Making ETAs Easier for Marketers
Hank Barnes
Chief of Research-Tech Buying Behavior, Gartner - Exploring the Challenges and Opportunities Surrounding Tech Buying Decisions
This post?originally appeared?on the Gartner Blog Network. This version may have minor updates and edits.
No, this is not a blog post about air traffic control.
Regular readers are used to seeing ideas and facts related to Gartner’s Enterprise Technology Adoption Profiles, ETAs for short.?As with?any new idea, they take a bit of time to understand and appreciate.?But the evidence of their value and insights continue to grow.
Even as understanding grows, a common concern we hear is that there are seven different profiles.?Seven is a lot to deal with and integrate with other segmentation approaches.??My colleague, Christy Ferguson, who is one of our top ABM and Demand Generation analysts, would say to me “We have to make it easier for marketing, no matter how cool you think ETAs are (or how cool they really are).”
So, we started looking at things more closely.??And we, Christy in particular, started seeing some patterns repeat over and over in different studies.??It turns out that pairs of our ETA profiles groups take quite similar approaches in terms of how they buy.??The timing of when they buy may be quite different, but the approach is similar.??This opens the door for marketers to choose which of 4 groupings to focus on, rather than seven.
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Source: Gartner, Inc.
We call these marketing clusters.?The four clusters are:
Christy has created a rich base of content using these marketing clusters.?From the overview document (client link) to innovation insights for each cluster that look at go-to-market strategies, complemented by infographics that lay out the specific channel and content preferences visually, there is a deep research base for clients ready to dive into ETAs.
And, ETAs are having an impact. Let me share another client anecdote.?We analyzed the ETAs of the customers of one our our accounts concurrent with working with them on some messaging efforts.?The ETAs reveals a heavy dose of Strict Planners and Cooperatives in their customer base–but the messaging was heavily focused on innovation and products.??The end result was low interest or interest that basically was “how low can you go on price.”??Using the ETAs, we helped them craft a story that was built around strategic alignment, reduced risk,?and managed innovation.??Their team has tested this style messaging with 100 accounts.???Every single one of them has been interested in follow up discussions.?Even better, they focus has shifted from price to strategic partnering.?The results are coming in.
I can’t promise a 100% hit rate for everything, but I feel very comfortable promising valuable improvements in your efforts. ETAs--an idea whose time has clearly come.
?B2B Start-Up Growth Marketer | GTM, Demand Gen & Messaging | AI & Buyer Enablement | 23 Start-Ups, 5 Public Companies, 60+ Recommendations. ?? Fractional | Interim | Advisory | Special Projects
3 年Hank, how feasible do you think it might be for a vendor to create their version of a quick questionnaire with prospects that would reveal that prospects' key buyer type? Indeed, wouldn't this be a great idea to apply to an Account Based Marketing approach - wherein each account's buying type might be identified. Obviously, room for error can be quite large and dependent on who is answering questions, so I guess it may all be a lot of effort for little gain. Another question: based on what you've seen, would you expect to see a variety of ETA across different accounts for the same solution sold - or would you expect to see the same ETAs across multiple accounts, somewhat dictated by the nature of what is being sold?