Few industries are as competitive or experiencing the kind of hypergrowth that the tech industry continues to enjoy. If your clients are selling IT, they have to understand what these buyers are looking for. This year’s B2B Barometer from Spiceworks reveals what IT sellers can expect and how they should promote their offerings.

The great news is that larger marketers are still benefiting from the 2018 tax cuts and have money to spend. However, the spending intent varies by business size. Larger operators will be investigating more spending on the cloud in 2019. For smaller operators, IT spending will focused on replacing hardware. It’s not just businesses that are spending on IT. Over 80% of government agencies expect to invest in IT infrastructure this year too.

Planned IT Spending

Your clients should know that planned IT spending by type will break out as follows for North American companies:

• Hardware 42%
• Software 26%
• Hosted/​cloud-​based services 20%
• Managed services 9%
• Not sure 2%

While the planned spending by businesses and government agencies is great news, your clients need to be ahead of the game on more than just product development. Their marketing tactics need to be leading-edge. 

IT Vendor Marketing Tactics

In 2019, at least 68% of IT marketers will use video marketing, making the format a true mainstream trend. And, 55% will have on-​demand content available for B2B buyers. Spiceworks analysts say that the number of IT marketers using influencer marketing will grow from 31% last year to 48% in 2019.

IT advertisers, like all other business operators, want to maximize their ROI when they spend marketing dollars. That means 44% will use purchase-​intent targeting. This strategy is about efficiency. Marketers can't afford to waste time and money on prospects that aren’t in the market for what they’re selling.

What about other leading-​edge tactics like VR or AR-​based customer experiences? Should your clients be spending on something futuristic to show their tech superiority? Maybe not. Only 14% have plans to do so this year.

The 350 marketers that participated in the Spiceworks survey hope to have a great year. To do that, they’ll stay focused on what’s logical. You can help them target their buyers by checking out the many purchase-​intent profiles available at AudienceSCAN, available on AdMall from SalesFuel.