Do the same Inbound Marketing rules apply for a systems company?
My present company is a systems company that has to sell both hardware and software to business end customers. We are close to launching our product and I was wondering if the same Inbound Marketing rules that apply to software companies translate over to systems companies.
Strategy Inbound Marketing Product Launch
1 Answer
I'd say so. You're still solving problems for someone, right? Just because the features / implementation are more complex for your type of company doesn't mean you're any less capable of producing content about the benefits you provide, the problems your customers have, and the other issues that they're dealing with.
The challenge with your company is that you're selling to many different industries, which makes creating one unified channel (like a blog) to publish your content on much more challenging. But inbound marketing isn't just about blogging. Creating a resources section for each of your most common use-case audiences is just as valid of a strategy. Creating infographics, white papers, articles, and how-tos will provide findable content that others working in / serving the industry will find it valuable to link to.
Though they're larger-scale, some good examples are:
- Oracle (Sun)'s Industries section
- Adobe's Communities sections
- Cisco's Communities and Blogs sections
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Jay- Thanks for the pointers. You are right that we are solving a problem but I sometimes struggle with how we can leverage all of this. I have seen system companies try and do it but it's so blah. I don't want us to follow the same path. – Jarie Bolander 14 years ago
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Inbound marketing is the same path that the best salesman take: you don't sell, you make people want to buy. Show your target audience that you're *very* interested and *very* much an expert on their problems -- part of this means: a) figuring out what aspects of your solutions you really can do both of those things for, and b) figuring out which audience is large enough to make it worth it. || Note that that audience doesn't have to be the people making the purchase decisions; an internal evangelist can make your sales just as surely. Read Crossing the Chasm for more insight. – Jay Neely 14 years ago
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Jay's right. Inbound marketing is not applicable to just software companies, but any situation in which it's possible to "pull in" people that are interested in what you have to offer. – Dharmesh Shah 14 years ago
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All good points. I guess I will take a look at the sites Jay mentioned and just build our Inbound Marketing plan with those ideas in mind. It just feels like I am missing something here. Well, the only way to find out is to go try. – Jarie Bolander 14 years ago
