1

Consider the promotion of your products and services to be as critical as their development. For maximum success, give your marketing as much care and thought as you give design engineering and manufacturing. Products, no matter how stellar, don't sell themselves-and the more technologically innovative they are, the harder it can be to showcase their benefits. If you wouldn't settle for second-rate engineering, don't compromise when it comes to promotion.

2

Launch marketing campaigns that address what your customer wants to buy, not what you would like to sell.  Focus on the benefits to the customer, and avoid mere descriptions of the product's features and capabilities. Selling is more than telling.

3

Use phased promotional planning that dovetails with your product development cycle.  You wouldn't release a product before you had beta tested it. Similarly, you don't want to promote a product before you establish an infrastructure to support sales, such as product training and customer reference sites.

4

Provide sufficient information.  Business customers considering technology-based products want substantial information before they buy. Make sure that high-level ads, sales presentations, and brochures are backed up by more extensive information, such as white papers, data sheets, beta site testimonials, and consultants' reports.

5

Work with promotion experts who can understand your product or service. When you rely on a general-purpose ad agency, even a good one, all you'll get is general-purpose promotion. To promote specialized technology-based products, hire specialized technology-savvy professionals.

6

Resist the temptation to do it yourself.  Your engineers and product managers understand your products better than anyone else. But they are typically so immersed in a product that it's nearly impossible for them to convey the benefits of it to a customer who may have no experience with this kind of product or technology. Understanding technology doesn't necessarily enable you to communicate effectively about it. Let your engineers and product managers focus on what you hired them to do. Hire professionals in technology-based communications and marketing to focus on promotion.

7

Manage promotional expenses.  Where applicable, use the many free and low-cost avenues that exist for promoting your products and services. For example, you may get more qualified sales leads from a white paper posted on your company's Web site than from a glitzy direct mail campaign. Working with an expert in the promotion of technology-based business-to-business solutions can help you optimize your marketing budget.