Selling Content Marketing Software to your CIO
Marketing departments and IT departments notoriously have had a strained relationship. IT thinks that marketing never fully understand all the implications of what they are asking for and marketing departments see the IT team as a roadblock in the path of getting their job done. This can become especially true when a marketing department is buying new software to be used. Too often the IT team is thought of as the barrier for marketing and IT is generally brought in too late in the buying process. It's important to take this all into consideration as a marketer when you are getting ready to start going into the buying process for content marketing software. There are a few questions that a head of an IT team is constantly asking themselves when it comes to the marketing department:
- How can our team accomplish its goals with limited funding, technical resources, tight timelines, and weak support from management?
- How do we demonstrate the competitive advantage IT can provide?
- How can we meet the company's needs in the most efficient manner possible?
- How can we make data available to help the company make better decisions?
Now that we have those thoughts in mind we can use it to our advantage when trying to sell them on the idea of signing up for a new piece of software to help solve your content marketing challenges. Here are three things you can do to get them on board with your plan:
- Introduce them to the software early on. Nothing makes an IT person more frustrated then when you bring them in last minute to give their stamp of approval for something when they don't feel comfortable doing it. If you bring them in early on in the process you are much more likely for them to be receptive to what you are doing.
- Make sure to get all their questions answered. Get a list of questions from them and then go to the software provider with them. The faster you can get those questions answered the more likely you are to get them to buy in to it.
- Give them information in a logical manner. In order to gain their trust and respect, you need to present information in a way that they understand. Not doing so will frustrate your IT team as well as yourself.
If you're interested in learning some of the questions that a CIO would typically ask, or how to influence other members of your C-level team, download Compendium's new guide "How to Sell Content Marketing Software to the C-Suite."
