IT Specialists must reach their intended audience to be successful with their marketing. As you'll learn in this article, your first step needs to be gathering information about your niche.

IT Specialists Should Study What their Niche Clients Do

For instance, to reach small medical offices, get up to speed on the business issues that impact the decision makers in these small medical offices. Get subscriptions to industry publications, e-mail newsletters, and other industry publications that you know medical office managers are going to read. For instance:

o Medical Economics o Financial Management Strategies o Medical Group Management Association publications

These resources happen to be all U.S.-based, but there are others. The key thing is to start reading the publications so you understand what's keeping medical office managers up at night, what's driving their decisions, what their biggest points of pain are, what the biggest security issues are, and what the biggest IT issues are right now so you can become an IT specialist in their field.

Learn What Solutions You Can Give Your Clients

Find out how small medical offices are using technology to change the way they do business, to get reimbursed faster by insurance companies, to make scheduling more efficient, and to keep track of charts more effectively.

Whatever industry it is (architects, graphic artists, veterinarians, etc.), make sure that you understand big picture trends that are going on right now. As an IT specialist, your prospects will expect you to be the expert.

An IT Specialist is a Virtual CIO

Then, when you go in to meet prospects, you're not just the consulting firm that sells PCs, or installs LANs, or fixes software problems. But you're a true virtual CIO. You can analyze their special business needs, make recommendations, create long-term planning strategies, put it all together and make it happen on-time and on-budget.

IT Specialists Are Not Commodities

When done right, you're not just the tech people. As an IT specialist, you understand your prospect's business. And your prospects know that they are not going to spend six months training your firm because you can hit the ground running. It will be obvious you've worked with lots of other offices their size and you're definitely the right people for the job. Their only questions will be, "So where do I sign?" and "When can you start?"

Spend Time Reading Your Clients' Trade Publications

Instead of just reading the consumer and IT trade publications to keep up from a techie perspective, make sure that you understand the business issues and specifically the business IT issues that impact the niche that you're targeting. You won't become an IT specialist in that industry by paying attention to general-interest publications like PC Magazine or CRN or conferences like COMDEX.

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