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Marketing to Vertical Industries

February 18th, 2008 | Maureen Beattie

Many of our clients have indicated that vertical industries are an important target audience and most provide technology solutions specific to these industries. Still, we often see vertical industries (the most common being financial, government, healthcare and manufacturing) as a secondary or tertiary target audience in a broader marketing program. Why don’t more vendors create marketing programs that target vertical industries?  Don’t they have the content assets specific to the industry(s)? No additional budget to target this audience? Or do they simply not know how to go about creating or implementing such a program? The answer is likely a combination of these issues. I am surprised however at the number of clients who have solutions for vertical industries yet little to no content created beyond data sheets or brochures.

I have had the opportunity to work with several clients on successful vertical marketing programs. The most important element is to have a well thought out content strategy that addresses the needs in the industry by guiding people through different phases of the buying cycle. An integrated approach works best, a mixture of white papers, case studies, demos/trials, analyst papers, webcasts, data sheets, etc. This variety provides useful information to the user whether he/she is in the early stages of research, consideration or product trial. Reviewing your competitors’ content can also help with determining any content gaps that need to be filled.

The same rules apply with marketing programs that target a broader audience. Seems like common marketing sense, right? Then why aren’t more vendors implementing vertical programs? My educated guess is that they do not have the bandwidth to create the specific content required. The content that targets the broader initiative is top priority. My suggestion is to create the vertical content simultaneously with the broader content. This way both sets of content will have format alignment while addressing different audiences. And, paying writers and/or analysts for one big job will be more efficient than several one-offs down the road. Once the right content is created, targeted promotion to select the industry should provide great results.

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Getting IT Pros to Respond to Your Follow-up Marketing Efforts

November 13th, 2007 | Maureen Beattie

A common question I hear from our technology vendor clients is how can they get IT pros to respond to follow-up marketing efforts after they download a content asset such as a white paper, webcast or podcast.  Too often we hear that telemarketing is used as the method of follow-up and the results are less than favorable.  I always advise my clients to use the same method for re-marketing as they did to capture the prospect’s information in the first place.  The audience has already demonstrated a comfort level or preference with that method - why change it? 

This seems like marketing common sense.  So why do so many vendors still use telemarketing when the audience is in the online research phase of the buying process? Last June, Garrett Mann posted on this topic, quoting that IT buyers are twice as likely to give vendors a valid email address than a valid phone number (MarketingSherpa & KnowledgeStorm, Connecting through Content, June 2007). The point was reinforced at the TechTarget Online ROI Summit this past September where many of our panel members (IT professionals) stated that they are not likely to answer or return a marketing call from an IT vendor.  They would rather have the vendor follow up via email with another relevant offer or content piece.  IT professionals receive so many phone calls from vendors each day that they simply can not respond nor are they ready to. 

So how can marketers help move prospects through the buying cycle, past research and on to consideration?  One of our presentations at the Online ROI Summit, Selecting Content to Match the Buying Process, addressed this with some best practices for choosing content type and topic to match the various stages of the purchase cycle.  This presentation addresses:

  1. Understanding the various stages of the IT buying cycle and the effectiveness of  different media types and topics at each stage
  2. Mapping out a plan to have the appropriate content pieces which will move prospects through the cycle
  3. Setting expectations on the number and quality of leads based on the content types and topics you are offering
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Posted in Best practices, Buying process, Email marketing | Post or View Comments (2)

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