Clicks 'n Conversions Blog

If you haven’t seen the 2009 report from TechTarget titled “Closing the Gap between IT Buyers and IT Marketers”, you might want to give it a look. There’s some useful information even though the study was conducted in 2008 – which can sometimes seem like forever ago. I suggest it’s still valid now because I see at least some of these disconnects happening still today in nearly every IT company whose leaders I speak with. Interestingly, the more marketing-oriented the company’s marketing people seem to be, the more likely they are to be missing the point with IT buyers.

Here’re some of the most interesting points in the report:

IT buyers want to see vendor comparisons – especially in the final stage of evaluation but marketers resist offering them. When comparisons are not available IT buyers make their own. Isn’t this a great opportunity for marketers?

IT marketers are lagging behind demand in the availability of trial software. We’ve gotten better but not good enough. 35% of software companies were offering trial software in 2008; but 54% of IT buyers were looking for it. By the way, IT buyers (70%) say they spend two weeks or less evaluating trial software downloads. Does this surprise you?

Just because your product is expensive doesn’t mean buyers won’t appreciate a trial. True – most IT buyers (83%) are downloading trial software that has a final cost of less than $25,000, but some that are using it to evaluate software costing more than $500,000. 68% of all trial users are somewhat or very likely to purchase the solution after using the trial.

In the not-so-surprising category, 64% of IT buyers always use the internet to research information on technology solutions, 31% use it frequently, 5% use it sometimes (who are these people?); nobody never uses it.

While marketers tend to overrate it a little, white papers ranked the highest as the most utilized online content – used by 70% of IT buyers. Product literature came in second at 62%.

Email newsletters and e-books are useful to IT buyers during the awareness stage of the buying process. Trial software, vendor demos, case studies and comparisons are favored more towards the decision stage. This is important especially for those of you who are ignoring prospects in the early stages. Email newsletters and ebooks are a good way to hook these folks.

IT buyers prefer your videos or webcasts to be on-demand versus live. This is probably a convenience preference. The 10% who prefer a live performance do so because of the Q&A opportunities.

Search engines are the most used information source during the buying process (83%). Vendor website came in a number two (75%) followed by testimonials from peers and colleagues (65%) and IT publisher websites(64%). Interestingly online social networking groups were used by only 11% of IT buyers.

You can download a copy of the full report here: TechTarget 2009 Media Consumption Benchmark Report 2.  You’ll have to give up some contact details but the info is worth it.

Does any of this surprise you? If so, let’s hear about it here.