The IT services industry must grapple with growing competition. From other providers to the evolving self-help SaaS industry, competitors come in all shapes and sizes. There is also enormous opportunity in the IT services industry. Gartner predicts that worldwide IT spending will grow 6.2% in 2021.
Fortunately, IT service companies can beat the competition by focusing on and improving their demand generation efforts. In summary, demand generation is about driving market awareness, interest, and excitement to your business. When done rightly, it can deliver all sorts of benefits. Demand generation fills your pipeline with qualified leads drives revenue, attracts new customers, and secures your business's long-term profitability.
Inbound tactics generate 54% more leads than traditional paid marketing. – HubSpot State of Inbound
With that said, here are the five demand generation best practices for IT service companies.
1. Invest in an optimally designed website.
As the IT landscape becomes more difficult to penetrate, it's increasingly necessary to ensure that your website is updated, optimized, and engaging. Leverage the highest-converting web design practices for IT service companies to stand out from the competition.
- Adopt a grid layout inspired by Pinterest
- Use a long scroll to provide a compelling user journey
- Generating high-quality content that educates and inspires
- Use accessible, visually appealing images, typography, and site structure.
All of these tactics will engage your prospects and improve your demand generation efforts.
Related: How to Improve B2B Website Conversion Rates
2. Develop ideal customer profiles (ICP).
ICPs are representations of your ideal customers based on the data you have about your current buyers. In using ICPs to inform your content strategy, your messaging will resonate with your audience, generating interest and improving conversions. To get started, collect demographics about the different customer segments you have and their company type, role, pain points, challenges, goals, etc. To find this information, speak to your existing customers and sales team. From there, name each different ICP and craft content and messaging points explicitly designed for that audience.
3. Generate content that engages your audience.
A common error made by IT service companies is creating boring content with too much tech terminology. In reality, buyers and prospects alike appreciate a break from dismal, stuffy content. As such, you'll most likely notice a distinct improvement in your sales, demand generation, and customer retention by creating content that can engage, educate, and inspire. To get started, develop a unique and accessible voice that will appeal to your customers and craft your content around their concerns, pain points, challenges, and desires – rather than your service features.
Related: Content and collateral for B2B marketing
4. Improve your SEO strategy.
While many IT service companies already have an SEO strategy created, it's essential to review it regularly to optimize your marketing campaign. To begin, we recommend further defining your keywords to guarantee you're speaking to your customers – rather than confusing them with technical jargon they don't fully understand. To do this, discuss your customers' values, pain points, market forces, and differentiators. From there, create high-quality pieces around those keywords for each ICP, and optimize for all search engines (including Google, Yahoo, and Bing.)
5. Leverage gated content.
Gated content is premium, branded content that prospects can only access if they fill out a form and provide essential information, like their name, email, etc. In exchange, the visitor can view the content, and your company can use their data to nurture them with targeted marketing created with their interests, pain points, goals, and challenges in mind. To get started, create high-quality, valuable, and well-designed content, like an e-book, webinar, white paper, or case study. From there, make it shareable via social media, ask your advocates to spread the word, and feature the content prominently on your website and in your newsletters to make sure your target audience can access it easily.
Related: How To Improve Lead Generation Using Gated Content
Sources
- Gartner, Gartner Forecasts Worldwide IT Spending to Grow 6.2% in 2021, January 2021.
- HubSpot, Hubspot State of Inbound.
