The Mind of the Embedded Engineer - Part 2

The Defended Mind

This is another in a series of posts about these what I have learned about marketing to engineers over my 25-year career. I encourage you to add your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.

Everyone is swarmed with messages --many of which are irrelevant or not timely. The typical North American consumer will be bombarded with thousands of advertising messages each day from Internet, TV, billboards and signs, radio, social media, apps and games,

Key takeaway: even if you have an exciting product and a great story to tell, your potential customers may not be listening. 

In response to this noise people have developed both intentional and unintentional filtering systems. Just think about your own experience. How do you avoid advertising and marketing messages that are constantly pushed at you? And even though we are business-to-business (B2B) marketers we have to remember that our potential customers for technology products and services are also consumers. Their behavior, expectations, and response to marketing efforts are often shaped by what is done in business to consumer marketing (B2C).  If you study B2C marketing you can see how the big budget brands deal with the message noise problem. You have likely noticed that many TV ads are crafted to look like entertainment to capture your interest and break through the noise.

Photo by Travis Seera from Pexels

Here are just a few of the other techniques consumer marketers have used: celebrity endorsers, spokespeople that become recognizable and part of pop culture, social media influencers, contests and promotions, product placement, humor, and persistence,  Many of the above ideas can be adapted to B2B marketing. 

Here are several more ways you can continue to reach your audience even with the pervasive noise

• Understand your target customer. The more you know about him, the more likely it is you can create messages that he will respond to. Many companies write detailed personas to describe the characteristics of ideal or typical customers. 
• Build a relationship with your target customer. People are much more likely to listen to voices that are familiar and trusted Affiliate your product/brand with something that your target customer is already interested in or involved with. 
• Become a trusted information source. Engineers are under constant pressure to absorb new technology and new information. If you position yourself/your company as a trusted source for reliable technical content then you will be front of mind when they are ready to buy.
• Go where your target customer is. What is she reading? What conferences is she attending? What are her trusted sources for gathering information about new technologies?

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