Solving problems is at the heart of any technology company. However, IBM had its own problem in 2018. The company was losing the confidence of developers. At the same time, the global population was facing natural disasters of apocalyptic proportions. IBM’s technology product marketing team realized that the best way to let the company’s ethos shine is to put its technology in the hands of new audiences. Thus, Code and Response was born, a hackathon-led movement that gave 18-34-year-old developers from around the world an opportunity to take center stage as they used IBM’s code to solve a problem they cared about the most. As for the outcome:
Besides having a strong distribution network and quality products, successful companies have a deep understanding of their customers. Here’s how technology companies can utilize their product marketing arm to integrate their customer voices into what they create.
Everything from ‘sign up’ and ‘watch video’ to ‘add to cart’: in-product user interactions generate the most useful product usage data. Moreover, this data gives you an insight into who the end-user of your product is and when/how they’re interacting with it.
Success story: Customer behavior analysis for increasing product usage
Customers perceive a brand based on what they believe it stands for. This perception consists of two crucial elements: first-hand experience and reputation. A technology product marketer must work towards creating brand equity. This means that even if your product is identical in every other way to your competition’s, people will be drawn to your product more if they’ve heard of you, they remember your name, and they associate your brand with quality. If you know what quality means to them, you will be able to forge an unbreakable connection.
Furthermore, by employing the best consumer insights research methods, technology product marketing teams can measure brand awareness, recall, recognition, identity, and trust. Consider the case of Apple. Multitudes of people are willing to pay thousands and queue for days for each new Apple product release. But, how did the brand cultivate such dedication? Among other things, the company listened to what customers needed and delivered to meet their desire.
Success story: Establishing an emerging IT player as an industry thought leader
The product marketing and product management teams can no longer afford to work in silos. For example, Samsung leverages user insights by tapping into the age of a smartphone device to target specific user segments with a ‘time-to-upgrade-your-device’ marketing communication. The company also provides an inbuilt all-in-one content platform on its device to understand what kind of content the user engages with the most (thriller movies, gaming, music videos, et al). Eventually, the insights derived from this platform help Samsung pitch specific technology products and models to their users over time.
Technology product marketing teams can understand gaps in product adoption and utilization by
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