crossed only half the bridge. The rest of the journey requires the support of a razor sharp market focus, strong marketing strategy, and robust content that transforms value into strong words that will reach the target audience. Failure in matching pace with competitors strong in their marketing capabilities will directly lead to lose of sales, increased sales costs, and overall loss in the market place. Hence product leaders must realize the power of intelligent content marketing in generating sales leads.
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Channel confusion
Selecting the right channel of distribution and marketing collaboration is the next critical aspect of an effective technology marketing campaign and its acceptance by the target audience. The right choice of distribution channel helps in successfully positioning the product to achieve optimal visibility among the target audience.
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Conflict between marketing and sales
A major concern for companies is regarding how the marketing and sales processes are clubbed together. A lack of balance between the two roles results in repetitive tasks, confusion, and poor lead generation.
7. Partnering
Partnering or marketing outsourcing is one of the solutions that can be implemented to increase the sale leads of these products. This approach helps in utilizing the expertise of the best talent in marketing for formulating strategies, gaining cost effectiveness, assessing and accessing new markets, setting industry standards, and focusing on core competencies. The organization can then focus on product development and innovations.
8. CRM as a process
A wise man once remarked that holding an existing customer is much more valuable than seeking new customers. An engaging customer relationship management (CRM) process plays a key role in retaining the customers and maintaining long-term relationships between the customer and organization. CRM also helps in bringing more lifetime value to the firm, acquiring new customers, and developing products according to customer needs and expectations.
Marketing has certainly gained significance as a powerful tool that consolidates a strong technology product organization. Marketing as a function has multiple complex elements that intricately influence the performance of the product in the market. One of the most important elements of marketing is content marketing, which delivers relevant content highlighting the distinct features and characteristic differentiators through focused channels to the target audience. Outsourcing this aspect of marketing offloads a huge responsibility from the minds of technology organizations and drives these technology-focused product organizations to a whole new level by harnessing the power of intelligent content.
Technology content needs to be created by dedicated value writers analytical skill, rich domain expertise, and skill sets. The writers must have additional skills such as persuasive writing, consultative writing and engaging customer conversations will certainly deliver on expectations. A nuanced marketing strategy that relies on intelligent content writing and marketing is the need of the hour to drive the sale of technology products, Content for technology products and its marketing outsourcing holds the key.