Research is the backbone of strategic marketing – whether it’s to help steer the direction of product marketing, direct a content marketing plan, or support the alignment of sales and marketing efforts. Each year, IDG’s marketing team conducts several primary research studies to better understand the activities and drivers of our tech buying audience, including the technologies being actively researched today, the makeup of the buying committee including their roles and responsibilities, and the content that they rely upon throughout the decision-making process. Below we’ve outlined a handful of key stats from our 2019 studies to help advise your 2020 marketing plans.

  • Strategic CIO – CIO’s are focusing more time on business strategist tasks, helping to identify new revenue opportunities and operational innovations. Close to 2/3 of CIOs say that the creation of new revenue-generating activities is among their job responsibilities. (2019 State of the CIO – FYI…find the 2020 State of the CIO research here.)
  • The Buying Committee – The number of people involved in technology purchase decisions continues to expand. On average there are 21 people involved in tech buying decisions (11 IT and 10 line of business.) We are able to dive deeper into the buying team by technology being purchased and also company size. For example, there are 23 people involved in data & analytics purchases vs. only 16 for desktops/laptops. (2019 Role & Influence of the Technology Decision-Maker)
  • Becoming a Digital Business – Organizations continue to strive towards becoming a digital business. On average, organizations plan to spend $15.3 million on digital initiatives over the next 12 months. Of this, 59% will be allocated to technology and 41% to people and skills. (2019 Digital Business)
  • Reinvesting Cost Savings – 79% of heads of IT say that their organization realizes cost savings from their IT efficiencies. The majority (97%) are likely to reinvest these savings with the top areas being in new technology to improve customer satisfaction/engagement, new/upgraded technologies to improve security and new tech to support business goals. (2019 CIO Tech Poll: Economic Outlook)
  • Prioritizing Security Awareness – 44% of IT decision-makers (ITDMs) involved in security say that improving employee security awareness programs and staff training is their top priority for the upcoming year (which is the 2nd ranked priority, after improving the protection of confidential and sensitive data.) This is for good reason, as employee awareness and cooperation issues are the third ranked challenge causing security executives to redirect their time away from strategic initiatives. (2019 Security Priorities)
  • Responsibilities within Software Development – 89% of ITDMs involved in software development report that the role of the development team at their organization has been impacted due to technology modernization. Developers feel that there is a stronger need for new programming/language skills (40%), increased need for new development tools/solutions (39%) and that there has been an increase in the scope/complexity of application development requests (37%). (2019 Role of the Developer)
  • Quality Content is Key – 79% of ITDMs say they will register for content if they know they will receive value in return. However, only 38% of downloaded work-related content has provided value in the past 12 months. It’s important to understand where ITDMs are in their tech buying process and provide them with the right content at the right time. (2019 Customer Engagement)

Keep your ideas fresh by staying up to date on IDG’s research to get the latest 2020 insights. Find everything you need on our Tools for Marketers page and sign up for our MarketingFit newsletter to learn about new research as it is released.