Technology content marketing: Key components and nuances of B2B tech

What is technology content marketing?

Let’s start with the basics.

When tackled the right way, technology content marketing is a powerful instrument in your digital marketing toolbelt and it’s critically essential in the B2B/B2G technology industries. Technologists from the daily operational level to the C-suite are intelligent, curious and research-driven. They crave up-to-date information and easy-to-access educational content related to their respective areas of expertise. By creating content, tech brands have the opportunity to deliver on multiple marketing objectives simultaneously.

Technology content marketing deserves its own designation independent of traditional content marketing because it has unique components and nuances compared to other industries. As a technology marketer, you have to understand the distinctive considerations of content marketing in your industry to do it right.

68% of B2B marketers say that content marketing efforts deliver success against building subscribed audiences, generating sales and revenue and building loyalty with existing customers.

– Content Marketing Institute

4 key nuances of B2B tech content marketing

1. B2B IT and security change are incredibly fast-changing industries.Information technology is the only industry that every other industry needs and relies on, which is why it changes so quickly. Every industry, whether healthcare, finance or the government relies on IT to make business work efficiently and reliably for their customers. IT must therefore evolve alongside every business.It changes with unmatched speed because it must meet the needs of every conceivable business type and respond by evolving and becoming more efficient based on diverse customer requirements. Naturally, when you have millions of customers, you’re going to change almost daily because there’s always something new to learn, whether it concerns software development, infrastructure, cloud or security, for instance.This makes content marketing both essential and challenging for tech companies. You’re responsible for educating your customers on a great deal of industry news and insights and keeping them up to date so they’re aware of what’s changing and how. Marketing teams must evolve the content marketing strategy on a continuous basis to keep your assets refreshed and current.
   

   “IT is the only industry with everyone else as the customer.”
   – Marsha Cipollone, IT engineering advisor, Van Dalen

2. Good technology content marketing requires having a fundamental understanding of the B2B/B2G IT & security industries.Information technology isn’t simple. As a tech marketer, you need a basic understanding of technology as a whole, including how it works and the value propositions across the industry. For example, if you don’t understand what security is, why it’s important and why businesses need it, you can’t generate content effectively. Or, if you don’t understand what the term “infrastructure” means and its basic components, you can’t effectively demonstrate the potential problems that accompany it.It’s incumbent upon technology content marketers to maintain a basic understanding of IT because it’s comprised of many different moving parts and ties deeply into business requirements – recognizing the relationship between the two is critical. You don’t have to understand the engineering, but you do have to understand fundamental technological components, how they relate to business, what the value is and why you need them. A solid understanding of IT is crucial to content creation.
3. B2B technology companies who are doing content marketing successfully operate marketing teams who communicate with technical experts.We’ve established that the industry changes almost daily in some regard. If your tech marketing
   team were to try to write your content in a vacuum without talking to engineering, a month can slip by and suddenly things have changed – the next thing you know, you’re writing inaccurate material, resulting in lost credibility. Your prospects and customers trust you to provide accurate information, so be sure to maintain that trust.Second, to write effective content, you have to understand your subject. There’s no better way to do that than to speak to the experts. You’ll be able to fact check your content assets while uncovering new, innovative topics you haven’t thought of.
4. Content marketing assets centered on problem solving are of critical importance.Generally, when technologists are on the internet searching for information, they’re either seeking to read industry news or solve a problem, whether it’s a current technology question or an initiative they’re looking to execute on in the future. This is true regardless of a prospect’s place in the buyer’s journey. For this reason, your marketing team should be creating and publishing content consistently that’s going to answer those questions and help prospects solve their problems. Technology content, from blog posts to industry reports, has to be created with acute intention.
   

   “If a technologist is visiting your website and engaging with pieces of content, they’re trying to solve some kind of problem. No one goes searching for information on security analytics just for fun.”

   – Mike Albert, security engineering advisor, Van Dalen

Takeaways for the modern technology content marketer

Content marketing is a very effective tool for garnering website traffic, generating leads and fostering brand loyalty so long as it’s done with the distinctions of the IT industry in mind. Now that you know what makes our world different, you’re well equipped to share high-quality content that will be delightful for your customer base and effective for your business.

Let’s sum up a few key takeaways for the modern tech content marketer:

• IT changes fast and your content has to keep up.
• You can’t do content marketing for IT if you don’t understand IT.
• Technology marketers need to collaborate with engineering and technical experts.
• Content marketing in B2B IT and security is all about problem solving.