For enterprise technology startups and mid-market companies, content marketing is still one of the most valuable strategies for attracting more traffic, bringing in more qualified leads and increasing conversions. But if you want your marketing efforts to be successful, it’s important to keep up with trends and follow the latest best practices.
Here are the best marketing practices for enterprise technology companies for 2023 that can help you connect with customers and stand out from your competition.
Understand Your Audience — Thoroughly
Thoroughly understanding your target audience — including their needs, wants and challenges — should be the foundation of all your marketing strategies.
Your buyer persona should include basic information like age, gender, education level, income, location, personal interests and marital status — but to truly connect with your prospects, expand your personas to include the details of their emotional landscape.
What are their motivations for buying? What are the problems that keep them up at night? What keeps them from reaching full productivity, satisfaction or engagement in their day? What are their biggest motivations for buying (both practical and emotional)? What objections do they typically have before making a purchase?
Depending on your business and the products and services you offer, you may have multiple buyer personas. If that’s the case, it’s important to fully develop each persona and tailor your campaigns accordingly. You should also plan to regularly revise and refine your buyer personas to stay current with your marketing and industry, as well as your customers’ demographics, needs and motivations.
Set Objectives and Goals Based on the “New Normal”
Has your company set goals and objectives for 2023? And does everyone on the marketing team know what they are?
Your company’s overall goals should guide your marketing strategy and shape all your campaigns. And all team members — from the C-Suite all the way through to individual contributors on the marketing team — should understand those goals and how their activities will impact those goals.
That said: 2022 shook up enterprise technology companies, and your 2023 approach to reaching your company’s goals should reflect those changes.
With economic uncertainties looming large, big tech companies laid off thousands of workers. Meanwhile, mid-market enterprise tech companies responded to the uncertainties of 2022 by slashing their hiring budgets. As a result, many of these larger companies brought a lot of their marketing work in-house and relied less on contractors and outside vendors. This has put incredible strain on marketing teams and their capacity to create copy and content for marketing initiatives.
Startups didn’t see the growth they experienced in 2020 and 2021, but they kept on ticking nonetheless. Because of this, in 2023 many startups are actually positioned better to reach enterprise audiences with strategic marketing campaigns than large and mid-market companies are.
Given ongoing supply chain issues and continued economic fluctuations, your 2023 goals shouldn’t be based on your 2022 goals.
Leverage These High-Impact Content Marketing Approaches This Year
AI-enabled content creation
Generative AI software tools like ChatGPT are an increasingly powerful tool for enterprise technology companies. You can potentially use these tools — which include natural language processing (NLP), summarization, sentiment analysis and automated writing — to speed up content creation and streamline your marketing processes without needing to add headcount.
That said, generative AI platforms are simply tools in the copywriting toolbox — they don’t replace writers and editors. Your marketing team is still responsible for creating content that connects with readers on a human level, which means fact checking, editing, and adding nuance, narrative and soul (in other words, making sure your content doesn’t read like it was written by a bot).
Read my guide to generative AI for tech startups right here.
Targeted, useful long-form content
In 2023, avoid the pitfalls of “content debt” — the hidden cost of mismanaging the creation, maintenance and usability of digital content.
One of the best ways to keep clear of content debt is to avoid creating content simply for the sake of creating it. Instead, keep your focus on producing thoughtful, relevant content that has long-term value for prospects and customers. Repurpose single-use content into multiple assets, like lead magnets and search-optimized website content.
If you had to slash your marketing budget or reduce staff last year, use some of your remaining budget to bring in key outside vendors to help with your most pressing content needs.
And although the marketing world is all abuzz with talk of short-form video like TikTok content, research indicates long-form written content delivers a far greater ROI. Check out this in-depth study from Content Hacker, which showed that the company’s long-form content (including blog posts, emails and in-depth videos) brought in 62x more ideal customers than their short-form content.
In-depth content performance measurement
This year, I recommend that all enterprise technology companies use the latest tools to track content performance.
You may already be using tools like Google Analytics to track clicks and visitors, but to truly measure performance, you’ll need to dig deeper. Use your CRM in combination with the other data analytics tools in your tech stack to help you find:
- The content topics, lead generation, and lead nurturing tactics that performed the best
- The content or campaigns that drove the most qualified leads
- The types of content that work well for your organization (for example, short-form video vs. long-form blog posts)
- The posts that drove the most email sign-ups and sales
- The emails that garnered the most opens, clicks and sales
This invaluable data can not only shape your entire marketing strategy for the new year, but can also demonstrate your team’s impact and value to your company leaders.
Be aware that as of July 2023, Google’s Universal Analytics will become a legacy tool and will be replaced by Google Analytics 4. This shift will change how marketers interpret data and understand the customer journey — so it’s worth getting your Google Analytics 4 account up and running now so you can start gathering information on your website performance. You’ll have six months after the switchover to export your legacy data.
Higher-quality user experiences
Consumer expectations are higher than ever before, which means companies that want to stay competitive must focus on providing a high-quality user experience.
You can create the world’s greatest content, but if you give users a poor experience, that content won’t perform well.
For every piece of content, prioritize the user experience in terms of:
- Mobile performance
- Formatting of the text, including bullet points and subheads
- Quality and placement of images
- Structure and ease of use
Read this post to get more information on how to deliver a good content UX.
Maximizing in-person events
After nearly three years of largely virtual events, live attendance is back. According to a survey by MarTech.org, 40% of respondents said they were “extremely likely” to attend in-person events in the first half of 2023.
Although it’s still recommended that live, in-person events include options for attending remotely, all-virtual events aren’t working as well as they did during the height of the pandemic.
To run a successful in-person event, focus on:
- Seamless online registration and check-in
- Clear and relevant pre- and post-event communication
- Value and accessibility of your venue
- Enhancing the experience with digital elements like apps, NFTs and interactive polls
Tech Marketing in 2023
The 2023 marketing landscape will be heavily influenced by technology, particularly analytics solutions and generative AI software. More than ever before, enterprise tech marketers will need to focus on delivering truly useful, deeply engaging content and providing high-quality content experiences for customers.
Connect with Jessica Mehring on LinkedIn to find out more about how Horizon Peak Consulting can help you plan and execute a highly successful content marketing strategy for 2023.