A social marketing effort will focus more on involving your audience with the creation of the offer as well as promoting it.
Technology companies have engaged user groups and beta testing for many years to further define a technology solution during the early stages of development. It is a process that allows trusted user groups to provide feedback about the solution functions, capabilities and technical architecture prior to full market release. The user group and beta testing phase of a product development effort may have tremendous influence on the refinement and full market launch of a new technology solution. This reliance on user feedback has been a proven method among many product development departments.
As a tech marketer, you can follow a similar user centric approach to promote and market your technology solution . Compared to more traditional marketing efforts, where an offer is developed based on what the company wants to sell, a social marketing effort will focus more on involving your audience with the creation of the offer as well as promoting it. This approach may seem a bit daunting at first, but doesn’t it make sense to develop an offer the audience is looking for and encourage them to promote it.
I have attempted to outline how social media can be utilized to promote you technology solutions using social media:
- Assign a person to monitor discussions on various social communities and networks relevant to your audience. They should be listening and documenting key conversations, keywords and issues.
- Develop messages ( or sets of messages) and offers based on conversations identified as priorities within the communities. Your messaging should be informative using a softer sell approach. Any message that appears to sales like or aggressive will lose effectiveness. Make sure your message communicates how the audience will benefit.
- Begin to identify and communicate with influential participants within the communities (these can be bloggers and other active participants) respond to their postings and ask questions.
- Discover the various types of media used by the community to communicate (blog posts, podcasts, vcasts).
- Create your messaging based on the types of media vehicles.
- Establish an on line destination to share the offer and messaging. It is critical this destination allows for feedback and comments (these could be blogs or micro sites).
- Communicate with the identified influential persons directly, email them, acknowledge their participation and encourage them to spread the word. These persons can become advocates for the offer and your technology solution.
- Monitor, listen and respond to conversations happening in the communities.
Based on feedback, you can create special offers to key participants and influencers to encourage further participation (free webinars, Free attendance to seminars or demos). These special offers can be used to reward participation or used to incent further advocacy. By recognizing and motivating the key influencers, your message can be distributed to wider audience faster!
The most important takeaway is that your social media effort is an investment in time. With a dedicated effort your marketing and promotional effort can evolve into a relevant relationship with your audience and allow you to further create interest and potentials sales by altering your offers and messaging based on customer preference.
