B2B marketers targeting the C-Suite face greater challenges than their counterparts in companies were the decision-making processes and budgets belong to mid-level managers. When a B2B company aims to provide services such as management consulting, system integration, BPO or expansion into local or foreign markets, the marketing needs to reach the top level decision makers.

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Understanding their social and interactive patterns on the internet is of paramount importance for the success of a campaign targeting such a small and powerful set of individuals.

Much has been said about the established and trustworthy channels that are best at targeting this high value niche market of CXO level executives. I will not talk about the publications themselves as I know that if you are reading this post you might already be familiar with them and their value. However, I will provide a list of B2B CXO targeted publications that can help you narrow down your focus.

I will then explain how this same valuable content broadens its reach through syndication and gets segmented and analyzed in business and personal blogs, wikis, local publications, vertical niche market websites and CXO level blogs.

This understanding can expand your reach and allow it to leverage the content that is consumed by the C-Suite and strengthen your marketing credibility by placing relevant ads that will compliment the content being consumed.

Keep in mind that these set of posts is not a reiteration of the usage of standard channels, rather it is a different view on the decentralization of high value content which flows through the internet veins and the targeting techniques that can be used to reach the C-Suite by thinking outside of the box [or thinking inside a bigger box] and targeting other lesser known channels where CXO level executives do their research and access more knowledge.

List of traditional media that came to the web:

Wall Street Journal
BusinessWeek
Business.com
New York Times
The Economist
Fortune
Forbes
Financial Times
The Washington Post

Before we take a deeper dive into the matter, we need to understand one thing clearly. The C-Suite is probably one of the most passionate personalities that you will find online. They are not only passionate about their businesses but also about their hobbies,  families and causes. They have an unwavering belief on what they do and a flawless commitment to their duties. Furthermore, personal improvement in many aspects of their personality is continuous. This constant evolution strengthens their character and deepens their core beliefs.

A key aspect of internet marketing is the set of tools available to target the different facets of an individual’s personality through alternative and traditional internet media. That is a power unique to internet marketing.

Please take a look at this presentation which summarizes at a very high level the steps of a good targeting strategy. This is all a work in progress and more on this topic will be published later in supporting posts.