Branding Wire: IT services

Late last week Steve Woodruff dropped me an email asking me to be a guest blogger for his Branding Wire project. I was psyched to be asked as a small wave of panic came over me. Some of the most respected branding/marketing bloggers in the world participate in this group. Each month this group of experts takes on a unique branding challenge. The advice is free to the company who serves as the case as well as to those of us who read their isights. Among them Martin Jelsema, Lewis Green, Kevin Dugan, Valeria Maltoni, Steve Woodruff, Drew McLellan, Patrick Schaber, Derrick Daye, Gavin Heaton, Becky Carroll and Olivier Blanchard. Here is my take on this month's challenge.

As a quick summary, this month's challenge is from a small Canadian IT company. They are capable of handling all of their SMB client IT needs, but they're challenged when it comes to using marketing and PR to grow their business to its full potential. A growth area that they're moving into is Green IT services whereby they help companies leave less of an environmental footprint. The company has leveraged non-profit work to grow to their current level, but want to expand into larger enterprises who have more demand for their services.

The company has fallen into a situation where a lot of small IT firms wind up. They provide extremely valuable services, have great service, impact the bottom line in a positive way, BUT they're seen as an necessary evil, an ancillary commodity. So how can they move past that?

Thinkers only become thought leaders when they share what they know.

You're an expert, share like it.
The people working at this company are IT experts. They keep up on industry trends, know when virus alerts are being issued, know why (or why not) to install Windows Vista, how to mainstream back office systems and more. That's all well and good, but they're missing a huge opportunity. Share it! Thinkers only become thought leaders when they share what they know. Create white papers that can immediately add value or show a need. Give presentations or host lunch discussions for IT folks to stay up to date on the latest and greatest or just discuss best practices. This company also needs to join the conversation economy and create a strategic social media plan to reach the community.

Listen: Find where people in the area are sharing their IT problems and advice and help out. Offer your advice in message boards, join LinkedIn and take part in their Answers area. This step is about building online credentials as IT experts. Take a strategic approach to this and seek out enterprise problems/solutions and avoid the one-off consumer issues to maximize effort. You never know who will see your replies.

Blog: Kill the corporate site as you know it right now. Chances are your shop looks like 99.9% of the other sites out there. This will help to set you apart. You should add in basic content that explains the services and processes you use, but your thinking is what you need to showcase. Share what you know through a blog. This is key. The blog serves as your hub for activity, a two-way conversation with whomever finds it.

Engage employees throughout the company to give more of a personal touch to the content, but stay focused. Reach out to current customers to add value and send it to people you want to work with as an introduction to your company. Be THE IT resource for the area's businesses and work with the press to make sure they know you've built this blog and offer to help whenever any IT news comes up.

Twitter: Create an account on Twitter, a social presence service, and focus on informing the community of IT issues in real time. Twitter will strategically position the company as a resource to learn about breaking IT news for your area and beyond. Value is added by the immediacy of the information and it's also a great platform to promote blog posts as they're published. Twitter is also very tech-forward and possibly PR worthy in using it to inform IT staff of potential problems and solutions.

Keep the messages simple.
One of the biggest hurdles for anyone in IT is a lack of understanding from the rest of the enterprise. IT people have dug this grave themselves by years of talking in tech-babble and overcomplicating things that should be simple. The goal for this company needs to be to keep IT simple. Focus on the big picture, explain things with visuals, and always show the end-result's impact on the company. If people understand what you're talking about, they'll be more ready to place value on it. Every blog post should end with a recommendation or suggested call to action, not a sales pitch. It's about adding value over time.

Be a partner not a vendor.
This is a problem with most service firms. Are you just another invoice that goes out at the end of the month or do you have the president's ear? There are a couple of ways to help shift from a vendor to a partner.

Staffed solution: One way that companies like IBM and EDS become a partner is by having a physical person in the office of the client. As this company starts to grow into larger contracts, they should look into setting up staffed solutions where a company pays them a monthly charge to cover this individual. The company benefits from this service as it saves the client company from having to pay the salary + benefits of the individual (quickly proves ROI), they get a better response time and the IT shop gets all of the intangibles that come along with it (conversations, infrastructure knowledge, meeting attendance, etc.).

Enhance current customer services: This company does a very good job of providing its clients with detailed end-of-month reporting on the work done, but it focuses on the cost and not the value. They should look for ways to touch on the ROI of what they do on each hour spent. Use the invoice to suggest new improvements, make sure it's easy to understand and pass along to others. If work completed now would have cost more later, figure out the savings and promote it.

Act like a high-price partner: The EDSs and IBMs of the world focus on ROI, provide great service, thought leadership and most importantly they make their clients look good. Our company should look for opportunities to promote their clients by press mentions, speaking on panels, etc. Wether or not they go with the embedded staffing solution, the company needs to use their knowledge of customer's systems to provide broad, reaching strategic recommendations along with specific, tactical implementation. Larger companies support the enterprise and this company needs to do the same even on smaller project work when there is larger potential.

Green identity.
The green IT movement is in its infancy, but growing steadily with each passing day. The companies that move in and explain the intricacies in simple terms will probably win out in the end. This should have its own identity for the company. Green logo, category on the blog and an email newsletter to promote it. Get a separate URL for the service to link to the category on the blog along with explanations of how it can be implemented and a DIY savings calculator.

This could be a very easy item to get PR attention (both for the IT company as well as the company implementing the solution) since it's such a national hot-button. Reach out to potential customers with this message and offer to provide a Green IT audit. A quick checklist and report on what they could do and how it falls into your niche. Also check if there is a financial benefit for companies who implement Green IT solutions. Follow up with local government as well to make sure this is on their radar as a legitimate green measure.

Overall it sounds like this company is on its way to success by making sure the service level is high as well as moving into progressive new markets like Green IT. It's time to step up the game, start thinking bigger, acting bigger and sharing information more readily to get new clients and influence existing ones. The blog, and other social media outlets, provide a base for sharing knowledge, but the personal interactions and strategic thinking are what will win new accounts and grow existing ones.

For more thoughts on this topic check out the other author's blogs:

• Martin Jelsema
  
• Lewis Green
  
• Kevin Dugan
  
• Valeria Maltoni
  
• Steve Woodruff
  
• Drew McLellan
  
• Patrick Schaber
  
• Gavin Heaton, Becky Carroll
  
• Olivier Blanchard
  
  + Fellow guest bloggers
  
• Cam Beck
  
• Chris Brown
  
• Mark Goren
  

Comments

[Kevin Dugan]

Matt - Welcome to the fray. There's some great thoughts in here. Clearly the green services hold potential. And I also spoke to the concept of simplifying their message...especially for their target audience.

[Cam Beck]

Dang, Matt. You knocked this one out of the park. I can't believe you had the same amount of time I had. :)

Great work!

[Valeria Maltoni]

Matt:

Lots of great ideas here. Welcome to the BrandingWire challenge. Keeping the message simple and being viewed as a partner may be two great places to begin moving up on the value scale strategically. And making Green IT real by building sustainability in that conversation may also be a strength. With everyone moving in that space it may be one more "checking the box".

[Gavin Heaton]

Great post, Matt. I like the co-hosting idea ... that has been a very successful approach for many companies I have worked for in the past ... on the technology and marketing sides. It shows that you are a team player with some "skin" in the game -- it demonstrates partnership like nothing else can.

[Lewis Green]

Matt,

Nothing more need be said: The gospel (good news): "The people working at this company are IT experts. They keep up on industry trends, know when virus alerts are being issued, know why (or why not) to install Windows Vista, how to mainstream back office systems and more. That's all well and good, but they're missing a huge opportunity. Share it!"

[MartinM]

Mark: Thanks for participating the BrandingWire. You've added another perspective, but also reenforced what a lot of were saying. This firm should certainly get the message: become an advisor, focus on "good" customers and prospects, become the "go-to" company for something unique. Strange how companies, in the heat of battle, forget the basics. Martin

[MartinM]

Matt: Sorry I called you Mark in my first comments. I just didn't do my homework. Martin

[Matt Dickman]

Kevin -- Thanks for the welcome! The Green IT is such a unique differentiator right now and would really appeal to larger companies. A foot in the door is key here. Like I always say "Great technology is invisible technology", read simple is always better.

Cam -- Thank you for that. I really enjoyed your post as well and I think you hit on the key points in a very clear way.

Valeria -- I loved your conversational input on your post. The more these guys can reach out and involve people in these conversations by making things simple and comprehensible the better.

Gavin -- The co-hosting idea is a great way to add value and become more ingrained in the total business process.

Lewis -- I'm glad you agree! Thank you

Martin -- No worries on the name. I appreciate your feedback! Sometimes we all need a little basic training.

[Patrick Schaber]

"Kill the corporate site as you know it right now. Chances are your shop looks like 99.9% of the other sites out there"

Great perspective! Social media gives companies a way to differentiate themselves from the websites that double as company brochures.

Thanks for participating this month!