As an IT specialist, in order to have a successful marketing campaign, you must reach your target client community. The best way to start this process is to pull together information about your chosen niche.
STUDY WHAT THEY STUDY
Every IT specialist should invest time studying what the customers in their niche do. If it’s your goal to reach small medical offices, you should get to know the issues that directly impact the people that make decisions. This process should include finding trade publications, email newsletters and any other industry publications that might help you gain insight. Regardless of whether it is a national or international publication, you should go where you know these clients will go for business tips and information within their own field.
FINDING SOLUTIONS
Once you get to intimately get to know the problems and concerns of the clients within your niche, you can start to determine what you, as an IT specialist, can do to provide technological solutions. Find out how these businesses currently use technology in their daily lives to change the way they do business, make scheduling more efficient, handle their own clients, and keep track of their own documents. Understanding the big picture is fine to start out with, but eventually these companies will want their ideal IT specialist to be experts on their problems and interests.
Finding solutions before you meet with prospective clients will give you an edge, and make you a true Virtual CIO, and not just someone going in to install LAN’s or fix software problems. You will be an IT specialist able to assess their specific business needs and come up with long-term strategies easily, on-budget and on-time.
BE A LIVING SPECIALIST
If you truly get to know your prospective clients and their community, you will become more than just a tech person. Because you are an IT specialist, you are expected to know the ins and outs of your customers’ business so you can come up with the best possible solutions to their specific and complex problems. Clients will want to know you have already done the groundwork necessary to understand their field, and that they will not need to train you just to get you started. Even if you are just starting out, it should feel to your clients as though you are a human being, not a product, and one who has worked with many others in their field and have an invested interest in their needs.
Blogged By: Computer Consulting 101 Professional Kit
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