Target Those Who Can Make Things Happen

Senior leadership will continue to be important in lead-generation campaigns, but aim your content at a company's IT influencers, the diverse group of professionals within the IT buying committee that include managers, senior employees, and individual contributors – as well as contractors and consultants, NetLine advises.

"Build deeper influence within the organization by expanding your target range outside senior leadership and target the professionals that advise them," the report says. That can build greater credibility, "an often underestimated attribute [associated with] the vendor selection process," NetLine says.

Gail Blount, marketing and communications manager at JDL Technologies, a solution provider based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., knows the need to target messaging.

"One size does not fit all in this world of a million micro-niches," she wrote in an email to ITBestOfBreed. JDL – No. 498 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 - has separate email lists for its four primary target audience, "and we talk to them differently."