Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Forbes Insights : The Rise of the Digital C-Suite

How well do you know your audience - are they Generation Wang, Generation PC, or Generation Netscape? Unless you understand your market and the sources they use for information gathering, you may be missing out on how to market and establish a dialogue with the C-Level Executive you want to talk to.

According to Forbes, the following is a general profile of established and emerging C-Level Executives and how they use media today.

"Generation Wang - This group is made of executives who entered the job market prior to 1980. These over-50s advanced in their careers with a terminal on their desks, but may still be equally or more comfortable with non-digital forms of communication. Not having been raised in the PC age, they are digital immigrants, conversant in computing while thinking in their native analog tongue.

Generation PC are those whose career starts coincided with the rise of the PC in the early/mid-1980s, Generation PC members are the digital settlers of the corporate world. Generation PC came of business age with word processors, spreadsheets, and desktop presentation software, and it was the first group to
send email, build Web pages, employ search engines, and see business move to the Internet. Now that its members are 40-50 years old, they are an increasingly dominant force in the C-suite.

Generation Netscape is the generation whose careers began with the growth of the Internet in the 1990s, Generation Netscape is the most Internet-savvy group. The under 40s don’t know an office without email or home pages, and they are the most willing to leverage the newest wave of Web-centric tools and experiment with emerging technologies. Members of this group are entering upper executive ranks and will be a growing influence on the C-suite."

Right now, a generational change is taking place that is transforming how executives use the internet on a day-to-day basis. Executives who started their careers with the advent of the desktop computer, are now assuming leadership positions. Research shows that they are more likely to see a greater value in Internet technologies - and gather information from different sources, including video and mobile devices. Integrated marketing is essential --- and having a solid understanding of the practices your audience employs. This isn’t about age, this is about who uses what type of media to retrieve information that they are interested in.

They consider the Internet a primary source of information leading colleagues, professional networks, and the traditional mediums of print, TV, radio, conferences and trade shows. And here is a distinct difference - members of the C-suite actually do the research themselves. Today, it is more likely that an executive prefers to do the research.

So what does that mean to you? That means your marketing and messaging has got to be produced so that it speaks to them – one size will not fit all --- and even more important --- show and demonstrate you understand their business, their challenges and have solutions or recommendations that they can envision or apply to their specific business objectives.

If Forbes feels this is significant enough to do a study on, then perhaps you need to look at your marketing, messaging and channels to see whether they will ever reach your target audience.

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