By Dustin Haisler, Chief Strategy Officer & Chief Innovation Officer, e.Republic
Often people come to me and want to architect a campaign to target solely the Chief Information Officer (CIO) or sole perceived decision maker in the buying process. What they fail to realize is that there are multiple points of influence in the buying process outside of the person at the top of the organizational chart. IT decisions are influenced by multiple people who each play a critical role in the buying process.
For example, if you wanted to sell a document management system to government, you would not want to try to directly sell it to the CIO, because they are not the user with the problem to be solved. Rather, you would want to raise awareness with actual users or department leaders that would be using the system that there is a better way of doing things. The CIO still plays a critical role in validation (and sometimes even bringing these solutions to department leaders) but again, different roles play different functions in the buying process.
This means that when you create content, you should look for content that doesn’t just target the top of the decision-maker matrix — but the entire buyer’s journey or critical path of market commercialization. Look at the different titles involved in document management purchasing at a local level and how they each play a different, but critical role, in the overall buying process.
When you analyze leads coming from your content, don’t throw away non-decision makers but look to them as another signal to show the intent of a prospective agency in your solution. These may be hidden influencers hiding in plain sight.
e.Republic’s team of government marketing experts would love to help you develop an effective lead-gen strategy. Let us know if you are interested and we will schedule a call to discuss.