The move to the cloud is in full swing. SWZD’s March 2021 survey of 500+ decision makers involved in the cloud purchase process revealed the business impact of COVID-19 accelerated cloud migration in most companies (53%), and going forward, the adoption of public, private, and hybrid cloud will only continue to grow.
According to our research, an estimated 50% of workloads will run in the cloud by 2023, up from 40% in 2021.
The continuing shift to the cloud presents opportunities for technology vendors offering cloud-based services and solutions. However, with stiff competition in the cloud space today, marketers must be in-tune with technology buyers’ needs.
SWZD research discovered that typically 6-8 decision makers within an organization comprise the “buying collective” (also referred to as the buying committee). These key stakeholders consider the purchase through their own unique lens, which ultimately influences a given technology purchase that can effectively address the needs of the collective and the organization they represent.
To help tech marketers understand the individuals with sway over tech buying, we surveyed 300+ IT decision makers (ITDMs) and 200+ business decision makers (BDMs) in March 2021 about their cloud purchase behaviors and preferences.
Our full data set includes deep insights covering public cloud, hybrid cloud, cloud storage, cloud security, and Software-as-a-Service. This article provides a high-level overview of buying habits across all cloud technologies.
Schedule a one-on-one with one of our experts for a more in-depth look at a specific segment within the cloud category.
In the vast majority of organizations (91%), there’s no single decision maker that exclusively owns the entire cloud buying process. Instead, the purchase process is almost always a collaborative effort involving a group of key stakeholders that comprise the “buying collective.”
Median number of influencers involved in cloud purchase decisions:
According to our research, ITDMs are involved in 88% of cloud purchases. They’re also central to the buying process from beginning to end.
ITDMs play a critical role in:
BDMs play a critical role in:
From a customer retention perspective, ITDMs also implement, manage, and support cloud solutions on an ongoing basis after a purchase is made. Examples of IT titles involved include IT administrators, IT directors and managers, and senior IT executives such as CIOs and CTOs.
Equipped with visibility into ITDMs and BDMs involvement and the content they engage most with at various stages of the buying process, marketers can accurately align their campaign strategy and target buyers more effectively.
For more insights into specific needs and preferences among these two groups, check out our article on ITDM vs. BDM buying preferences.
The purchase of a cloud-based service is far from a spur of the moment decision. Because many stakeholders are usually involved, it’s a process that can take months from discovery, to research, to making a final decision.
Length of the B2B cloud buyer’s journey among all companies:
While this data is interesting, it’s not entirely useful to tech marketers without additional context. The length of the buyer’s journey for cloud services varies from company to company for a variety of reasons, including company size and work style.
If you’ve ever tried to get a large group of people to come to an agreement, you know it can be a challenge. Complexity and conflict have far more potential to grow when there are more employees and departments within an organization that might not see eye-to-eye.]
Typically, the bigger an organization is, the greater the number of stakeholders involved in a purchase decision. It makes sense that decision makers in the buying committee take longer to come to a consensus in larger businesses.
Our data shows roughly half of large companies (500+ employees) take more than 7 months to complete the cloud buyer’s journey from start to finish, compared to roughly a quarter of SMBs (fewer than 500 employees).
But the longer buyer’s journey doesn’t mean that there’s resistance to cloud adoption within bigger organizations. In fact, the opposite is, more often than not, true.
Large companies are often better staffed and more well funded than smaller organizations. As a result, bigger companies tend to be quicker to adopt the full range of cloud technologies as discussed in our article on cloud adoption plans in 2021 and beyond.
IT buyers working for large organizations more likely to believe:
In our study, a whopping 80% of decision makers said that cloud technologies are useful for supporting remote workers. So, it should come as no surprise that businesses with flexible work policies are more likely to use cloud technologies.
Additionally, organizations with flexible work policies are more likely to complete the buyer’s journey faster: 31% of organizations that have flexible remote work arrangements complete the cloud journey in less than 3 months, compared to only 25% of organizations that don’t allow remote work.
In our digital world, more than 70% of the buyer’s journey takes place before a sales engagement. Therefore, it is now essential that sales and marketing organizations understand the needs and concerns of their prospects so they may provide the information potential buyers need when researching cloud solutions.
According to our study, ITDMs and BDMs care most about the same product attributes when evaluating a cloud-based solution. However, ITDMs tend to pay closer attention to these factors because they’re the primary decision makers performing the initial evaluation of solutions and providers.
Top 4 product attributes considered for cloud purchases:
Members of the buying collective seek out specific information as they make their way through the buyer’s journey. Our study found the most important information IT buyers seek includes the following:
Marketers should consider this information to be table stakes. Best practice is for vendors to optimize their campaigns/content, making it easy for customers to find relevant content online through search or at various touch points throughout the buyer’s journey.
The B2B purchase process is almost always (91% of the time) a collaborative effort involving a group of key stakeholders that comprise the buying collective.
In a world where marketers are focused on delivering the right information, to the right people, at the right time, it’s important to know when members of the buying committee will actively seek out or be most receptive to different types of information.
For example, buyers want visibility into accurate pricing information as well as tech and product specs throughout the entire decision-making process. However, other types of content are more relevant at specific stages of the cloud buyer’s journey.
On a more granular level, conversations with solutions architects are most useful during the research phase and high level summaries are most relevant during the discovery phase. When it comes time to make a final decision, information about regulatory compliance and ROI/TCO calculators are most sought out.
Given that cloud computing is a rather abstract concept, buyers want an effective way to evaluate a solution in the absence of a tangible, physical product. Therefore, it’s a best practice for tech marketers to show, rather than tell prospects about their cloud-based solutions.
According to our research, the following are the most helpful types of content tech buyers want to engage with most when evaluating a cloud solution:
Notice the one thing each of these content types have in common: The ability to provide a better sense of what it’s like to actually use a cloud solution, whether that’s through use of the interface, peer feedback, or online video.
Finally, tech marketers can engage their prospects through a variety of channels. Given that most of us check it daily, it may not come as a surprise that email is the preferred channel for cloud buyers. After all, email isn’t too intrusive, and it allows cloud buyers to connect on their own time.
Interestingly, decision makers in small businesses show a stronger preference for email (69%) compared to those in large businesses (57%). At the same time, decision makers in larger businesses show a greater preference than their counterparts in small businesses for social networks (24% vs. 13%), text messages (28% vs. 14%), and online banners (15% vs 2%).
However, video conferencing is the most preferred method for real-time outreach. It’s worth noting that decision makers in large businesses have a stronger preference for video conferencing (51%) than those in small businesses (41%).
We saw early signs of this shift in preference in 2020, when a SWZD workplace communications report discovered that remote work is changing how the business world stays in touch. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, 79% of organizations were using video conferencing tools, up from 69% in 2019.
Additionally, communication styles vary in different parts of the world. In general, U.S. tech buyers tend to gravitate towards email, while members of the buyers committee in the U.K. and APAC are more likely to engage with text messages or chat.
And while buyers in the U.S. are also more wary of online ads than their counterparts in other regions, they’re more likely to attend sponsored meetups.
Equipped with these insights on the IT and business decision-makers that influence whether or not organizations will buy your cloud-based solutions, you can take action.
First, you’ll need the right content that appeals to various decision makers’ wants and needs… assets that address your potential buyers’ concerns and show what it’s like to use your solution. And the more tailored your outreach is to specific preferences based on persona, company size, and region, the better.
Next, you’ll have to deliver the right content at the right time, and to the right people. Identifying prospects that are actively researching and looking to purchase cloud solutions like yours can greatly improve the likelihood of sales and marketing success. That’s where intent data can be your best friend.
Behavioral intent data from SWZD can be used to power ABM campaigns and prioritize which accounts to engage based on their propensity to buy. The more accurately you can identify these accounts, the better.
SWZD’s B2B intent data is informed by a wide range of inputs, including content members of the buying collective reads, their activity in tools and applications, their participation in discussions in blogs and forums, and their consumption of product reviews and comparisons.
Once you identify the accounts that are in-market for your solutions, you can reach out to members of the buying collectives — including BDMs in the boardroom and ITDMs in the server room — tailoring your outreach to each persona and their unique concerns.
This SWZD survey was conducted in March 2021 and included 530 IT buyers (310 ITDMs and 220 BDMs) involved in the cloud purchase process. Respondents represent organizations in North America and Europe across a variety of company sizes, including SMBs and enterprises. Respondents also represent a variety of industries, including education, healthcare, government, finance, retail, construction, manufacturing, and IT services.
