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Need Help With A Marketing Plan For An It Business
Posted By: orobledo on 11/4/2004 4:38 PM (CST) 125 Points
Which are the main points to consider about IT corporate customers. Which are their needs about technology solutions for Businesses.

Posted by: Praf* Accepted Answer
11/4/2004 4:57 PM (CST)
This is a very open ended questions. The basic elemnts of a marketing plan are the same. Try to answer the following questions and you will have the beginnings of a marketing plan:

What are you selling?

Who are you selling it to? What is your market space and how big is it? What are the demographics and psychographics of your target marketplace?

What need does your product satisfy?

Who else is selling the same or similar products?

What are you pricing your product at?

Why will someone buy from you and not from someone else? What is your distinguishing feature?

What is your warranty?

Be very clear in your answers. Do not use weasel (or ambiguous) language. Add more things that you can think from this beginning.

If you are more specific, I can help you more. Call me if you want to.

Good luck.

Praf
 
Posted by: orobledo Author Response
11/5/2004 3:20 PM (CST)
I mean, which are the main points to analyze when we are marketing software servicies for another companies (B2B). Could be CEOs needs, CIOs needs, end users consuming trends??? what you think????

And which are the corporations (my customers) needs facing new markets trends on IT Business Solutions? could be web servicies? legacy extention? more data integration? wireless? voice automation? what you think? agree? have another ideas or sources to search about corporate needs for 2005 or 2006?

Now I'm working for an IT corporation that works in US & Canada. Moreover, I'm just began working with them weeks ago and I'll really appreciente your opinions about this. Also, any cultural issue will be great this is my first time working in northamerican markets.
 
Posted by: telemoxie Accepted Answer
11/9/2004 7:57 PM (CST)
I think one of the primary needs of a CIO is to work with vendors who are technically up to speed, who have recently completed similar work, who understand the needs of their specific business and also understand their market.

Therefore I would suggest that one strategy would be to pick some specific cases in which you have recent excellent experiences and references, generate a list of similar businesses, write some short white papers or case studies, and get the word out.
 
Posted by: orobledo Author Response
11/14/2004 12:39 PM (CST)
More data:
1) what kind of software are you marketing?
We are developing infromation access tools for Business and indirectly for their consumers.
2) who are your customers? (what kinds of companies buy your software?) B2B: Every company that need access to their information and want to give their employees & consumers easy and quick access to their servicies and info.
3) why are you asking the question (what are you hoping to do with the answers? write a marketing plan? or something else?)
I reviewing our marketing plan and I think that the customer analysis part is the weakest point of it. Also, with this answers I can make a better analysis about B2B customers, what they want and which are the market trends in our business.
 
Posted by: mbarber Accepted Answer
11/15/2004 4:07 AM (CST)
Gidday Orobledo.

Certainly it sounds like you need to strengthen your company's understanding of what type of customers it wants to target.

I'm fascinated about this idea of giving both the business and its consumers access to information. Is it a financial service market you are after? Or is it a large hardware chain?

Do you plan to make this a marketing tool for the business by enabling them to handle their customer servicing easier?

Is the information about product flow or financial data?

What I'm trying to do is get back to your initial question about who you need to speak to in your target clients and what the reasons might be for them wanting to hear from you.

So will this tool be a cost reduction enabler? Speak to the CFO.

Will it be a marketing advantage? Speak to head of marketing

Will it be a profit increase enabler? Speak to the CEO. Will it let the company achieve the same with fewer staff or more with the same staff? Speak to the CEO again.

What do you say? Well once you've worked out what your product does and who would be most likely to influence the decision cycle in your favour, work out what message exactly, that that person would want to hear, from their side of the desk.

Best of luck
 
Posted by: ASVP/ChrisB Accepted Answer
11/15/2004 5:39 AM (CST)
It sounds like you need to do two forms of segmentation plus an exercise in mapping and matching the stages in the buyers and sellers journeys.

Let me explain:

First segment your customers into groups by the products they buy, and identify where the main value chunks are that contribute to the company's revenue streams.

Make sure you really understand the value proposition applying to each of those key segments.

Then examine the structure within each of the client companies in the key segments so you understand who you have to sell to; i.e. are they User-Buyers, Economic-Buyers, Approver-Buyers, or some other class. Use position titles instead if that helps.

Then examine the buyers journey, in terms of the steps they need to make in order to buy from you. Match those where possible against the steps you need to take to get them to each next step...

If that seems complicated (it really isn't) then go look at a book called The Leaky Funnel written by Hugh McFarlane who is a KHE member, you can get it from Amazon or via his profile here at http://www.marketingprofs.com/ea/profile.asp?userID=185982

This should give you:

- Who you should be selling to;

- What you are selling them;

- Why they are buying it;

- How they are buying it;

- Who you are selling to within the customer account;

- What steps you and they need to take for the sale to proceed smoothly.

Hope this helps.

ChrisB
 
Posted by: Val (Moderator)* Moderator Response
11/28/2004 3:51 AM (CST)
Hello all. I am closing this question, since its more than 10 days old. We do this to make sure members' contributions are rewarded in a timely manner and to improve the visibility of newer questions.

Thanks, so much, for participating!

Val (Moderator)
 
Posted by: orobledo Author Response
11/28/2004 12:22 PM (CST)
Hello Everyone,
Thanks for your responses were really useful and I think that I have a better idea of this point. Thanks everybody.
About the product, is an information access software that is build over the existing systems that you have and improve your information access. We work in different ways could be legacy extension, web servicies or voice enable systems.
The main benefit is that you can access and interact with all the info that you have from out of your office and also this can be build for your employees and consumers. They can buy, sell or just get data in their personal devices. This can contribute to increase productivity and give to the cosumers easier alternatives to buy products and servicies.
About customers this can be used in many different sectors financial, legal, government, health and others.
Again, thanks for all you help and if you have any other inquire feel free to contact me.
 


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