Top Stories: January 16 — 22, 2009
January 22nd, 2010 - Posted by Tim Freestone
Four reasons CIOs don’t switch (but a big reason why they do): You can run down the list of enhancements and show that your solution could beat the competition head-to-head. And, it’s cheaper – a lot cheaper. It goes on and on. You’re talking to a prospective client and keep hitting a roadblock: he doesn’t want to switch from what he has now. In the IT sales and marketing space, this could be the most difficult challenge you’ll face.
enter:marketing announces new IT social media marketing solution: The buzz around social media marketing is palpable, but many IT resellers are rightfully skeptical. After all, how do you link tweets, fans and other nebulous concepts to sales opportunities? Through our work with you and the top IT manufacturers in the business, enter:marketing has developed a unique, results-focused social media marketing approach that is designed to extend your reach, target your message to a specific market and generate opportunities for client intelligence and new business. Enter the social media space confidently, and reap the rewards of this robust marketing venue.
Swing for the fences: Are you trying hard enough?: In IT marketing departments and businesses around the world, the fear of failure is endemic. Nobody wants to have to explain why something didn’t work … let alone carry the stigma of an unsuccessful attempt. This phobia, unfortunately, is costing companies ROI. As we mentioned yesterday, if you’re doing everything right, you’re really doing everything wrong. You should be stretching for bigger results. Take the risk, and you may trade a few unsuccessful for campaigns for a much higher overall marketing ROI.
Are you tuned in to your clients’ compliance initiatives?: The first decade of the 21st century will be remembered, at least in part, as one of the most complex regulatory periods in U.S. business history. IT departments have had to address the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the USA PATRIOT Act and many others. As we begin to sort through the implications of the recent financial crisis, expect more to follow. Some changes to financial oversight rules are already in the works.
Venture capital trends give an inside look at the year to come: To get a sense of what’s happening in the IT market, sometimes you have to look elsewhere. So, when the latest private equity fund-raising results were published (by Dow Jones LP Source, via VentureBeat), I checked on the venture capital data. Why? Venture capital trends hold some clues as to where the IT industry is headed.
Most Popular Keyword: Swing for the Fences
And, you may have missed …
A marketing plan is more than a calendar of events: The declaration “We need to do an event” is one of the most damaging sentiments uttered in the IT industry – that is, when it is declared outside of a meeting that involves a goal of creating a comprehensive marketing plan. An ad hoc, reactive event planning approach to marketing has one of the highest costs per touch in the marketing arsenal (when you truly factor in all the human resources it requires to throw and event) and generally sets IT resellers up for a degraded ROI.
