Marketing to IT Professionals – Case Studies, Product Demos & Bloggers

Thu, Nov 5, 2009

Conversion Optimization, Traffic

   Written by: Susan Tatum

Marketing to IT Professionals – Case Studies, Product Demos & Bloggers
Last week’s issue of BtoB magazine contains a vertical market focus on the Information Technology market. If you sell to IT people – or if they influence your sale – you’ll find some very helpful content in that issue. Read it online here: BtoB Vertical Market Focus: Information Technology.
In the lead article, Common Tactics Reach Diverse IT, reporter Mary Morrison makes the point that although there are many subcategories within the IT market (networking, wireless, security, etc.) the best methods of reaching and communicating with this audience are fairly standard. She singles out case studies, video product demonstrations and social media (ie, blogs and community sites) as effective ways to connect with IT execs.
At Tatum Marketing, our experience bears this out. IT professionals, much like engineers, share two common traits. They like a lot of information, and they don’t trust marketing. Therefore, if you’re marketing a technology product to the IT department, it could be argued that the best thing you can do is to make plenty of information available, encourage interaction among users and experts, and stay out of the way.
Here are some recommendations from the article to more effectively engage this audience:
•Make sure your website contains plenty of good product information and that both the site and your content are easy to find.
•Develop compelling case studies that show how others have used your product to solve their problems.
•Use video or flash animation to dramatize the product’s functionality.
•Establish relationships with appropriate technology bloggers and actively participate in IT communities. (Sonal Gandhi, of JupiterResearch suggests ITtoolbox).
One other interesting idea suggested by this article is the potential for offline advertising to become more effective. As marketers shift more and more dollars from offline to online tactics, print publications carry far less competitive “noise” making it easier to get your message noticed. That really might be worth a try.
Technorati Tags: marketing, technology, btob

This article was first published September 24, 2007 on the Tatum Marketing blog

Last week’s issue of BtoB magazine contains a vertical market focus on the Information Technology market. If you sell to IT people – or if they influence your sale – you’ll find some very helpful content in that issue. Read it online here: BtoB Vertical Market Focus: Information Technology.

In the lead article, Common Tactics Reach Diverse IT, reporter Mary Morrison makes the point that although there are many subcategories within the IT market (networking, wireless, security, etc.) the best methods of reaching and communicating with this audience are fairly standard. She singles out case studies, video product demonstrations and social media (ie, blogs and community sites) as effective ways to connect with IT execs.

At Tatum Marketing, our experience bears this out. IT professionals, much like engineers, share two common traits. They like a lot of information, and they don’t trust marketing. Therefore, if you’re marketing a technology product to the IT department, it could be argued that the best thing you can do is to make plenty of information available, encourage interaction among users and experts, and stay out of the way.

Here are some recommendations from the article to more effectively engage this audience:

  • Make sure your website contains plenty of good product information and that both the site and your content are easy to find.
  • Develop compelling case studies that show how others have used your product to solve their problems.
  • Use video or flash animation to dramatize the product’s functionality.
  • Establish relationships with appropriate technology bloggers and actively participate in IT communities. (Sonal Gandhi, of JupiterResearch suggests ITtoolbox).

One other interesting idea suggested by this article is the potential for offline advertising to become more effective. As marketers shift more and more dollars from offline to online tactics, print publications carry far less competitive “noise” making it easier to get your message noticed. That really might be worth a try.

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