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This is an in-demand occupation. In 2004 (the latest year available for such data), there were about 280,000 IT managers in the United States. And employment in computer and information systems management is expected to grow faster than the average for any other occupation through the year 2014, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
IT managers, in general, comprise a highly educated market, with the majority having at least a bachelor’s degree and many holding master’s degrees. As a result, average salaries are high. Median annual earnings in 2004 were $92,570, with software publishers paying the highest amount, $107,870, according to the Labor Bureau.
Demographics also point to a decidedly male market. CIO, one of the leading publications for this market, notes that its subscribers’ average age is 45, and 82 percent are men. Moreover, this market enjoys robust spending power. The average IT budget among its readers is $291 million, and 100 percent of subscribers are involved in IT purchases.
IT managers install and upgrade hardware and software; program and design systems; develop computer networks and the security needed to run them; and implement Internet and intranet sites. They also specify and/or buy hardware, software, consulting and programming services, telephony equipment, and myriad other goods and services. Job titles in this market include CIO, CTO, MIS director, project
manager, LAN/WAN manager, IS manager, application development manager, senior analyst and many others.
Kelsey Voss, circulation director of CIO Insight, a Ziff Davis Media magazine that covers the industry, notes that IT senior executives are a particularly busy group. Her research reveals that 38 percent of the publication’s readers say they have 50 or more IT projects planned within the next year. Capturing the attention of these harried managers may be tough.
Visionary Approaches Needed
Tim Babbitt, director of technology at Human Kinetics (HK), a Champaign, Ill.-based publisher of books and scholarly journals, says effective marketing messages for IT products and services should “be sensitive to my pain points, or where I am suffering the most today.” In particular, he looks for visionary approaches to solving IT problems.
For example, last year HK needed more servers, but its budget was limited. “We started using server virtualizations, which are computers that act as multiple servers.” He’d read about the service in trade publications and then followed up to get more data.
When shopping for IT products and services, Babbitt says he looks for brands he trusts and companies with solid reputations. “There’s a strong disposition among IT managers to buy more products from companies whose products you already have,” he notes, “because if you go with a multivendor solution, you don’t know whom to blame when things go wrong.”
However, he doesn’t overly restrict his list of prospective vendors. “If you buy too much from one company, the vendor can take advantage of you. So as a customer, I have to be ready to shop around when I need something new.”
The Shopping Process
Babbitt says that once he has pinpointed what he needs, he starts his search online. Dolores Broderick, director of list management for Walter Karl, which manages the subscriber files for CIO Insight and other Ziff Davis technology publications, agrees that IT managers are shifting their buying habits from offline to online. Specifically, they’re using online search, signing up for more e-newsletters, attending more webinars and engaging in virtualization networking—all with the intent of boosting their knowledge base.
Babbitt notes that while e-mailed information is helpful, he prefers to get printed materials on the products and services he’s considering. “Print is so much better, especially when we don’t need the product today, but may in the future. We can file it away and retrieve it easily,” he explains.
That said, however, Voss notes that in her search for qualified subscribers to her three controlled-circulation IT magazines (CIO Insight, Baseline and eWeek), printed materials such as direct mail don’t work. “It’s too expensive. The postage costs are too high, and the conversion rates are too low to justify it,” she says.
Pull Them In
What do IT managers buy for themselves? High-tech products, of course. Mark Gambill, vice president of marketing at CDW, a provider of technology solutions for business, government and education, says IT managers also buy high-tech rewards, such as iPods, for their staffs.
List managers who serve this market say IT managers also buy educational materials to improve their management and leadership skills, and they visit IT job sites.
What messaging techniques work? Gambill says most marketers think IT managers don’t have a sense of humor. “But they do. They really appreciate smart wit,” he notes.
Also, messages must hit the right tone. “Sometimes our engineers will supply copy to us here in marketing, and we just can’t use it. What about our customers who are not that tech-savvy, those for whom technology is only part of their daily work responsibilities? So the tone of those messages has to be right for your customers,” he advises.
Lastly, be honest about what the product or service does. “Marketers tend to overstate the capability, which just wastes everyone’s time. And they shouldn’t be cryptic about the technology’s features either,” Babbitt adds.
A Market Worth Pursuing
Marketers targeting IT senior executives are looking for greater granularity in the data, notes Jay Schwedelson, corporate vice president of Worldata, a list service company that manages several technology lists. Harte-Hanks’ CI Technology Database, which Worldata recently started offering, has 350 technology and demographic selectors available. Worldata can denote not just names of people who have routers, but specifically, those with Cisco routers, and not just businesses with desktop computers, but those with Dell PCs in particular. “Several software and hardware producers are really looking for that level of selectability,” says Schwedelson. “Databases that have highly segmentable files are the ones that are enjoying a lot of test campaigns.”
Mary Ann Doolin, marketing specialist at IDG List Services, which manages the CIO magazine list, says the interest in the IT managers market is wide and includes, for example, companies touting globalization strategies, leadership training, wireless technology, emerging technologies, storage and data management products, and much more. Indeed, mailers that have tested the CIO Insight list include Dell Computer, Forbes, Forrester Research, Oracle, Learning Tree International, Intel, Motorola, Harvard Business School, Sprint, The Wall Street Journal, Xerox and the University of Chicago.
In short, this is a market of high-income, highly educated professionals with impressive spending power, who are tasked with making many purchases for their companies. And who wouldn’t want to target that market?
Donna Loyle is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia.
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