Technical Marketing & Why It's Important

Despite its lesser-known status, technical marketing is a must-have for a successful marketing strategy. This subset of informative marketing is especially important for businesses offering advanced technical products or services.

To execute a successful technical marketing strategy, marketers must understand business’ more complex products and services. Technical marketing demands specific skill sets and backgrounds. A professional marketing agency may be able to support you, or you may want to build technical marketing capabilities in-house.

By integrating technical marketers into your marketing team, you can expand your reach and engage tech-savvy audiences.

This article not only defines technical marketing but also explains why it’s important and outlines the essential responsibilities of technical marketers.

What Is Technical Marketing?

Technical marketing focuses on a product’s specifications and features. It appeals to a specific audience that has basic technical knowledge.

Unlike typical marketing, technical marketing uses jargon like cache, IPS, SKU, and WPA to describe a product.

Technical marketing focuses on how a product or service functions and its benefits to users.

Fields that benefit from technical marketing include big data, finance, and electronic engineering, among others.

For example, Adobe publishes video tutorials to help users learn about its products’ features.

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Below the video is a list with written instructions, recapping the video’s lesson.

Businesses can use various forms of content to deploy technical marketing campaigns, giving consumers high-level details of products and services.

Why Is Technical Marketing Important?

Technical marketing helps businesses with complex products or services teach consumers how to use its products and show how the product is useful. It helps you engage and attract a tech-savvy audience.

Technical marketing may even help improve your rankings in search results.

Google ranks websites that display a high level of E-A-T (expertise, authority, and trustworthiness) higher than websites displaying low levels of E-A-T. Publishing content online that showcases and explains technical aspects of your products helps signal E-A-T to Google.

For example, Microsoft used a blog post about working from home to highlight different technologies and their features.

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Under its image, Microsoft highlights the webcam’s features, such as 1080p video with HDR and True Look technology. This informs consumers and demonstrates E-A-T. It's also a great example of reverse positioning in marketing.

By implementing technical marketing in content strategies, companies produce content that signals high levels of E-A-T and can advance their rankings in search results.

Engaging technical marketing strategies helps businesses reach more audiences and achieve high rankings in SERPs.

What’s the Role of a Technical Marketer?

A technical marketer manages campaigns to entice a knowledgeable audience that’s passionate about the technical aspects of a product or service.

Required technical marketing skills include:

• Advanced knowledge of the company’s technical products and services
• Ability to conduct competitor analysis
• Content creation experience
• Product positioning experience

The role of technical marketers includes the following responsibilities and considerations, too:

• Target a range of consumers and address pain points
• Develop intentional content
• Address all stages of the buyer journey

Target a Range of Consumers & Address Pain Points

Multiple stakeholders may be involved in purchasing technical products or services such as a CRM, ERP, or other business software solutions.

Products or services that impact multiple business processes likely serve as solutions to pain points customers face. As a result, it’s important that technical marketers contextualize each feature and demonstrate its ability to address business challenges.

For example, HubSpot spotlights features of its sales software in the product overview page.

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Software company Hubspot not only lists popular features of the sales software but also explains how each feature benefits sales teams.

Develop Intentional Content

In addition to infographics and long-form written content, technical marketers produce product demonstration videos, tutorials, and checklists. This content helps not only increase search rankings but also attract qualified visitors.

Asana, for example, provides visitors with a variety of content to familiarize them with product offerings.

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The software company offers webinars, video tutorials, guides, and courses to help users take advantage of its product’s features. Asana helps existing users and attracts new customers by using different mediums for delivering content.

Address All Stages of the Buyer Journey

Technical marketers develop personas and content to engage users throughout their journeys. By understanding each persona, technical marketers can create content that caters to buyers’ unique needs at each stage. What a consumer needs at the awareness stage is much different from her needs at the decision stage. Supplying buyers with helpful content establishes trust and encourages them to continue in their journeys.

For example, Zoom features different types of content on its website to engage buyers throughout their journeys.

Zoom's blog caters to buyers in the awareness stage. In this stage, consumers typically conduct research into potential solutions to problems.

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In addition to blog posts about the benefits of Zoom’s technology, the company features case studies on its website.

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The case studies showcase stories about how different Zoom users benefit from the product, highlighting their specific buyers’ journeys. Since case studies cover a business’s challenge, solution, and benefits, they cater to buyers in the decision stage.

Technical marketers play vital roles in marketing teams by engaging a technically knowledgeable audience and helping businesses capture a broader consumer base.

Technical Marketing Helps Businesses Succeed

Technical marketing helps companies reach a broader audience by using (and simplifying) technical jargon to engage tech-savvy consumers.

Unlike general marketing, technical marketing highlights features and specifications of complex products and services. By showcasing technical specifications, companies provide technically knowledgeable consumers with the information that interests them.

Developing content to support technical marketing initiatives also enables businesses to establish expertise, authority, and trustworthiness online – and hopefully, advance their website rankings in search results.

Among others, technical marketers manage the following tasks: develop content for technical audiences, identify pain points to address in content, and produce different types of content to target consumers in different stages of the buyer’s journey.

Businesses should use technical marketing strategies to engage a larger audience and promote growth.