By: Mark Glasner, VP Marketing Services & Client Strategy

“Most of our content assets are too old to be effective.  They tend to revolve around our products.  They aren’t focused on specific information needs of buyers in different positions or stages of the purchase process.”

Sound Familiar?

In today’s complex, fast-paced business environment, the technology purchase process involves vetting and collaboration between many decision-makers and functions including: finance, business and technology.

It’s fundamental, but often overlooked by technology marketers: Before embarking on developing a product overview, a case study, video or a white paper, it’s critically important to think about your customer’s specific information needs.

• What content assets will motivate then to do business with “your” organization?
• What justification information do your prospects believe is most important?
• What types of content assets will positively affect their decision-making?
• Where is their organization in the technology purchase process?

Knowing the right answers to these questions and delivering relevant content is crucial to making the short list and ultimately, winning the business.  Here are some basic, yet powerful keys to successful content development at each stage of the technology purchase process.

Awareness: Today’s decision-makers are trying to solve specific business problems through the use of technology.  Demonstrating a clear understanding of your customer’s pain point is crucial to positioning your company as a “thought-leader” in the category.

Your content assets (including webcasts, whitepapers and blogs) should be aimed at educating your audience about technology solutions that will give their organization a competitive advantage.  Compelling content in the Awareness stages should come from knowledgeable category experts to demonstrate the credibility of a particular technology solution.

Consideration: Here, prospective buyers are evaluating the difference between specific technology solutions.  The content that stands out at this stage includes: Technical briefs, demo videos and case studies.  Assets should include both business-value and technology information, as well as facts and data to support your company’s product positioning and ROI metrics.

Preference: This is the time to deliver information that differentiates your products and company from the competition.  Content that validates your company’s unique value proposition and superior product benefits will likely have the most impact.  Success stories and peer-to-peer conversations about your company’s technology solution will produce the best results in the preference stage of the technology purchase process.

Justification: Now, buyers are serious about recommending your company and products to other stakeholders in the organization.  Since this decision-maker is focused on justifying their brand selection to peers and management, this is the right time to introduce content that justifies and validates their decision-making criteria: TCO and ROI calculators, company newsletters showcasing the adoption of your technology in other organizations and social media peer-to-peer validation are all crucial to turning justification into actually closing sales.

Identifying where your prospects are in the various stages of the purchase process is critical to determining the most effective content strategy.

However, it’s important to keep in mind that the technology purchase process is no longer as linear as it used to be.  The advent of social media and peer-to-peer validation, (in addition to the right content assets) all play a role in successfully moving a prospect to buying specifically from your organization.

Understanding your prospects unique information needs at every buying stage and addressing their motivations to buy your particular technology solution is paramount to consistently winning the business.
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Geeknet Media’s market experts are uniquely equipped to help your company build a successful content delivery plan.  With a deep understanding of the technology purchase process and extensive experience building high-impact marketing assets, these industry communications veterans will help you create compelling content that will resonate with and activate your target audiences.

For more information on how to effectively position your company’s technology solutions for consistent sales-success to IT, Developers and Business decision-makers, please contact Mark Glasner, VP of Marketing Services and Client Strategy at mglasner@geek.net