By Guest Blogger Jim Novy, President, IT Marketing World LLC

What J.Patrick & Associates is to IT recruiting, IT Marketing World is to marketing best practices.   As the first and most social-savvy online community of IT marketing professionals, IT Marketing World is seeking the best and brightest minds in the industry to establish and refine long-elusive industry best practices. 

Although nearly every industry relies on information technology to drive growth and innovation, IT marketing standards have woefully lagged behind other industries due to ill-defined, inefficient and ad hoc practices.  IT Marketing World fills the gap between tech-heavy IT trade publications and general B2B marketing resources, essentially picking up where blogs and LinkedIn Group discussions leave off.

“Marketing planning and implementation varies widely from company to company, and point pieces of information about successes and failures are spread around the industry,” said Marije Gould, vice president of marketing for Tandberg Data. “This new community gives IT marketing professionals a sorely-needed platform to share their experiences in order to fine-tune best practices and raise the bar throughout the industry.”

 “General marketing practices are well defined but IT marketing best practices are not,” said Holger Schulze, director of worldwide marketing for SafeNet and ubiquitous IT marketing blogger who manages the 18,000-member B2B Technology Marketing Community LinkedIn Group.  “The industry transition from old media to social media has been terribly inefficient and there has been a void in structure driving IT marketing standards.  IT Marketing World fills that void by harnessing the industry’s brightest marketing minds in an interactive community, essentially picking up where LinkedIn Group discussions leave off.”

Specifically, IT Marketing World members provide content, comments, survey insights and resource referrals based on their respective job functions, technology focus and sales channels.  From this data stream, advisory committee leaders develop best practice models for review and implementation by members, providing continuously improved and actionable industry standards.  Other services on the site include a job board and a referral-based directory of marketing services.  The community is currently seeking IT marketing subject matter experts to serve as advisory committee members to manage category topics, content and best practice models.

The community offers marketing vendors a palatable way to reach members through the directory and online advertising. IT Marketing World research shows 92.3% of IT marketing buyers solicit referrals from their peers when shopping for third-party service providers, and 65% of vendors’ new business comes from client referrals.  Therefore,IT Marketing World’s promotional vehicles are based on member (client) referrals to ensure integrity.  Additionally, vendors do not have access to the site’s interactive features, thus minimizing sales-oriented spam.

Community founders Jim Novy and Frank Berry, who have a combined 50+ years experience in technology marketing, developed the concept for IT Marketing World while collaborating on a model to measure IT marketing effectiveness.  They determined the best way to identify, validate and benchmark IT marketing best practices was to create a central clearinghouse and vetting process for the tremendous volume of IT marketing data found in industry blogs, company web sites, online discussion groups and other valuable resources.  IT Marketing World leverages social media techniques to begin the process of building IT best practice models for members to share and refine.

Jim Novy, president and chief editor of IT Marketing World, held senior marketing positions with several leading IT companies since 1987 including Quantum Corporation, NetApp and CA Technologies.  He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Journalism from the University of Illinois.    

IT Marketing World is currently recruiting members, soliciting content and inviting category experts to serve as Advisory Committee members.  Membership is free, though IT marketing professionals must register on the site in order to participate in interactive features.  Members can register at www.itmarketingworld.com/account/register/.