How to market to CIOs in 2025

By Sofie Skouras, Head of B2B Technology Marketing & PR, Europe & Erica Schain, Head of B2B Technology Marketing & PR, North America

Understanding CIOs is essential for tech marketers. This blog explores CIO priorities, challenges, and content preferences for 2025, offering actionable insights to refine your B2B marketing strategy. Discover where CIOs engage, how they consume content, and how you can build stronger connections. Download our full audience insights report now.

Most tech marketers know the first place to start with any marketing or communications strategy is your audience.

No, not the tired stereotype of IT professionals as hoodie-wearing techies in a basement. I mean genuine persona insights into their challenges, priorities, and needs.

Take Chief Information Officers (CIOs). What’s keeping them up at night? What internal pressures are they dealing with? And what’s at the top of their list for 2025?

At Aspectus, we’ve always been big believers in an audience-first approach. But we get why some marketers find it hard to do the same. When your to-do list never ends, diving into persona research can feel like a luxury. That’s why we’re here to help.

We’ve put together a series of curated audience insights for busy tech marketers, doing the heavy lifting of gathering the best research into a format you can actually use. The first up: CIOs – an audience that matters to many of our B2B technology clients.

Download the Aspectus Audience Insights: CIO edition report for free.

Why Today’s CIOs Are More Than IT Experts

CIOs aren’t just tech troubleshooters anymore; they are organizational change markers. Taking on much broader roles within the organization – balancing innovation with operations. Gartner’s CIO Agenda Survey (2024) found 80% of CIOs have expanded their role, with 18% leading non-IT functions and 10% leading P&L efforts. This comes with challenges of getting the balance right between the two and juggling it all. 

DocuSign’s CIO, Shanthi Iyer, summed this up perfectly in in a recent Forbes column:

“There was a time when CIOs were simply asked to ‘keep the lights on,’ managing desktop services and supporting data center operations. But today, in strong organizations, that’s changed. The CIO role is expanding and evolving into a larger and more strategic role—the ‘CIO-Plus’.”

This shift means marketers need to rethink their approach. For example, how can you demonstrate that your solution, or service, helps balance innovation with operational excellence? Does it simplify processes, reduce complexity, or free up time for strategic planning?

Want to get your marketing strategy right?

If you’d like to speak to a member of our global B2B technology marketing & PR team about how you can use audience insights like these, and more, in your marketing and comms strategy this year. Drop us an email on globaltech@aspectusgroup.com.

Key takeaways:

1. Why do CIO insights matter for B2B tech marketing?

CIOs play a strategic role in business transformation. Understanding their priorities helps marketers craft relevant messaging that addresses their needs.

2. What are CIOs prioritising in 2025?

Balancing innovation with operational efficiency, expanding leadership roles beyond IT, and managing organisational change are key concerns.

3. How can marketers effectively engage CIOs?

By using data-driven insights to create relevant content, engaging in key online communities, and demonstrating how their solutions align with CIO priorities