When creating content targeted towards IT decision makers across various business verticals, you need to keep several aspects in mind. Your content needs to be informative, specific, and engaging. Putting together this type of content isn’t always easy, but it’s crucial when marketing your products or services to ITDMs (IT decision makers).
Providing statistics and solid information about how your solutions and services can help IT decision makers is critical when developing your content. Nearly all IT decision makers read and review dozens of tech-related articles and information daily. Keep your information easy to understand, and show your readers what specific ways your products work for their customers or teams to engage, inform, and excite.
IT personel simply don’t have the time or energy to waste on reading buzzwords. Keep your content unique and interesting by presenting your product or service in a way that they may not have considered. Offer insight into your products that show the distinctive capabilities and solutions you offer for problems that their teams struggle with every day.
When you’re writing content for IT decision makers, don’t ignore the rest of the IT department. While the C-suite or senior executives make the final decision on purchasing, others in the department give crucial feedback. According to a study performed by Google in 2015, the biggest influence on IT department purchases comes down to nonexecutive level influencers. In fact, the nonexecutive level employees make up 81 percent of the influence on purchases for the department.
Programmers, developers, database administrators, and others in a department spend much time researching potential software and products that help them do their jobs more efficiently. When you can demonstrate how a specific piece of software or how innovative solutions can meet the needs they face, you will be able to help your content stand out from the market competition.
While you might want to say that your solution or the vendors you partner with are the best on the market, you’ll have more difficulty proving it. IT leaders and teams need unbiased information about the products and services they use. Keep the content level, and if sections of the industry don’t benefit from what you offer, be upfront about what you can’t offer to these areas. Showing that you can be unbiased about what your product accomplishes helps your credibility and improves your business targeting.
One of the best ways to make sure that you’re engaging IT decision makers and their teams is to discuss ideas with them. Social sites such as Reddit or Stack Overflow allow you to talk about technology trends, best practice information, and details of the industry. Become active in the communities that your target market participates in, and do more than simply try to sell your product. Showing IT department influencers that you back up your sales pitch or content with real-world knowledge and understanding helps make them more comfortable with you and your company.
If you’re looking for ways to leverage your content to generate leads, check out our marketing playbook for IT VARs & MSPs. We’ve included how content fits into an inbound marketing campaign, what channels to distribute through, and overall tips on improving the campaign outcome. Click below for your free copy.