What happens when your marketing strategy gets turned upside down, events are canceled, product roll-outs delayed and traditional marketing methods are no longer effective?

The trajectory of your company has changed and as the next three to six months brings dramatic transformation in the way we do business; special attention needs to be paid to how your brand and marketing tactics adapt to the new environment.

Businesses need to be proactive with a plan to adjust and adapt how they market themselves and generate leads, communicate with their customers, and create brand awareness – all while adjusting their value proposition to ensure that it is relevant moving forward.

For many technology companies, big industry-based trade shows and conferences are key to lead generation, with more than 70% of their sales deriving from event-based marketing.

As the quantum leap from event-based marketing to primarily digital marketing takes center stage, this shift has to be reflected in the overall marketing strategy and reallocation of marketing budget.

What has become more critical is the speed of change. Caught unaware, business leaders and marketers have been faced with a challenging situation which requires them to foresee what customers want, need and expect, as well as how their purchasing decisions will evolve.

Four Marketing Strategies that Guarantee Technology Businesses Pivot Rather than Stagnate:

1) Campaign-driven lead generation

While having a holistic marketing strategy that regularly communicates with the market is essential, campaign-driven marketing activations are key to leveraging an omni-channel approach to lead generation.

A typical marketing campaign would encompass:

• Campaign strategy: Develop the overarching strategy encompassing the focus of each campaign. It maybe cloud-based solutions for one campaign and a new product launch for another.
• Set key performance indicators: Work out how many leads are required to achieve the desired conversion rate for each campaign and ensure that revenue goals, return on investment and cost of sale are all part of the measurement of campaign success.
• Deliver compelling content: Whether it’s email marketing campaigns, social media posts, blog content, website landing pages, advertising or sponsored posts – it all needs to be aligned to the campaign driving home the key messages and call to action.
• Creativity is key: Everyone has adapted to the new way of communicating with customers, so how you stand out from the crowded marketplace may all come back to how creative and on-brand you are.

2)  Automated marketing practices

From the development of your marketing strategy through to ongoing marketing efforts, the more you automate marketing, the better the results will be.

Tools that will help you capitalize on fewer resources include:

• Marketing strategy: Robotic Marketer is a tool available through the Oracle Digital Marketing Center platform that uses artificial intelligence, big data and machine learning to develop powerful marketing strategies aligned to your business goals. You won’t have to second guess where you invest your marketing budget and resources because the technology uses data and best practices to focus your marketing efforts on your business goals.
• Email marketing: Combine bespoke email marketing campaigns with ready-to-use Oracle campaigns that you can co-brand and ensure that your customers and prospects are being communicated with consistently. Use an inbuilt e-marketing platform that integrates with your CRM.
• Marketing automation: Leveraging Marketing Automation platforms that easily integrate into CRM, e-marketing tools and other digital marketing tactics.
• Analytics: Use Google Analytics to track campaigns, Alexa to ensure that your website is ranking in comparison to competitors, and Robotic Marketer to analyze how your social media is tracking against competitors.

3) Content Marketing

More people are working from home and this trend will continue right through 2020. It’s important that brands don’t just “sell” with content, but provide informative, interesting stories that encourage engagement from the target audience. Be creative with content and explore the use of VR and interactive content as a way to set your brand apart.

Now is an opportune time to capture greater mind-share, engage with the target audience and use digital mechanisms to nurture leads with awesome content creation:

• Blogs
• Email marketing
• Podcasts
• Videos
• Infographics
• White papers
• Case studies
• Social media posts
• Downloadable content: e-books, guides etc
• Targeted landing pages
• Live streaming: Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.

Online events such as webinars and meetings are great ways to continue your event-based marketing while providing buyers with content that is both useful and informs their decision-making.

4) Website and Online Presence

If your website is out-of-date and not relevant to your business today, then now is the time for an overhaul. If you think about the fact that your customer will most likely find you via the internet and their first port of call will be your website, you really need to ensure that they resonate with the customer experience you are providing.

Take advantage of  free website analysis platforms that heighten your understanding on what your company needs to do to optimize their website performance particularly for in-bound lead generation.