Why an IT product is hard to talk about
Inside the team, the value is obvious: architecture, speed, integrations. But the owner of a store chain in Samarkand or a finance director in Tashkent will not be moved by the word “scalable”. They want to know what changes in their business. PR here is translation from the team’s language into the audience’s language.
Trust is the second factor. Software is bought for the long term and handed your accounting, customer base and payments through Click or Payme. A company’s reputation and the visible people behind the product weigh as much as the feature list.
Audiences and channels for IT PR
Start by deciding who you are talking to. Each group asks different questions, and one message for everyone does not work.
Channels follow the same logic. Business media and Telegram channels about companies and startups like news with a clear market impact. Professional chats, meetups and engineering blogs demand depth, because developers spot marketing quickly. Your own channels — a blog, a Telegram channel, pages for founders and experts — give consistency, and a founder who speaks regularly and usefully about the industry often becomes the company’s strongest PR asset.
- Customers: owners and managers who care about results
- Technical people on the customer side, who care about security and integration
- Candidates: developers, analysts, product managers
- Investors and partners, including integrators and large companies
- The professional community
- The state, if you work with government clients or IT support programs
Explaining complex things simply
The core rule: talk about the problem and the change, not the technology. Instead of “a demand forecasting module based on machine learning”, say “a store sees which products will run out next week and reorders in advance”. Instead of “data integration”, say “accounting and the warehouse now look at the same numbers”.
A simple test: describe the product to someone from another field. If they can retell what it does, the explanation works. Prepare two versions, a plain one for business media and customers and a deeper one for technical outlets. Trendy words like “artificial intelligence” without specifics usually do more harm than good.
News hooks and case studies
A good hook is an event, not “we operate on the market”. For IT it is usually one of these:
For a B2B company the case study is the main tool: what the problem was, why earlier solutions fell short, how the rollout went, what changed. Publish it only with the client’s consent and only with facts that can be verified. If the client prefers to stay unnamed, make the case anonymous but describe the industry and the task clearly. The client’s own words persuade more than any claim from the vendor.
- Launch of a product or a major feature
- A new client, with their permission
- Raising investment
- Entering a new market or region
- A partnership with a well-known company
- Your own research that does not expose confidential data
- A hackathon, open-source project or education program
Experts, talks and PR for hiring
The most interesting people in an IT company are often its engineers. Support their conference talks, lectures at universities and IT schools, and posts in an engineering blog. Agree in advance on what can be discussed: client data and closed projects are off limits. A talk should be useful to the audience, not an ad.
The same work helps hiring. Strong specialists pick employers by reputation, and a technical blog where developers describe real problems often persuades better than a job posting. University partnerships, internships and hackathons are practical ways to show how the team works.
Outages, leaks and common mistakes
For IT, the most dangerous situations are a data leak and a service outage. Prepare the plan beforehand: who speaks for the company, how and in what order customers are told, what information is disclosed. Two things work: speed and honesty. A hidden problem usually comes out anyway, and the reputational damage grows.
Other frequent mistakes: using technical jargon with every audience, promising what the product cannot do yet, forgetting the employer brand, and publishing a case study without the client’s permission.
How to measure results and where to start
Look at consequences, not reach: publications in target outlets, inbound requests from clients and partners, applications from candidates, mentions in professional chats. For startups, add investor interest after publications.
Start small: describe your audiences, explain the product without jargon, choose one or two hooks and one or two channels. If you want help with that foundation, markdev builds marketing strategy for businesses in Uzbekistan, including IT companies. Tell us about your task and we can discuss where to begin.
FAQ
Where should a small IT team start with PR?
With one clear sentence about what the product does for the customer and one channel, for example the founder’s Telegram channel. Then add a first case study with the client’s consent.
Should we write about technology at all?
Yes, but for developers and technical specialists. For customers and business media, the problem and the result matter more.
Can we publish a case study without naming the client?
Yes, if the client agrees to an anonymous version. Describe the industry, the task and a verified result, without details that identify the company unless permitted.
What should we do when the service goes down?
Tell customers quickly what happened and what you are doing, appoint one spokesperson, and explain the cause and the fix openly once it is resolved.
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