CCgroup, a B2B technology PR agency, has today launched a new report containing insight into how IoT technology vendors can successfully market and sell to IoT buyers.
The report outlines the marketing channels and content types IoT buyers deem most influential when identifying, shortlisting and selecting technology vendors. It also reveals that trade and business media, along with industry analysts and vendor-owned marketing channels have the most impact on IoT buyers when selecting vendors. Social media is also found to be a highly influential channel, with almost half of IoT buyers stating that social media has contributed to vendors being selected for RFPs.
Based on a survey of IoT buyers across the UK, US and Europe, CCgroup’s report, How can IoT technology vendors successfully market and sell to buyers?, reveals how IoT technology vendors can increase brand awareness and improve their chances of being selected within RFP processes.
The report breaks down the specific buying journeys of three distinct IoT buying audiences: end user organisations, OEM organisations and app developers & hardware and systems integrators (SIs), and reveals the impact that the pandemic has had on the IoT buying process.
Key findings from the report include:
- 83% of IoT buyers believe the COVID-19 pandemic has caused delays to the technology buying process, where almost half (49%) have seen delays of six to nine months.
- IoT buyers deem trade media as most influential marketing channel for selecting vendors; industry analyst reports as the most valuable content type when learning about vendors; and email marketing as the most valuable content when selecting a technology vendor.
- More than half (54%) of IoT tech buyers believe social media has a heavy influence on the awareness of an IoT tech vendor, where 45% specifically think that social media contributed to vendors being shortlisted for RFPs.
- 43% of IoT buyers use industry analysts to identify and shortlist vendors, and just under a third (31%) state that more than half of all purchasing decisions involve industry analysts.
“The IoT sector is set to explode over the next few years. There are strong use cases in just about every sector and competition amongst IoT vendors—for both attention and business—will be fierce. Ambitious IoT vendor marketing leads need to deploy the right strategies to get their companies onto RFP lists,” said Chloe Pope, head of IoT, at CCgroup.
When looking at the buying habits of distinct IoT buying audiences, the report shows how different sources are influential to the different audiences. While web search and analyst reports are useful sources for some IoT buyers when long listing different channels, like events and email marketing are useful when shortlisting vendors, and content, like case studies and media articles, are used to make final purchasing selections.
