Bring Your IT Staff to Your Marketing Plan Meetings

it-in-marketingIt is often said that too many cooks in the kitchen will ruin a meal. Though this idiom might be true in a culinary context, it is not accurate in the world of advertising. The truth is that your IT marketing plans can be sabotaged if there are too few voices in the room. Marketing is all about creative thinking, brainstorming, and trailblazing new paths.

Allow your IT personnel to join in on marketing discussions and you just might tap into unique perspectives that drastically improve your advertising campaigns. These tech gurus will lend critically important insight as to how your organization can maximize its tech investments for customer acquisitions and conversions. Bring your IT team in on the advertising discussions and you just might start to think of your advertising efforts as IT marketing as opposed to conventional marketing.

Power in Numbers
If you are questioning why you should allow IT workers to voice their opinions to your well-trained marketing gurus, you are not alone! Most people think of IT personnel as geeky loners who are always staring into screens and toying with computer hardware. However, these individuals offer a unique perspective on the business as well as the ways in which technology is used to connect with target customers.

Give your IT team a chance to have their say during marketing meetings and their words will help your advertising specialists in ways you could not have foreseen. This is the power of brainstorming and problem-solving in numbers. Numerous minds are always better than one or even a couple, especially if the individuals involved have diverse perspectives and skill sets.

The Perspective of IT Professionals
Do not make the classic mistake of stereotyping IT workers as introverted tech-obsessed nerds. Plenty of IT professionals are actually quite creative. More importantly, these employees are intelligent and offer unique insight into the business. Let them bounce some ideas off the marketing meeting room walls in terms of how to use technology to enhance advertising and connect with prospective customers. The ideas they float out just might break your marketing team out of their “thought cycles” and inspire them to attack marketing challenges from an alternate perspective.

IT Marketing: Data Matters a Great Deal
Marketing is becoming more data driven as time progresses. Your IT team’s strength is data processing and analysis. These individuals can help your marketing experts embrace new technologies that empower the company to reach a wider audience or at least key in on target customers with more efficiency. In the end, your organization’s ability to win new customers partially hinges on the manner in which you use technology. This is precisely why the voices of your tech experts should be heard in every marketing meeting.

Let your IT workers speak their piece and you will find that these professionals help to establish a single view of customers. Your IT team’s insights will help produce consistent customer experiences regardless of whether they are engaged through online or offline channels. Your IT team can help develop a consistent record of consumer interactions in terms of customer profiles, mediums used for interactions, prior purchase data and beyond.

IT professionals understand exactly how technology plays an integral role in establishing this single view of customers. From the perspective of marketers, this single view of customers is extremely important. Marketers are always on the prowl for new and more detailed customer data. The generation of a single view customer will provide insight regarding the organization’s customers and also serve to clarify customer actions. As an example, the failure to establish a single view of customers could prevent the marketing department from even knowing that a lead has been converted into a paying customer.

Recognize IT Gurus for Their True Worth
Don’t let your marketing team fall into the trap of constantly reinforcing one another’s opinions with positive affirmations. Let your IT personnel in on the marketing discussions and they’ll enhance the dialogue by providing insight and opinions as to how technology can be leveraged in the never-ending quest for new customers. Join your marketing team with your tech team and you’ll enjoy IT marketing that combines your organization’s talents into a cohesive whole.

For other blog posts by Michael Fitzgerald, visit https://www.spacelink.com/blog/.

Michael Fitzgerald
About the Author
Michael is the CEO of Spacelink (https://www.spacelink.com/), providing IT infrastructure cloud hosting services and since 2001. Michael has over nine years of experience in IT infrastructure and has a passion to simplify the complexities of information technology and cloud services. Spacelink exists to help companies propel their businesses with a well-reasoned IT strategy and forward-thinking technology that's cost effective and reliable. Spacelink was recognized as a top Managed IT service provider in North America by MSP Mentor in 2016.