How A Marketing Student Can Start A Business?

Starting a Business

Nowadays, marketing is essential for the development of any company. In the modern era, experienced marketers no longer play as much of a role. Higher education students and graduates with a modern vision of marketing strategies are a priority.

Innovative ideas, understanding consumer circles, and being in the focus group make it possible to better find new leads with the least amount of advertising. For example, native advertising plays a very important role in marketing. 

Many students begin to work in parallel with their studies. They have less and less free time. Therefore, in order to have time to do all work tasks and homework, they have to ask for help more and more often.

The most popular and effective help students call online services. For example, I need to write a research paper urgently. I search for where I can pay someone to write my research paper as realized that I will not be able to do this assignment due to lack of time. This way I get rid of problems in my studies and I can devote time to developing my business.

I know firsthand how to build a sales office and marketing service for a developer company, why software should have strategic competitive advantages, what promotion tools are effective in the IT market, and why agile doesn’t work in marketing. Here is my list of tips for those who are planning to set up a marketing department in an IT company.

Start the marketing department with a product manager

The best definition of marketing that I know of says that it is the science, art, and technology of creating better customer value. The goal of the marketer is to endow a software product or IT service with properties that meet the expectations of users and ideally even exceed them. The aerobatics is to lay down such distinctive characteristics, which in the strategic, i.e. long term, will not be repeated by any competitor.

Hence the number one piece of advice: the key specialist to start a marketing department in an IT company should be a product manager or a group of such specialists if the product portfolio is diversified.

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The product manager must initially be well-versed in information technology and the chosen automation application area. It makes sense to invite for this position a specialist with experience in IT or at least with a basic technical background.

After all, no matter how great the achievements of a marketing specialist with a background in humanities may have been in his previous life, he will not be able to handle a complex IT system with all his experience. At the same time, the tasks of a product manager are quite extensive and require both deep specialized knowledge, creative thinking, and a systematic approach.

For you need to: research the market and identify customer values; analyze competitors’ offers down to the last screw; take the lead in creating and developing a software product, formulating its strategic competitive advantages and positioning it relative to products offered by other players; motivate developers; prepare content for sales, press-service, etc.

It is not easy for a novice marketer as he does not have the proper experience yet. But he has a great desire to succeed. Various obstacles can appear in his way, including problems in his studies. Therefore, if a student needs to write an A-grade essay he can turn to professional writers.

Focus on marketing support for sales

The IT market is predominantly a b2b model, where the main way to conclude contracts is through direct sales. Consequently, the marketing department must work in unison with the sales and presale departments. Its role is to ensure that the sales funnel is filled evenly and to prepare salespeople to work with customers.

To solve the first problem it is necessary to measure the effectiveness of the generation of leads with the help of different marketing tools and, by planning their use, to achieve a constant flow of incoming calls, corresponding to the carrying capacity of the sales department.

To minimally solve the second problem it is necessary to develop a licensing policy and pricing system, to provide sellers with up-to-date pricelists and technology for the preparation of sales content: texts for the corporate website and business pages on social networks, reports, presentations, booklets, templates, commercial offers, newsletters, etc.

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Use content marketing to nurture the loyalty of your target audience

Information technology is an area of constant transformation and innovation. It is easy for the user to get lost in the plethora of new terms and approaches. Therefore, the main tool of an IT marketer is his intellect, and the main means of production is content marketing.

From practice: the subject education of the potential consumer is one of the most effective tools to promote software and IT services. To succeed in the IT market, one has to become an IT evangelist, ready to endlessly tell and explain not only the essence of his proposal but also the technologies used and the applied methods at the interface with them, to repeat the same thing repeatedly in front and back, in different sauces and for different audiences.

For example: “Here are a couple of numbers illustrating the savings from implementing software for top managers. And here’s a two-page flyer for an analyst, with an in-depth look and lots of recognizable examples. And there’s also for the IT guy – a visual diagram, a little technical support, etc…”

Generously pouring quality content through different channels, the IT company is not just bringing useful knowledge to potential customers, but acquiring loyal customers in their face.

Set up the process of generating the content that sells

It doesn’t make sense to breed a comprehensive organizational structure in the marketing department to hammer every nail in-house. Rarely occurring tasks are more appropriate to outsource.

Organizing a one-time event will be more effective to invite a specialized agency, for restyling – a designer, to create a support site – web-studio; good SMM man also do not need to keep in the state – such specialists prefer to cooperate on a contract basis, etc.

The main thing, in my opinion, is to build in the marketing department a continuous process of generating content useful for the target audience, because such information – really “tasty” and richly flavored with hooks that hook customers – can be born only within the IT-company.

It is important not to be clever and not to neglect coverage of the issues, “widely known in narrow circles”, in other words, the obvious to IT people. The owners of budgets for automation are often users who are far from IT. Not every customer is an IT savant, but few are willing to openly admit their ignorance. Just help your future customer to understand. The expert image of an IT company and much of its future sales today is centered in the hands of content marketers.

By experience, the best content marketers in IT are retrained technicians: engineers, programmers, teachers of technical disciplines, etc. As the saying goes, he who thinks writes clearly.

Engineering background and proven technology of laying out algorithms help such specialists to quickly understand new technologies and simple, accessible, literally “on their fingers” to present the possibilities of software and benefits of its use, consciously dosing technical details and preserving their competitive value.

Large IT companies, especially integrators not related to the development of their software, often invite external copywriters to prepare the content, while the rest, as a rule, use the resources of the marketing department.

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Put the work of the press service on technological rails

In the b2b market, the boundaries of external communications of IT companies are more than observable. Only one press secretary can cope with image maintenance, search, and coverage of customer projects, placement of publications and comments in mass media, and maintenance of news flow on the corporate website.

The role of the press secretary should not be overestimated; the media plan is only an integrated part of the marketing strategy of an IT company, broadcasting “outward” positioning and targeted messages initiated by a known set of news events.

To prevent the IT company from disappearing from the user’s radar, it makes sense to implement the technology of generating the reserve info trends in the press service in case of media plan “ruptures”. For this purpose, it is enough to type universal topics which may be interesting and useful for the target audience (for example, analytics of market segments following the six months/year-end results, experts’ materials, etc.)

And to establish a system of accounting for the information needed for their coverage (for example, fixation of interesting reviews, new competitor projects, etc.) to prepare at the right moment an information message not tied to external approval and fill the information vacuum.

A spokesperson is probably the only position in IT marketing that does not require a technical background. If the content is prepared properly, all the PR person needs to do is to bring it to its final form and set the accents correctly. Well, and, of course, clearly and responsibly work with contractors.

Implement a system of planning and control of the marketing department

I may risk being unpopular, but a widely promoted flexible agile approach to management in marketing – is the way to nowhere. Planned management is our everything. In the current reality, it is not easy to make long-term plans, but a year is a reasonable planning horizon for marketing.

SWOT analysis of the calendar year is an excellent basis for formulating a marketing strategy, goals, and performance indicators for all areas of the unit in the new period. Decomposition of goals and indicators by quarters or months allows for setting the limits of tactical and operative planning.

In the process of planning it is advisable to involve all employees of the marketing department so that each formed a plan of measures and the budget for his direction in the context of achieving common goals. The manager will only have to coordinate and approve the finished plans, monitor their execution, including expenditures, and manage changes because any marketing plan at least once a month needs to be adjusted. Operational weekly plan-actual reporting is enough to monitor the work of employees in the unit.

To summarize

  • Don’t be afraid to start your own business. You don’t have to be born to rich parents to build a successful career. The main thing for you is to have the determination and to believe in your strength.
  • If you are still a student, but you already have ideas – put them into practice. Do not be afraid that this will cause a decline in academic results. You can always find the best services on Reddit where you can get help with your homework.
  • Availability of digitized marketing goals and coordinated plans to achieve them, a system of sliding regulation of plans and control over their execution. This is the responsibility of the marketing director.
  • A deliberate approach to delegating certain marketing department tasks to the side – to save time and target department resources.
  • Well-established product marketing, which acts as the basis for the development and positioning of the software, as well as for its promotion. The core of the marketing department are product managers: they provide the link between marketing and the outside world and communication within the company with business analysts, developers, the project office, etc. Product managers are the main source of information about the company’s software products for developers, salespeople, content marketers, the press service, etc.
  • The synergy of marketing and sales provides the necessary sufficient level of new calls to the IT company and their effective processing. Monitoring the availability and relevance of the “tools and means of production” of salespeople for each software product and its new version is the basic task of the marketing department.
  • A well-established system of communications with specialized and subject-oriented media, as well as the internal technology of generating newsbreaks so as not to disappear from the horizon of a potential client.
  • Mature content marketing, forming an expert image of the IT company and the loyalty of potential customers. Future customers, equipped with new knowledge and competencies, will vote with their money sooner or later.

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