Do you Hate Marketing Firms? 5

Well, you kind of hit the nail on the head... engineers are a (mostly) logical bunch. We suffer fools poorly, which means any amount of fluff/BS is frowned upon. If you can manage real marketing without falling to the darkside, you could make a bundle in a hurry.

Dan - Owner

Engineers solve problems right?
I feel Hype and Fluff comes from not knowing what your "target audience" actually wants.

When people are trying to guess problems of others.

Do you think establishing what problems engineers face, in terms of making sales etc, would minimize the Crap that gets pushed at you?

The problem is not all that different than most any professional who ends up running his own business.

For example, my wife worked for years consulting with family dental professionals providing advice on how to market their services. The problem was that while the dentist (it could have just as easily have been an engineer) is highly trained in how to be a dentist and deliver dental care to be his/her patients, they learn very little if anything about how to run a business, including what the role of marketing can play in helpping the dentist to become financially successful. And it doesn't end with marketing either. If you're running a business, you're going to be hiring employees, having to manage accounts payable, submitting invoices and making collections, etc. In fact, my wife usually offered consultive services for all of the so-called 'back-office' activities of a private dental office. And until she retired about 8 years ago (to take care of her mother who had suffered a stroke and could no longer care for herself), she made damn good money doing so.

John R. Baker, P.E.
Product 'Evangelist'
Product Engineering Software
Siemens PLM Software Inc.
Digital Factory
Cypress, CA
Siemens PLM:
UG/NX Museum:

To an Engineer, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.

I've worked with good marketing professionals. Few and far between, but true gems they are. As in any profession, good marketing is based on good theory and good data combining into good practice.

What marketing activities would engineers actually VALUE or find USEFUL, to have taken off your hands or have someone do more efficiently.

I feel Hype and Fluff comes from not knowing what your "target audience" actually wants.

When people are trying to guess problems of others.



These seem to be typical engineering viewpoints about both their markets and the marketeers. The premise seems to be that the market is known and people know what they want. For cutting edge, this couldn't be farther from reality. 30 yrs ago, could you have convinced the average person that they NEEDED or even WANTED Facebook, or Twitter, or Google Maps? Often, people don't know what they want, or even what their actual problems are. Market research spends millions a year to figure these things out, and often, they find that the customer doesn't actually know, and marketing is what leads the customer by the nose to the solution to the problem that they might not have even been aware of. Chia Pet, Pet Rock, etal, demonstrate that the market often has hidden needs and wants that defy explanation or analysis, even after the fact.

There's a famous apocryphal story about Intel's marketing department dismissing the idea of building and selling their microprocessors to the public because there was no consumer market for that much computing power. Even at that, the market for engineering or B2B microprocessors were limited as well.

While many of us see the communicators from Star Trek as prescient, which they were, to a degree, the current cell phone does way more than just communicate; in fact, it's current not that far away from combining both the communicator and tricorder functionallity into a single construct. The cell phone can take pictures/videos, has onboard sensors, can find itself, perform complex math, play music/video, etc. These were mostly missing from the Star Trek communicator because, as prescient as they were, the creators couldn't even begin to see what an evolved version of their communicator might really have looked like.

Engineers need marketeers to pierce the veil of the subconscious mind of the consumer and figure out what they might buy, just as much as marketeers need engineers to realize and solidify those nascent market desires.

TTFN
faq731-376

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Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!
There is a homework forum hosted by engineering.com:

I am most responsive to other engineers or technical people who know their products, know the limitations of the product, can show you how their product helps you, and don't lie in the process. I don't respond to slick marketing.

I never respond to fear of loss... on anything. It infuriates me, is demeaning, and I walk away. Heck... I run away.

Mike McCann, PE, SE (WA)

I think "marketing" has some value in the larger economics scheme of generating revenue. But too often this is hijacked & corrupted by "marketeers". They wind up presenting themselves as soul-less hucksters who won't accept responsibility for anything they say. IMHO engineers are the ones in the team who are held responsible for final actions & commitments, and must deliver results. Else they get burned for non-performance. Hence we all tend to be very conservative. Marketeers who sell the sizzle & not the steak are of a different mindset. I don't make a lot of time for those guys.

I worked for a "marketing-driven" company where daily activities were simply surreal. I attended a high-level management meeting where the division manager presented a 10 year plan. While room full of lapdogs sat there passively eating from trough of poo this guy was feeding everyone, I silently questioned the financial goals he was pushing. I punched the numbers up and it showed a 10% year-over-year gain for 10 years. And that was only simple interest calculation. I was prepared to sell my wife, kids, house, everything to get in on that action. It was all total BS...but it sure SOUNDED good. Like a steak sizzling.

TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering

Ron said:

I am most responsive to other engineers or technical people who know their products, know the limitations of the product, can show you how their product helps you, and don't lie in the process. I don't respond to slick marketing.

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I Love This. I told my two highest paying clients from the outset

"Honestly, I have no idea how i'm going to achieve X for you, but we can figure it out together".

I always under promise and bust my balls to over deliver as we all should. It's a good thing I didn't lie as I feel the honesty + results is what has kept them with me to this day.

JohnRBaker said:

The problem is not all that different than most any professional who ends up running his own business.

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I never thought of it that way. Being a business owner looks a lot easier from the outside looking in....until you decide to become one.

TheTick said:

I've worked with good marketing professionals. Few and far between, but true gems they are.

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How did you go about finding the Diamond in the ruff - Or did they find you?

IRstuff said:

Engineers need marketeers to pierce the veil of the subconscious mind of the consumer and figure out what they might buy, just as much as marketeers need engineers to realize and solidify those nascent market desires.

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That was an epic notion of how things should be - moving forwards. I could actually think of a few ways in which to gauge the interest in products customer "Might Buy".

tygerdawg said:

It was all total BS...but it sure SOUNDED good. Like a steak sizzling.

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If the sizzle sounds too good to be true......

Marketing is simply about finding perfect clients who buy your product or service among all the clients who do this, and than trying to attract more of such clients, letting your worst clients go.

And it is an erroneous assumption, I believe, to think that marketing has nothing to do with precise figures. It is not math, of course, but still, you set a plan, and then you control its fulfillment using precise, good-looking figures.

Vadim Kadyrov
English - Russian technical translator and DTP specialist

Getting our name out there to the people that matter.

My first business partner had all these fancy pamphlets to hand out, but no work. When we partnered together suddenly work came in because I was doing whatever networking I could think of.

Here's a simple example that would impress me if I ever heard one of the marketers tell me. We will take a look at your website and see what types of visitors you are getting. We will then target and increase the volume of those visitors. If a lot of your potential clients are using iPads to find you, we are going to make a stunning site specifically for iPad visits. Google ads? We will set that up to target potential clients based on this, this, and this.

Instead I get calls saying they will do a bunch of nonsense garbage for a high fee. I am on some forums related to this topic, and have said enough times I don't mind paying someone to do this stuff, but generic silliness is not getting anyone anywhere. I really don't need to send out spam email to the entire world. Engineers are going to be one of the first professions to call this out.

Here let me market to you guys really quick. Anyone want to know why I autopost our pictures that go from instagram to a bunch of other sites like Flickr? Because Flickr ends up picking out keywords which get pulled up in search and it all leads back to us. I watch our website stats to see who is coming from where and can sometimes even know in advance to get ready for a call. Where are the marketers to someone like myself who doesn't have time anymore to do this? Or someone to come in and do this stuff for those not familiar with technology?

B+W Engineering and Design | Los Angeles Civil Engineer and Structural Engineer

The best marketers actually come and listen to the engineers carefully and research the intent and limitations of the design / product / widget before trying to market anything. That way the "thingy" gets pitched to the people who might have the most use for it.

There are some marketers, however, who mass market things on the basis, simply, that it M ight B e A wesome.

I imagine the marketing landscape looks pretty different in electrical compared to civil. Since there is essentially zero meaningful innovation in civil engineering right now, it is more about informing or reminding potential clients that you exist. Otherwise they will just continue to use who they've always used. We use marketers/business developers who are not engineers and it works well. But we have a comprehensive approach to marketing (a relatively large department), not just a guy pressing flesh. They consistently account for about 30 percent of our revenues, which is huge. Marketing doesn't always have to be "look at us and what we can do". It is better if you can say "Hey, here's a job lead you might be interested in". They will be grateful even if they don't get the job and be likely to push business your way either from them or suggest it to others.