Marketing advice for the technical entrepreneur
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Most of my clients are - and always have been - technical entrepreneurs. Yes, I've done a lot of work for Fortune 500 companies, and companies in the health, travel and retail industries.
But my passion is helping the technologist who has started a company, created a decent product, and now needs to get to the next stage in his growth - whatever that might be. He's gotten as far as he can using the methods he's been using.
These entrepreneurs find marketing frustrating. Sure, they can get their website built, and their SEO/SEM is usually pretty decent - the ROI isn't bad. But they aren't satisfied that their website messaging is really doing them any good, and they know that their conversion rate could be better - especially if they are using salespeople to help close the deal.
If this sounds like you, I have some good news for you. You're right, your website copy isn't doing you any good. Your conversion rate could be better. Your salespeople could be closing more sales.
Here are five things you could do, today, that would start to make a difference.
1) Focus on your customer's buying process, not your selling process. Your biggest barrier to revenue growth is your tendency to be shy about interacting with customers directly. Big mistake. The most important thing you could do for yourself is to step out of your comfort zone and start having at least two phone conversations with customers, every single week.
Ask them how they feel about your company, products, and service. Ask them how their own business is, the challenges they're facing and the trends they see. Ask them how they found you, and the search terms they used.
After only a couple of these calls, you will be slapping your head, thinking, "I could have saved myself a lot of money and wasted effort, if I had known these things sooner." The good news is, the more you talk with them, the more confidence you will have in your decisions about how to grow your business.
2) Don't let anyone tell you that you can't market. I've had more luck teaching technologists how to market than I have teaching marketers about technology. Once you understand that the best source of growth data comes from your own customers, and you start to focus on supporting their buying process, you will realize that marketing can be very understandable.
Yes, you will still need someone to put the pizzazz in your website design, and some good copywriters who can actually capture the essence of your company. But you will be able to manage these resources, giving them the direction they need to do a good job, if you have made friends with customers and know what appeals to them.
Besides, marketing is now dominated by technology, and technology is something you already understand. You just need to add "total familiarity with my customers" to your knowledge base.
3) Realize that your company, your customers, and your character are all completely unique. Your good character is unique. It is one of your company's most precious assets. Find ways to build on it.
Don't try to be anyone else, and don't worry so much about your competition. Keep up with what they're doing, but make sure you obsess less about your competition and obsess more about how smooth you are making life for your customers.
From the moment they first come to you, everything should be simple and straightforward. I'm sure you can improve on your customer's experience.
If I download five software products in one weekend, looking for one that will solve my problem, I am often disappointed in all of them. It is almost impossible to tell how a product will work by looking at the software company websites. So, I've taken to switching Google to "images" when I do my search, so I can compare screen shots. I can often tell by looking at the screen shot just how convenient the program will be to use.
Then, I download the promising candidates and try them. I often hit a snag within the first fifteen minutes.
Software buyers shouldn't have to work this hard.
4) Don't get swept up in the latest marketing fad. Right now it's social media. Before that it was blogs. Before that it was search engine marketing and search engine optimization. All of these vehicles have their strengths and weaknesses, and methods that work best. You can remove all the guesswork in your marketing mix by finding out how your customers prefer to find you and buy from you. What you learn will help you create just the right mix. You will use each vehicle in a way that contributes to growing your revenue, rather than distracting you from doing so. It's more important to make money - because you're doing what your customers expect and want you to do - than it is to be at the bleeding edge of the latest marketing fad.
5) If you do nothing else, make sure you answer all of your customers' questions. Of course, you can't guess what their questions are. You have to know. We've all scanned through FAQs trying to find an answer to our question. Most of the time, our question - and its answer - isn't there. That's because the people writing the questions never talked to customers. They just rewrote their basic pitch into a Q&A format.
Why is it so important to answer customer questions? Because that's what selling is. If you answer your customer's questions to your customer's satisfaction, you will make the sale. Yes, it's that simple. Of course that means you have to have what they want, and you have to know what matters to them. You have to know what questions they will ask, and your salespeople must be equipped with the honest and effective answers to those questions.
If you start making an effort in each of these areas, your sales will go up. How can I be so sure? I have yet to encounter any company in the tech market that didn't have a lot of work to do in these areas. And, as a rather rabid consumer of technology products, I can tell you that the buyer's experience (especially buying software) is often frustrating - and often stops the sale dead in its tracks. It's just too hard.
If you're the company that makes it easy, you're the company that will make the sale.
"What's enchanting? A book that tells you exactly how to grow your revenue." - Guy Kawasaki, author of Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds, and Actions
