4 Unique Marketing Strategies for your Software Development Company

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Like all companies, a software development company needs good marketing to succeed. However, there’s a challenge.

You’re not selling something visible, nor tangible at any point of your process, be it identifying the need, developing, troubleshooting, or distributing. 

So how can you cater your marketing specifically to your unique needs? Read these 5 neat tips to find out.

1. Employ social media marketing

While social media marketing is the talk of the town, you need to be careful how you gear it towards marketing your software development company.

There are two steps to marketing on social media for your company:

  • Step 1: Create good content
  • Step 2: Choose the right platform

Step 1 entails disseminating all your promotional info on attractive social media posts, which customers will prefer to read rather than plain text.

You can customize your own social media post templates using professional, ready-made templates from PosterMyWall. For example, you can customize Instagram templates using colors and themes that are attractive and go with your brand identity.

You should also try to design high quality posters using poster templates, so that you can use these across other platforms.

However, your work doesn’t stop here.

The platforms you choose are essential. We have already talked about Instagram, but you may want to reach out to more than just the layperson. One platform which most other businesses wouldn’t think of, but is relevant to you, is LinkedIn.

In fact, according to Sculpt’s social media marketing survey, the “top 3 preferred social media platforms for developers in 2022 are StackOverflow (65.7%), LinkedIn (51.4%), and Twitter (45.7%)”. 

Here, you can find industry professionals and people who have some know-how of, and a genuine interest in, software development. You can engage with this audience to find out what major problems users are facing. Are there any gaps that a future product launch by you can fill? LinkedIn can help you find new niches in this way.

Developing companies and services like Amazon Web Services and IBM also make use of social media apps like Twitter to reach out to the developers community and offer helpful tips, a strategy you can both learn from and use.

2. Lean into Search Engine Optimization

This is a marketing strategy which, when adopted properly, can help your software development company direct organic traffic to your website via search engines like Google.

Three of the main ways in which this strategy works are:

  • Keyword research: This includes researching which keywords are popular when people are searching for anything related to software development companies or the services you offer, on search engines, and then making a conscious effort to use these keywords in your own content.
  • Create optimized content: This is the next step of SEO and involves using the keywords you researched, and relevant internal and external links, in the content you write. All this ensures your content reaches the largest possible audience.
  • Do outreach: This is a good way of marketing yourself using other websites which may be relevant to your own product or service, although outreach can be done on completely unrelated websites as well. You reach out to websites or blogs offering to pay to write guest blogs for them which help them with their own SEO, but which might contain a link or two to your website or product. This is usually a great way to build links within and without your website.

For example, Hubspot is a software development company that has made a website landing page which uses key phrase targeting to improve its Search Engine Optimization.

3. Do email marketing

Email marketing has some benefits for your company that other forms of marketing don’t.

  • First, you can segment your mailing lists according to whatever category you choose, including sex, age, location, or even specific customer interests or actions. 
  • Second, this is a direct form of marketing because each email lands directly into each separate client’s inbox. This may be more effective than a mass marketing strategy like social media posts.
  • Third, you can personalize emails by adding the recipient’s name or any other personalizing feature to the email. This helps the recipient avoid feeling alienated and might make them more inclined to follow any click-through links you add to the email.

These are just some reasons why you should try email marketing. Remember not to overdo it, though.

Don’t send too many emails to people who haven’t asked for them to avoid being marked as spam. Keep updating your opt-in links so that only relevant people get emails. Don’t be too salesy with the tone of your emails, and keep them brief and to-the-point.

Examples of software development companies that have successfully used email marketing include ProdPad, which grew its conversion rate from trial to paid users by 100% by including onboarding in its welcome emails. Another example is Groove, which experienced substantial growth in revenue following from its email marketing which increased interest in its product. 

4. Focus on the user experience

While most of these marketing tips are structured as promises to deliver, the delivery itself is a huge part of marketing your company. For this reason, the user experience you provide should be perfect.

This obviously includes your software itself, which should be free of bugs and should run seamlessly. It should also be totally user-friendly for all kinds of users. The product/service is the core of your company, and what you are advertising. 

But this is not all.

Your sign-up and payment process, as well as customer support, should be just as streamlined and flawless. 

  • Don’t have a complicated sign-up process.
  • Use lots of payment options to cater to everyone.
  • Have customer support be fully responsive, empathetic, and personalized.

According to BrainHub, focusing on user experience is important for software development companies because without it “developers would produce excellent software, but most probably overlook users’ requirements and won’t be able to take care of the overall experience”. 

This is the biggest part of running the company, and is not a simple marketing strategy to follow, but staying committed to focusing on the user experience is the one thing that will ensure your company’s  success.

Conclusion

As mentioned in the beginning, marketing a software development company is a unique challenge.

But that doesn’t mean it is one you should be hesitant to take up. And these four tips help you realize just that.