12 Marketing Strategies For Tech Companies with Examples
Balance Growth Tactics with Brand Building: Tech marketing requires a balance between immediate growth tactics (like paid advertising) and long-term brand-building strategies that focus on trust and authenticity.
Tailor Your Marketing Mix to Your Audience: The mix of marketing strategies that makes sense for your brand depends on your audience, your company’s stage of growth, and your business goals.
Address Your Audience Pain Points: The most effective marketing strategies come from a deep understanding of your audience's pain points and journey and from designing campaigns that address these at each stage of the funnel.
A handful of companies—Tesla, for example—have avoided traditional marketing strategies, instead letting word-of-mouth drive organic growth. But this is rare, and if you avoid marketing forever, you’ll put a self-imposed ceiling on your growth. (Tesla, for example, now runs paid advertisements.)
In this article, I’ll walk you through 12 marketing strategies that tech companies use to drive growth, including real examples for inspiration. You’ll find tactics that can help you build brand equity, optimize your marketing budget, generate qualified leads, and maintain customer loyalty—all while staying ahead of the competition.
12 of the Best Marketing Strategies For Technology Companies
From SEO to product-led marketing, here are the most effective marketing strategies tech companies use to spur growth.
1. Content Marketing Strategy
A successful content marketing strategy involves building trust. If you’re too aggressive—pitching your product at every opportunity—you’ll burn relationships quickly. That’s why successful content strategies lead with value, giving much more than they take.
Example: HelloSign
HelloSign, which Dropbox acquired in 2019 for $230 million, rode a wave of growth in the years before its acquisition, powered largely by content marketing.
Here’s what their content strategy looked like:
- Pre-funnel: Solution-unaware content that attracts the right buyers.
- Top of funnel: Thought leadership (social media/email) and evergreen content (SEO).
- Middle of funnel: How-to content, product lists, product marketing pages, and case studies. (All of these should find opportunities to link to product pages.)
- Bottom of funnel: Comparison content, “alternative to” content, and buying guides. (All of these should be as honest as possible when pointing out comparative advantages and drawbacks.)
To implement this strategy:
- Start with solution-unaware content that educates your audience without pitching your product.
- Create thought leadership pieces and evergreen content to establish authority and drive traffic.
- Use case studies and comparisons to guide decision-makers.
2. Influencer Marketing Strategy
Influencer marketing has always been seen as a B2C marketing play. However, many tech companies are beginning to explore how to use influencers in their marketing strategy.
They typically go down one of these two paths:
- Short-term marketing campaigns
- Long-term partnerships
Micro-influencers are often a good fit for short-term marketing campaigns. One good place to start is by finding customers already creating content featuring your product: authentic user-generated content tends to perform well in ad campaigns.
For longer-term partnerships, its best to work with an industry expert who your target audience sees as credible. If you have the budget, explore both short-term and longer-term influencer collaborations.
Example: Canva
Canva hired Guy Kawasaki—formerly responsible for marketing Apple in the 1980s—as its chief evangelist.
To implement this strategy:
- Partner with micro-influencers who already create content about your product.
- Use user-generated content in ad campaigns to boost authenticity and engagement.
- Build long-term partnerships with industry experts to add credibility and trust to your brand.
3. Paid Media Strategy
Paid ads are a digital marketing's double-edged sword: they can help scale your product’s user base quickly, but this growth often comes at the expense of profitability. And it’s easy to burn cash fast if your campaign isn’t set up with the right objectives in mind. That’s why being strategic about your approach to paid media is so important.
Example: Pimly
Pimly, a product information management (PIM) SaaS built on top of Salesforce, originally ran paid ads that directed users to sign up for a demo or meeting. But this was a lot to ask of users who had only just encountered Pimly through an ad, and conversions were weak.
As a result, Pimly pivoted its call-to-action and offered a lead magnet instead. Each lead magnet was optimized for the keyword being targeted, so it was hyper-relevant to the search. In some cases, conversion rates went up to 30%.
To implement this strategy:
- Focus on offering lead magnets rather than pushing for immediate demos or meetings.
- Create multiple hyper-relevant lead magnets, each optimized for specific keywords.
- Regularly track and adjust campaigns to maintain profitability.
4. Customer Reviews and Case Studies
It’s Sales 101: potential customers don’t care about your product’s features. They only care about the results your product can give them. One of the most compelling ways to communicate those results is via customer reviews and case studies. 49% of SaaS marketers say that case studies are ‘very effective’ at boosting sales.
Example: ActiveCampaign
When it comes to case studies, relevance matters. That’s why ActiveCampaign’s customer stories are so impressive: there are over 100 customers featured, from a car financing SaaS to a nonprofit organization focused on elk conservation.
ActiveCampaign hits all the right notes in the customer stories section of its website:
- Photos of its customers to establish trust
- High-level metrics at the outset of the article to show measurable results
- Compelling quotes from the customer
- Story-driven style
To implement this strategy:
- Create case studies for a diverse range of customers.
- Include photos, high-level statistics, and customer quotes to build trust and show impact.
- Use a story-driven format to make your case studies engaging and compelling.
5. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Publish articles, help your audience, and get customers on autopilot: what’s not to like about SEO?
Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work like that. Every tech company publishes content, and it’s harder to stand out. Plus, search engines like Google now offer their own AI-generated summaries above organic results.
Fortunately, with the right strategy, you can still use SEO to your advantage.
Example: Zapier
Zapier, an automation platform, isn’t an obvious candidate for SEO success at first glance; there isn’t much organic search volume for cross-platform automation workflows.
Despite this, Zapier gets millions of organic visits each month. The secret to Zapier’s SEO success is how it:
- Targets top-of-funnel traffic with app guides, software comparisons, and “best of” lists.
- Leans heavily on programmatic SEO by generating thousands of dedicated pages for each combination of software integrations (For example, if you search “integrate slack and google sheets,” Zapier’s content appears first).
While this strategy won’t work for every tech company, it’s a good example of the kind of creative strategizing necessary to succeed with SEO today.
To implement this strategy:
- Review organic search results to understand the competitiveness of your target terms.
- Design an SEO strategy that sidesteps the competition with creative approaches, like programmatic SEO or evergreen solution-unaware content.
- Audit your approach regularly to gauge results.
6. Email Marketing Strategy
Email marketing remains one of the most effective ways to nurture leads and engage customers; if you want to use personalization to share targeted offers, there’s no better channel. But keep in mind that most tech companies don’t just have one approach to email marketing—you have quite a few concurrent ones:
- Marketing emails
- Onboarding, upgrade, and loyalty campaigns
- Behavioral emails (driven by user actions)
- Transactional emails (like billing and account recovery)
While not all of these email campaign types are strictly marketing-related, they are all key to your marketing and retention efforts; you’re always one email away from accidentally sending an irrelevant email to your subscribers, prompting an unsubscribe, and chipping away at your reputation.
Example: Klaviyo
For example, after signing up for Klaviyo’s email marketing automation software, I received a 10-part welcome sequence. There’s a delicate balance when onboarding new users: you need to get them to quickly engage with the product so they can get value from it, but you don’t want to overwhelm or annoy them. Klaviyo does a good job with this dynamic, covering valuable topics like syncing your ecommerce store, personalization, automated flows, and inspirational examples from other brands using Klaviyo.
To implement this strategy:
- Divide your email marketing strategy into groups; promotional campaigns, onboarding, and transactional emails all deserve their own careful approaches.
- Make use of personalization to keep your emails relevant.
- Balance engagement with value to avoid overwhelming users, especially during onboarding.
7. Video Marketing Strategy
Video has a unique power: humans can absorb more information from video than from text, making it a potentially potent vehicle for your marketing initiatives. But video can be tough to do well, especially for relatively dry B2B topics. The best tech companies find a way to keep things entertaining (and funny, depending on their brand) while showing their product in action.
Example: Monday.com
Monday.com has video ads that are funny enough that you’ll actually watch them on YouTube rather than skip ahead. (One of them uses a David Attenborough-like nature documentary voiceover to narrate the activities of people in the workplace.)
But their most effective video marketing series is straightforward rather than funny. It’s a “day in the life” series showing how different customers manage projects—and how Monday.com fits into their workflow.
To implement this strategy:
- Create engaging video content that showcases your product in action.
- Use relatable scenarios, like “day in the life” videos, to demonstrate practical use cases.
- Find a way to keep viewers engaged while matching your brand voice, whether it’s humorous or strictly professional.
8. Social Media Marketing Strategy
It’s almost hard to talk about social media marketing as a single discipline; for example, the surrealist engagement-bait tactics that make Duolingo dominant in the B2C space would fall flat for many tech companies.
In the B2B marketing world, social media accounts tend to post brand-safe content. Increasingly, tech companies are relying on their founders and high-level staff to drive social media visibility.
Example: SparkToro
My favorite example is SparkToro, an audience research SaaS started by Moz co-founder Rand Fishkin. Rand—and even more so, Amanda Natividad, SparkToro’s VP of Marketing—regularly post thought leadership pieces on X and LinkedIn. While that content is often reshared on SparkToro’s brand account, it gets much more engagement on Rand and Amanda’s personal accounts.
To implement this strategy:
- Encourage founders and key staff to share thought leadership content on social media platforms like X and LinkedIn.
- Focus on authentic, original content to drive engagement—and make it clear that it’s coming from a person, not the company.
- Amplify personal posts by resharing them on the company’s brand account (but recognize that your personal accounts are probably where you’ll get the most traction).
9. Partnership Marketing Strategy
With partnership marketing, you gain instant access to the audiences of related businesses through a win-win arrangement.
This can take a few forms:
- Strategic partnerships
- Reseller partnerships
- Affiliate partnerships
- Software integrations
- Content partnerships
Example: Drip
Drip, an email marketing automation company, partners with agencies to expand its access to customers. (This sort of partnership arrangement also allows Drip to outsource much of its sales process to third parties). In exchange, Drip’s partners get recurring commissions and access to a dedicated partner manager.
To implement this strategy:
- Set up partnerships with related companies to expand your customer base.
- Incentivize partners with commissions, support, and other win-win arrangements.
- Even small-scale partnerships, like native integrations, can be effective at driving qualified customers.
10. Affiliate Marketing Strategy
Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy in which your company partners with individuals (or other businesses) to promote your products.
Affiliates earn a commission for each sale or lead they generate. Since you only pay for results, it can be a cost-effective and scalable form of technology marketing.
Example: Lasso
Lasso is a software tool that enables affiliate sales, so it’s no wonder it has its own affiliate program. To administer and track its affiliates, Lasso uses Tapfiliate, an affiliate marketing management program that automates commission calculations.
To implement this strategy:
- Partner with affiliates who promote your product and earn commissions for each sale or lead.
- Use affiliate marketing software to track performance and automate payouts.
- Scale the program by recruiting new affiliates to expand your audience.
11. Product-Led Marketing Strategy
It used to be that to buy most enterprise software, you had to talk to a salesperson just to get a hands-on look at the product. Product-led marketing turned this dynamic on its head: now, for many types of software, users can sign up for free and decide for themselves whether it makes sense to upgrade to a paid version.
Example: Dock
Product-led growth doesn’t make sense for everyone. As the team at Dock explains, “if users can’t get much value out of your product by themselves, then a PLG [product-led growth] model does not make sense.”
Dock, a sales and customer onboarding portal, is an example of a product that lends itself well to product-led marketing: it’s easy to set up a sales or onboarding workspace and start getting value right away. While Dock has a sales team, it relies on free trials to do much of the heavy lifting.
To implement this strategy:
- Offer a free trial or freemium version of your product to attract users.
- Use in-product prompts to guide users toward premium features.
- If necessary, use a hybrid approach, supplementing your product-led marketing with the option to set up conversations with a sales rep.
12. Event Marketing Strategy
Sponsoring an event? That gets your name in front of potential buyers. Hosting an event? That ensures potential buyers will be talking about you for days.
By designing and hosting an event, you can control the agenda, showcase your expertise, and connect with potential customers.
You don’t necessarily need to host an expensive in-person event to reap the benefits of event marketing; a webinar or virtual event can have a powerful impact, too. Ensure you provide substantial value to attendees and follow up by email after the event to drive conversions.
Example: HubSpot’s INBOUND
For years, HubSpot’s INBOUND conferences have been the place to go for anyone involved in sales and marketing.
Its conferences have brought in big names like Ryan Reynolds, Serena Williams, and Reese Witherspoon to headline. While the impact of these events can be hard to measure, they build valuable brand equity, keep your product at the center of the conversation—and might generate more than a few photos of celebrities with your logo in the background.
To implement this strategy:
- Consider webinars or virtual events as a small-scale way to demonstrate your product’s value.
- Host in-person events if you want to boost visibility and build serious brand equity.
- Use follow-up emails to keep leads warm after the event.
5 Factors to Consider When Choosing a Marketing Strategy
Not sure which of the above marketing strategies makes sense for your company? Consider the following factors.
- Align your marketing goals with business objectives: Before jumping into marketing tactics, clearly define your company’s primary goals (e.g., increasing brand awareness, driving sales, or generating leads). Your marketing efforts should center directly on these goals. For instance, if your tech company is focused on growing market share, you might want to consider partnerships, affiliate and influencer campaigns, and paid ads.
- Define your target audience: Once you’ve identified your ideal customer profile (ICP) and audience segments, tailor your marketing messages and channels to resonate with them. This might mean crafting different messaging for enterprise clients compared to small businesses or addressing specific challenges your product solves for each audience.
- Assess internal bandwidth: While pursuing multiple digital marketing channels at once is tempting, spreading your resources too thin can lead to inefficiencies and burnout. Assess what your marketing managers and team can realistically handle. If your internal bandwidth is limited, consider outsourcing tasks to agencies or freelancers.
- Finalize your marketing budget: When creating your budget, factor in both short-term expenses (e.g., launching paid ad campaigns and hiring consultants) and long-term costs (e.g., maintaining software and producing ongoing content). Allocate resources to strategies that offer the best return on investment (ROI) and allow flexibility to adjust as your business grows.
- Choose the right marketing strategy software: Don’t buy more complex (or expensive) software than you need. If you’re still in startup mode, stick with nimble, affordable tools and consider upgrading to more specialized software later.
Join For More Tech Marketing Insights
The tough thing about designing a marketing strategy is that there are so many possible paths to take. There’s no one right answer—experimentation is key. Carefully considering your audience, the stage of your company’s growth, and your business goals can help you decide whether to embark on a paid ads campaign, a partnership, or something entirely different.
Ready for more marketing strategy insights? Start by reading our interview with Unbounce’s Jess Petrella on how to lead a successful marketing management team, then kick off your marketing strategy efforts by reading our guide to marketing resource management software. And make sure to join The CMO newsletter to get our latest tips, resources, and guides sent straight to your inbox.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do you market a tech company?
While there’s no quick, one-size-fits-all answer to tech marketing, it often involves a combination of content marketing, SEO, paid advertising, and partnerships. In each case, the goal is to educate, attract, and convert potential customers. (For expert guidance, you may want to consider bringing a fractional CMO on board to consult.)
What is a tech company's go-to-market strategy?
A go-to-market strategy is a comprehensive marketing plan for launching a product or service to your target market-while differentiating yourself from the competition. At a minimum, a GTM strategy typically involves having your marketing team define your target audience, product positioning, pricing, sales channels, marketing efforts, and support infrastructure.
What are the two main go-to-market strategies for high-tech companies?
Tech companies have a wide variety of GTM strategies. Still, two broad categories are inbound marketing (attracting customers through content and SEO) and outbound marketing (active outreach through paid ads and partnerships).
How do you brand a tech company?
Think of tech company branding as having two primary components. First, there’s the essence of your brand: logo, colors, brand voice, and other brand elements. Then, there’s your brand experience—how your brand develops organically in interactions with customers. Focus on both of these to create a comprehensive plan for branding your tech company.
