Shooting article: marketing and PR in IT
I am a PR girl. With economic education and advertising and marketing past. I promote, sell, consult, etc. corporate software of a certain type. Once upon a time I started my posts on various websites with the words “Chamomile LLC” originates in the turbulent 90s ... ”I’m not ashamed of this, it was an experience I gained along with technical skills. I see how rarely successful posts are in the flow of Marketing. And I want to believe that only because we all are afraid to share our professional secrets. Maybe not why? In general, it's time to talk heart to heart.
Any IT product (service, software, hardware, gadget, cloud) needs to be sold, no matter how the developers frowned at this fact. And it turns out well to promote and sell to those who know how to do it. But nevertheless, companies continue to face negative, dramatically change the policy of promotion, embed budgets and score on advertising. This is largely due to the way the audience (Habr here is particularly indicative) perceives advertising. And this perception has its roots.
Marketers, PR and other commercial service fighters discredited themselves. And I have several iron reasons for this statement.
')
Press releases. Only you love them, especially in the form in which they come out. There is nothing wrong with informing the world about the release of a new product, but it needs to be done differently: immediately tell about the key benefits, highlight and describe the killer feature (if there is none, slow down the degree of pathos). And some press releases should even be embarrassing to write.
For example, your CRM was integrated with a new telephony provider - you are happy to work out a salary and write a release. This is the maximum news on the site. Do you know why? Because the IT publications, and some of the rooted clients already know that integrating with the next virtual PBX is simple - they have excellent APIs and platforms to multiply partners. This partnership is nothing heroic. But if you have a global partner in the macro-region Siberia, you should tell about it in a press release - even if it seems to you that this is not interesting to anyone. Because it is important that your software / product has covered a new region. And it is important to potential buyers. Releases for installations and installations - at your discretion. But, as a rule, here either the client should be large, or the implementation process is nontrivial. Automation of another advertising agency is not particularly interesting to someone.
The style of the texts. “Optimally balanced software that meets the most ambitious expectations of users of the XXI century, to work effectively in the framework of the tasks and to achieve global goals. You will enjoy working and interacting with a friendly, intuitive interface. ”
Do you feel uneasy? That's the same thing. I once wrote this way and revel in my syllable obtained without the participation of philology. So, users do not care about flat design, the expectations of all the previous twenty centuries and the balance of something there. They need to work quickly, without breakdowns, to satisfy the need for which it was created, and their bosses - that it influenced the growth of profits. Then you will love and get used to even the not very nice interface.
As for the style, then what it will be, decide for yourself. But for this, try to understand your target audience. As a rule, a person selects and purchases a product (and even an IT product) from among users rather than from administrators and programmers. To be clear to everyone, there is a universal recipe: speak Russian. For example, in the texts the phrase “During the development of software, the open source Postgres DBMS, which passed the key benchmarks, was used” should be replaced by “You do not need to buy a database management system in which your records will be stored - we use the free Postgres DBMS, which showed its power, stability and flexibility in special tests. " The main thing for the buyer is that he will store the data in something reliable and that one should not pay for.
Placement of advertising. Only the lazy one did not hear, and only the stupid did not guess what to write and talk about yourself should be where your audience is. And even if you are lucky enough to buy a publication in Forbes Russia, and you, for example, have no software for maintaining IP accounting, then you should not expect a special conversion - you are simply not interested in the reader. But for some reason you continue to bomb everyone: from forums to business publications. By the way, orders for reviews on the forums have long been out of fashion and cause a clear feeling of cheapness. The tip is simple: find your 3-4 magic sites and work with them tightly, for a long time and in different ways.
What is marketing? Few experts can answer this question accurately, some of the most advanced quotes Lebedev “There is no marketing in Russia”. I was lucky - I saw real marketing: on the basis of analytical data (yes, it was already big data in 2008-2012), proposals were developed for the audience - and everything just fell into it. It was a serious, painstaking work with internal TZ, SQL uploads, data processing in Access and completely technicians in the team, except for me and the girl sociologist. The market loved the office, the office loved the users - that’s all the loyalty, motivation and communication. And not the performances of the “main talking head” on the regional channel (and on the central channel too).
With proper marketing and PR, it turns out to be correct: working in close conjunction with sales, you know exactly the needs and headaches of customers, therefore you offer specific treatment, and not drink vitamins.
You are promoting the product. And not a solution to the problems through the use of the product. It is possible to describe all the excellent characteristics of a product or service over the years, but without understanding how it falls on needs, nothing will come of it. Let's compare the advertising Snickers and Twix. Both have expensive production, but Snickers gives a clear message - satisfy your hunger. Twix offers to perform an incomprehensible action in favor of the sticks. If you need a snack on the fly, the person is more likely to buy Snickers, because he will eat. It is the same with your product - until you find the fears of the client, his worries and his pain, you cannot sell him anything. The accountant carries the tax balance 40 times - as you still live without 1C, the salesman quit and took the notepad with clients - so secure it, buy CRM. It's simple. But even after this post, you will open a clean slate and start “A unique integration of personnel management modules and a set of gamification solutions will unite your team and allow you to work while playing.” By the way, you shouldn't go too far too - but this is the subtleties of mastery.
You do not know your product. Instructions, manual and moreover texts on the site do not provide comprehensive knowledge about the product. As long as you do not pierce all the buttons yourself, don’t feel all the jambs of the service and do not enjoy the work of any device with your own hands, you cannot tell about it. And it is precisely this ignorance that lies behind the ornate descriptions and buzzwords (often written off from the manual). If there is no desire or opportunity to figure it out - ask your developers, product developers or engineers to conduct a detailed presentation, ask questions - did not understand - ask again 10 times. It really works.
You trust social networks too much and follow them. Yes, we all have VKontakte, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. And we mainly communicate and have fun there, less often - we work. But this does not mean that you need to flirt and try to advance only through entertainment content, cats and postcards-motivators. However, Kubanzheldormash has already said everything - this is how promotion should be. If it does not work, then at least try to make sure that your brand is remembered.
It was not by chance that I came with a post exactly here, where companies keep their blogs. First and foremost, they are all great, I had to answer for two corporate blogs, this is a useful, but difficult and stressful process. And so, the secret of success on Habré is simple and does not fit into all the posts-instructions: write so that it is clear to everyone. Those who want to buy, show themselves, debate, pour a bucket of negatives on you. Let your techies and engineers write, write as they want to tell about it, and not your editorial and journalistic ego. These guys are able to look at the root - simply because most often it lies in their backlog or list of requirements. Let your salespeople write - they will coolly tell the customer how the product solves problems. Let him write a general - he clearly has something to say. Can not and does not have time to write - go after him with a dictaphone. Habr is absolutely unique for all purposes; this is the platform that should be in every IT portfolio. And Habr, most likely, will appreciate the posts created by, in general, ordinary users, but knowing and able in terms of your product absolutely everything.
In general, I was not afraid to write this post and I do not believe in the transformation of the world. But you never know, suddenly tomorrow will be one “exclusive offer for those who want to save money and make the work transparent” less. Not in the sense of a solution, but in the sense of the adequacy of the advancement and intelligibility of the dialogue with the audience.
Any IT product (service, software, hardware, gadget, cloud) needs to be sold, no matter how the developers frowned at this fact. And it turns out well to promote and sell to those who know how to do it. But nevertheless, companies continue to face negative, dramatically change the policy of promotion, embed budgets and score on advertising. This is largely due to the way the audience (Habr here is particularly indicative) perceives advertising. And this perception has its roots.
Guys you are to blame
Marketers, PR and other commercial service fighters discredited themselves. And I have several iron reasons for this statement.
')
Press releases. Only you love them, especially in the form in which they come out. There is nothing wrong with informing the world about the release of a new product, but it needs to be done differently: immediately tell about the key benefits, highlight and describe the killer feature (if there is none, slow down the degree of pathos). And some press releases should even be embarrassing to write.
For example, your CRM was integrated with a new telephony provider - you are happy to work out a salary and write a release. This is the maximum news on the site. Do you know why? Because the IT publications, and some of the rooted clients already know that integrating with the next virtual PBX is simple - they have excellent APIs and platforms to multiply partners. This partnership is nothing heroic. But if you have a global partner in the macro-region Siberia, you should tell about it in a press release - even if it seems to you that this is not interesting to anyone. Because it is important that your software / product has covered a new region. And it is important to potential buyers. Releases for installations and installations - at your discretion. But, as a rule, here either the client should be large, or the implementation process is nontrivial. Automation of another advertising agency is not particularly interesting to someone.
The style of the texts. “Optimally balanced software that meets the most ambitious expectations of users of the XXI century, to work effectively in the framework of the tasks and to achieve global goals. You will enjoy working and interacting with a friendly, intuitive interface. ”
Do you feel uneasy? That's the same thing. I once wrote this way and revel in my syllable obtained without the participation of philology. So, users do not care about flat design, the expectations of all the previous twenty centuries and the balance of something there. They need to work quickly, without breakdowns, to satisfy the need for which it was created, and their bosses - that it influenced the growth of profits. Then you will love and get used to even the not very nice interface.
As for the style, then what it will be, decide for yourself. But for this, try to understand your target audience. As a rule, a person selects and purchases a product (and even an IT product) from among users rather than from administrators and programmers. To be clear to everyone, there is a universal recipe: speak Russian. For example, in the texts the phrase “During the development of software, the open source Postgres DBMS, which passed the key benchmarks, was used” should be replaced by “You do not need to buy a database management system in which your records will be stored - we use the free Postgres DBMS, which showed its power, stability and flexibility in special tests. " The main thing for the buyer is that he will store the data in something reliable and that one should not pay for.
Placement of advertising. Only the lazy one did not hear, and only the stupid did not guess what to write and talk about yourself should be where your audience is. And even if you are lucky enough to buy a publication in Forbes Russia, and you, for example, have no software for maintaining IP accounting, then you should not expect a special conversion - you are simply not interested in the reader. But for some reason you continue to bomb everyone: from forums to business publications. By the way, orders for reviews on the forums have long been out of fashion and cause a clear feeling of cheapness. The tip is simple: find your 3-4 magic sites and work with them tightly, for a long time and in different ways.
What is marketing? Few experts can answer this question accurately, some of the most advanced quotes Lebedev “There is no marketing in Russia”. I was lucky - I saw real marketing: on the basis of analytical data (yes, it was already big data in 2008-2012), proposals were developed for the audience - and everything just fell into it. It was a serious, painstaking work with internal TZ, SQL uploads, data processing in Access and completely technicians in the team, except for me and the girl sociologist. The market loved the office, the office loved the users - that’s all the loyalty, motivation and communication. And not the performances of the “main talking head” on the regional channel (and on the central channel too).
With proper marketing and PR, it turns out to be correct: working in close conjunction with sales, you know exactly the needs and headaches of customers, therefore you offer specific treatment, and not drink vitamins.
You are promoting the product. And not a solution to the problems through the use of the product. It is possible to describe all the excellent characteristics of a product or service over the years, but without understanding how it falls on needs, nothing will come of it. Let's compare the advertising Snickers and Twix. Both have expensive production, but Snickers gives a clear message - satisfy your hunger. Twix offers to perform an incomprehensible action in favor of the sticks. If you need a snack on the fly, the person is more likely to buy Snickers, because he will eat. It is the same with your product - until you find the fears of the client, his worries and his pain, you cannot sell him anything. The accountant carries the tax balance 40 times - as you still live without 1C, the salesman quit and took the notepad with clients - so secure it, buy CRM. It's simple. But even after this post, you will open a clean slate and start “A unique integration of personnel management modules and a set of gamification solutions will unite your team and allow you to work while playing.” By the way, you shouldn't go too far too - but this is the subtleties of mastery.
You do not know your product. Instructions, manual and moreover texts on the site do not provide comprehensive knowledge about the product. As long as you do not pierce all the buttons yourself, don’t feel all the jambs of the service and do not enjoy the work of any device with your own hands, you cannot tell about it. And it is precisely this ignorance that lies behind the ornate descriptions and buzzwords (often written off from the manual). If there is no desire or opportunity to figure it out - ask your developers, product developers or engineers to conduct a detailed presentation, ask questions - did not understand - ask again 10 times. It really works.
You trust social networks too much and follow them. Yes, we all have VKontakte, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. And we mainly communicate and have fun there, less often - we work. But this does not mean that you need to flirt and try to advance only through entertainment content, cats and postcards-motivators. However, Kubanzheldormash has already said everything - this is how promotion should be. If it does not work, then at least try to make sure that your brand is remembered.
Now it is a little about Habré
It was not by chance that I came with a post exactly here, where companies keep their blogs. First and foremost, they are all great, I had to answer for two corporate blogs, this is a useful, but difficult and stressful process. And so, the secret of success on Habré is simple and does not fit into all the posts-instructions: write so that it is clear to everyone. Those who want to buy, show themselves, debate, pour a bucket of negatives on you. Let your techies and engineers write, write as they want to tell about it, and not your editorial and journalistic ego. These guys are able to look at the root - simply because most often it lies in their backlog or list of requirements. Let your salespeople write - they will coolly tell the customer how the product solves problems. Let him write a general - he clearly has something to say. Can not and does not have time to write - go after him with a dictaphone. Habr is absolutely unique for all purposes; this is the platform that should be in every IT portfolio. And Habr, most likely, will appreciate the posts created by, in general, ordinary users, but knowing and able in terms of your product absolutely everything.
In general, I was not afraid to write this post and I do not believe in the transformation of the world. But you never know, suddenly tomorrow will be one “exclusive offer for those who want to save money and make the work transparent” less. Not in the sense of a solution, but in the sense of the adequacy of the advancement and intelligibility of the dialogue with the audience.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/320818/
All Articles