How skilling is marketing

The secret ingredient to reaching your technical audience

As a digital marketing agency that has worked with Microsoft for over 30 years, we’ve been able to research and observe the technical audience to know what works and what doesn’t in marketing. For example, while helping to bring the skilling challenge “Microsoft Learn” to life at Microsoft’s Ignite and Build events, we noticed how much the technical audience embraces continuous skilling to experience new features, push capabilities, and feed their desires to be the first to know how everything works. So, what’s the secret ingredient for this audience? Focus on skilling. Here’s why:

1. They don’t want marketing fluff: Technical audiences understand that marketing is the most optimistic version of a new technology’s capabilities, but there’s typically a gap between the marketing’s POV and how the audience will use it. Instead, shift the focus to skilling and give them an interactive way to understand new capabilities.
2. They are consistently asked to evaluate new technologies: Technical audiences need to be on their skilling game to answer not "if” but “when” a technology is ready for adoption. Promoting the opportunity to skill up provides a tangible call-to-action that enables technical audiences to evaluate new capabilities and build their own readiness plan.
3. They must be prepared to implement new technologies when their companies adopt them: Their skilling is “always on” so tap into that by providing tactics and content that meet them where they are.
4. They like to share: We see this audience share their learnings at every flagship event. They want their organization to see what’s new and what’s possible. Doesn’t matter if they like the tech or not – they aren’t shy about giving their professional hot take so that their colleagues can keep skilling alongside them.

Our agency is dedicated to customizing your marketing approach so you can speak to your audience and ensure that they’ll listen.