Step By Step: A Template for Marketing IT to the Business

Many IT organizations are just beginning the journey toward more effectively marketing IT to their business constituents. But what is the right step-by-step approach to use to jump-start their efforts?

By No Analyst or Consultant

June 26, 2006 — CSO —

By Laurie M. Orlov (with Alex Cullen, Samuel Bright and Lauren Sessions)

Many IT organizations are just beginning the journey toward more effectively marketing IT to their business constituents. But what is the right step-by-step approach to use to jump-start their efforts? This document examines and synthesizes Forrester's research and examples of IT marketing and communications, and recommends the steps and categories of information that should be incorporated into a template for each step.

Getting Ready to Market IT

Your IT organization is doing the right things, providing cost-effective services and delivering projects on time and on budget. But your customers, the business management and staff still have a poor perception of IT, which hinders the organization's success. So you and your management agree that it's time to start marketing IT to the business. But where should you start? Before beginning any IT marketing, you must determine:

• IT's status and perceived value today. Any IT organization considering launching a marketing effort must first take IT's temperature to learn where IT stands today. This will serve as the primary input to crafting an IT marketing strategy. For example, is the organization about to roll out a new service? Have services been deployed that are underutilized? Do the business groups understand and value IT's contribution? Does their understanding vary by organization? Finally, does IT have a real or perceived issue with any of its key outward-facing responsibilities—help desk responsiveness, system reliability and availability, or network performance?

• The benefits of marketing. Next up for discussion with your management are the expected outcomes of marketing IT, specifically the results you all agree are achievable with more focus and effort. Perhaps you are seeking faster uptake on the upcoming technology deployments or are striving for better scores on surveys. Or maybe you are struggling to manage expectations about cost and delivery with your business unit peers.

• Your specific marketing objectives. An IT organization with a laundry list of issues and opportunities can't solve every problem at once. In the first year, try to focus marketing efforts on a few areas, selecting an upcoming initiative to start with, piloting approaches to targeting communications that will more effectively reach constituents of that initiative, and learning the best ways to measure success.

Marketing IT Step by Step

OK, so now you have management and team support. What are the steps and template for each step?

• Step 1: Make marketing someone's job. Maybe it's yours if you have a small IT shop. If you have more than 100 people in IT, then it can be part of someone else's job—someone who has the skills and interest to do it (for example, a relationship manager, a head of help desk or a head of app dev). If there are 500 or more in IT, this is a full-time assignment for someone brought in from outside of IT, ideally with a product marketing or marketing communications background. You should stay closely involved with the initial marketing effort to make sure it accomplishes the goals you have established with your boss.

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