Complex tasks are made easier with software. This makes the demand for software evergreen. However, when it comes to getting clients, the established names are the ones that catch the big bulk of orders making it a challenge for new software companies to grow their business. To face this challenge successfully and start growing your software company, you will find the below-given software company marketing ideas very useful:
1) Grow Clients with Basic Adjustments to the Website
Sometimes very basic things contain the potential to generate big results. This is the case with website optimization as some minute modifications on your software company website can cause an increase in the number of clients that your software development service is currently getting. So let us have a look at the required modifications.
A) There are enough tests to confirm that with every 1-second loading delay of your website, your site loses many visitors. So make your site fast to load by optimizing all the factors essential for it.
B) The longer the people spend time on your site, the greater their chance to convert. Adding videos adds to the time spent on site and it also conveys things better. So put out some professionally created videos on your website.
C) People use different types of devices to access the internet. So get your site ready to perform well on all kinds of devices else the resolution might break and can cause loss of traffic/visitors.
D) Trust-enabling factors like accreditations, awards, media coverage, and achievements, must be prominently mentioned on your website.
E) Entice people to call your business by giving them some irresistible incentive that can be in the form of free consultation, quick quote, etc.
F) Website must have a catchy look with the content well categorized and optimized along with an easy to locate contact details.
2) Get High Ranking, Get Clients Coming Passively
Marketing through good website SEO is one of the ways to ensure a regular flow of clients for your software development business. Since the search engine Google receives billions of searches every day, it is imperative that your software development website must be positioned at a strategic position on Google i.e. on the first page, to capture potential clients whenever searches related to your business take place on Google. The more queries that your business ranks for in search engines, the more will be traffic for your business and consequently growth of your business. All you have to do is to take care of SEO (search engine optimization) either by yourself or by a third-party agency.
3) Reserve an Additional Spot in Google to Get More Clients
When people search locally for products and services in Google, one common thing they come across is “Google Local Listing” which shows 3 enhanced results in a separate section on its first page. Those businesses that make it in this section are destined to get more leads and sales and this is why your business should also strive for the same. All that is needed to get started is having a well-filled “Google Business Profile” page for your software development business succeeded by the right optimization. You can leave the optimization part to any qualified agency for better results.
4) Ease Marketing with Press Release
Press releases are consistently being used by companies that realize their multidimensional benefits. Apart from the most apparent goal of making an announcement, they serve other purposes like fast visibility, securing backlinks, growing brand value, reputation management, etc. For companies that use premium distribution services for press releases, the overall gains provided by press releases are multiplied many times over. Press releases also sometimes rank in Google directly for easy keywords. So start taking advantage of good press release distribution through reputed service providers.
5) Push More Content to Grow Customers
While different online marketing methods have different levels of ease/difficulty, a relatively very easy (but slightly time taking) method for promoting your software company is content marketing. The basic thing that you must adopt for witnessing success with content marketing is consistently producing new content. The traffic to your site and consequently leads/sales will start growing as a result of your site being visible (on Google) for an increasingly greater number of search terms. Other complementary benefits associated with content marketing are growth in backlinks, rise in the credibility of your business, and improved conversion rates.
6) Use Social Media Sites for Growth
Social media sites are good platforms that can be utilized for growing your software company. The only thing that keeps some businesses away from marketing on social media organically is that the time taken to see results is not quick enough and a business has to put in consistent efforts during the early phases. There are several ways for a business to use social media to its advantage with some being joining relevant groups and pages, hosting contests, giving free rewards for promoting the business brand, using hashtags, etc. After spending a few weeks to months establishing a sound following on such platforms, growing the business profile further gets easier.
7) Use Emails as Long Term Assets
As the owner of a software business, there may be times when you would like to announce a new discount/offer/service and would like the discount/offer/service to reach as many people as it can. Email marketing can empower your business with the benefit of broadcasting your message/offer to thousands of prospects within no time. For this, it is important that you actively start collecting the email address of people who get to your website. Since very few people are going to voluntarily provide their email addresses on your site, you can think of ways that can make the visitor put their email address on the optin form present on your site. Some of these incentivized ways can be discounted service, gift certificates, free consultation, etc.
8) Run Google Search Ad Campaigns
As Google search results are dominated by big and established sites for most business-oriented search terms, it is hard and time taking for a new business or service to get a place in the top 10 search results of Google organically. An alternative route to get your website to be seen on the Google’s first page is to start paid advertising using Google ads. Since Google ads on search results have a high clickthrough rate, your business can capture a significant amount of traffic from relevant search queries on Google. To make the best use of your ad budget, learn to optimize different parameters of ads or assign this work to a PPC expert freelancer or agency.
9) Use Videos in Various Ways for Marketing
Video marketing is a slightly time-taking but efficient method to get passive traffic consistently once you have a good amount of videos out online. The key to success with video marketing lies in choosing keywords with low competition and creating videos on such topics along with good optimization of description, title, keywords, etc. By doing this routinely, your business will have many videos spread online that will work as a new channel to pour clients into your software development business. Video marketing can also be merged with social media marketing, paid video marketing to enhance the overall effects. On an interesting note, websites that do have a video placed on their homepage do witness a positive effect on their conversions. So do make sure to insert a video on your site homepage too.
10) Use Tech Influencers for Targeted Promotion
Influencers in the tech niche can promote your software development service to a professional audience. Subject to your requirement for local-level, regional-level, or national-level promotion, you can select your influencers accordingly. By promoting your software development service through influencers, your business will be perceived as more credible to the followers of the respective influencers. This process is also utilized to grow the social media profiles of businesses and services.
11) Discover Partners and Customers Through LinkedIn
Be it searching for potential partners who can refer your business or be it looking for high-end clients, LinkedIn can provide access to both of them as it has millions of professional profiles. Once you make a professional profile on LinkedIn and start growing your connections, you can easily start pitching your business to people who can bring you more business as well as to those who will take your service.
12) Use “Refer and Earn” Marketing
Asking customers to refer your business still works to some extent but rewarding people to refer your business works even better. This is why you must make use of a paid referral marketing strategy for your software development business as incentives work as a powerful motivation.
13) Make Selective and Wise Use of Directories
On scanning the Google search results for various search terms related to local businesses and services, you can find many directories also showing up along with websites. These directories are the ones that are showing up on Google due to their high authority. When you put the details of your software company on these directories, you get benefits in two ways namely traffic (visitors) and backlinks. So start taking these advantages from the directory listing of your business.
14) Do Reputation Building and Business Building with Print Media
Getting articles published in print media can serve the dual advantage of building the reputation of your software company along with providing you with new customers. Being knowledgeable in the field of software, you can easily contribute articles on various benefits and potential of software in serving people. As the media loves publishing expert opinions, you can share your knowledge along with doing a subtle promotion of your software company through print media. All that is required to get started is introducing yourself to the editors of local newspapers followed by obtaining the necessary consent for contributing articles.
15) Attend Events Related to the Software and IT Industry
With just a few clicks on Google, you can easily find upcoming events related to the software and IT industry in regions close to your location. By attending such events, you can easily find many new potential clients along with making contacts with other software businesses. Such events are also very useful in making you familiar with new and upcoming industry trends.
16) Offer Free Sample Work to Gain Momentum
Find a few popular businesses and services in your area and offer them free software for basic problem-solving. In exchange, ask them to refer your software company to other businesses and services in their network along with providing testimonials for your software company. You can also offer a paid upgrade of your freely distributed software to help them resolve complex problems easily.
17) Be Active in Growing Local Recognition
Many businesses and services in your region would prefer to take your software development service first if they know about your software company. So start growing your participation in all local events through techniques like sponsoring (or co-sponsoring), donating, having stalls placed, distributing cards/flyers in such events, hosting contests in such events, etc.
18) Share Success Stories, Get More Business
Creatively written content in the form of case studies and success stories influences more people than plain marketing content. So start sharing success stories of how your software development company has helped particular businesses/services in easing their operation and how it has benefited them in terms of time and budget. Post these success stories on your website and also on social media profiles related to your business.
19) Develop Niche Expertise for Growing Orders
Many times, businesses and services prefer to work with those businesses that excel in a specific niche. So while you may have the ability to develop software for a wide range of industries, showcase the sectors/niches where you have a much better experience and expertise. This feature of niche expertise can make your company get priority over others.
20) Scan Popular Job Sites to Land More Deals
Scan popular job listing sites for searching the requirements posted by companies for positions like software developer and reach out to them with your proposal. If you successfully explain to them how outsourcing their software development can save them money in the long term, you will be able to get many long-term clients by this method.
21) Start Growing Your Brand with Premium Targeted Publications
You can find many magazines (and even digital news portals) in the tech sector that have a readership of thousands. Once you get the sanction to publish/write for these magazines, you will easily be able to magnify your company brand image along with the opportunity to land more premium customers (large companies). After getting your articles published, you can also publicize this achievement on your digital assets to make more people (site visitors) consider taking your software services.
22) Catch Projects from Freelancer Sites
Freelance sites like Guru, Freelancer, Upwork, etc regularly have open projects for software development. By building a good profile on such platforms, you can bag software-related projects and can grow your business.
23) Witness Growth with Freemium Software Model
Find commonly searched software niches online and start creating freemium software for these niches. Start distributing them online through various software-sharing sites, forums, etc. As this software will provide paid upgrade option to access more features, you will get a good percentage of the software users to move to paid plans for using them (software).
24) Targeted Forums and Blog Marketing
Find the most relevant and high-traffic blogs and forums having content on the software solutions provided by you. Reach out to their respective owners and ask them to recommend your software in the specific posts that are ranking high in Google (to ensure that these posts are getting traffic). This method of promotion through contextual posts can start driving many customers to you passively.
25) Open the Promotion to Affiliates
If you are ready to share some part of your profit with affiliates who would drive potential customers to your business, you can make your software business grow faster. To make this happen, join as an advertiser on any reputed advertising network, agree to the profit-sharing contract, make some minor changes to your website for tracking, and you are good to go.
26) Enhance Sales with Offline Marketing
In order to enhance your chances to get more sales for a software development business, you must NOT ignore the power of offline marketing. It doesn’t matter how many millions (or billions) of people use the web every day, still, offline marketing is able to get your advertisement out to a big group of the population. Even though your online ad promoting your software business is delivering you leads consistently, you must explore the offline medium of advertising too. Any person who has seen your business/service advertising both online and offline will be much more likely to have faith in your product/services as compared to those businesses/services who just have an online presence.
27) Let Positive Experience of Others Drive More Customers
Seeking reviews is an important part of the decision-making process. With the internet, this process of seeking reviews has become extremely easy. Anyone can type the name of your software company in Google and can find what your previous customers have written about you. These past reviews will influence their current decisions. So strive to gain as many good reviews for your software company.
Start applying these software company marketing ideas to get the much-needed growth for your business. Use the comments section below to ask out any doubts, questions, etc. As a gesture of appreciation for this article, we would definitely ask you to share this article on your social media profile.
