IT marketing suffers no fools

According to Elise Roscoe, client services director at ChilliBush and former Sun Microsystems marketing manager, local marketing teams have to deal with multinational culture and corporate identities while still communicating local messages.

"It is critical that you don't alienate potential local buyers with a lot of global rah rah that is not applicable to the South African IT marketplace."

"Yes, you should stay inline with the international strategy; however, by not localising it you stand to lose a lot of wasted budget that attracts no future clients. Marketing teams must move beyond the hype while always considering product availability as in most cases it is not always immediately available locally which can lead to premature demand and
subsequent disappointment."

When developing an IT marketing strategy it is also important to consider who your target audience is. In IT there is a definite and clear distinction between technology, business and consumer users. Your techie is definitely not interested in business time-to-market, while corporate decision-makers really don't care about terabytes and consumers are indifferent to any messages that are remotely technical.

The bottom line is, understand the market. IT is a specialist field that requires insight and understanding. The same rules simply don't apply, Roscoe says.

"It is also important to make your marketing message unique, while driving corporate branding," comments Dale Hefer, founding director of ChilliBush. "This is particularly relevant when a technology such as wireless suddenly hits the market and everybody jumps on the proverbial bandwagon. Ensure that your message doesn't fall into a big, dark marketing hole, but that it stands out - communicating technology in a truly inventive and memorable way."

Global IT trends aren't necessarily applicable in South Africa. Until recently, VoIP (voice over IP) enjoyed very limited deployment, while our global peers are already deploying wireless-enabled VoIP.

"Marketing teams must also beware that they don't fall in this trap, keeping their hands on the pulse of local requirements and customising their campaigns accordingly. Here, time to market is critical, too soon or too late can be detrimental," comments Hefer.

"Teams should also remember that local spending is quite different to European and US spending, a local medium-sized business is small compared to its other Western counterparts, so a marketing campaign should be positioned accordingly," says Roscoe.

"Marketing is so much more than just advertising; a marketing team should stay on its toes and ensure that the message is linear and consistent throughout all departments that include PR," she concludes.