I’ve been wrapping my head around the subject of marketing to engineers lately. It’s a tough world with different rules than those which exist for marketing to the rest of us. Educated as an engineer myself, and having spent my first 5 years of my career in product development, I see these differences and try to understand them.
The Mindset of an Engineer in Regards to Marketing
- Marketing and Advertising are ‘muckety muck’ – a distortion of the true facts and figures that are necessary to make an educated decision about anything.
- Emotion should only be involved in a decision when it is in response to your wife and children. All other choices in life are logic based.
- Tell me about the features! I’ll figure out the benefits myself in relation to my specific requirements.
- Techno speak is welcomed- and is a signature of speaking the language of success and logic.
- Imagery should be used to show information- charts, tables, diagrams, drawings, layouts, equations whereas photographs and Photoshop are noise.
I have touched engineers at every stage of my career, and have played the part myself ( I do have an electrical engineering degree). So the above statements I feel are very accurate. Seen it, felt it, and maybe even said it.
Delivering Blog Posts that an Engineer will Read
A Professional Layout that limits white space
Just because marketing is thought of as superfluous to an engineer, an easy to read web page is still important. However, an overly fluffy design with lots of modern whitespace will be looked upon as a waste of space, and required of the user to do too much scrolling. Get to the point quickly- visually that is.
Simple Color Scheme
Any overuse of color could potentially smell of creativity. Engineers don’t wear flowered shirts and they don’t want you too either. Please don’t burn their eyes out of their sockets with more than one color. Stick with blue. That sounds so boring, I know. But most engineers when they design anything, they use blue.
No Anecdotal Advice or Personal Stories
Stories and information that is not backed up with facts are often dismissed. If it doesn’t have to do with the job at hand, it is only something to fill the time at a party. Simply, cut the crap and get down to business. Now, if your personal story is about the application of the product you are selling, do tell- but surround it with facts and a decent timeline.
Bulleted Lists
One of the main ways to break up a post to make sure it is read by anyone at all is to break it up, use short paragraphs, and include bulleted lists. A bulleted list is easily scanned by a reader. Being that your engineer targeted post includes lots of information, feature lists, figures, and maybe tables- well structured information will be essential.
Calculators and Excel Sheets
The interactivity of a calculator allows an engineer to apply his or her specific situation to the topic at hand. Calculators can be included in WordPress posts using custom code, through Calculator Plugins, but also through downloadable Excel Sheets and Templates, and through
Easy Access to Datasheets
An engineer knows that you are selling your product on your company blog. There’s no way to get around this. If you embed access to crucial datasheet (PDFs) links inside your post directly. Not only may you peek their curiosity without forcing them to browse your entire site, but you may enable an engineer to come to more of their own conclusions.
Application Notes
On another recent post about blog post ideas for engineering firms, we talked about bringing in real world examples into blog posts. These are absolutely essential and allow a narrative to be written, for photos to be included, and for the use of real world data to be applied to a concept. Do talk about applications!
Charts and Graphs
I’ve already said that an engineer delights in charts, graphs, formulas and equations. But there is also no way to make one feel stupid then to include visual information that is improperly marked and not relevant to the discussion at hand. Do include charts and graphs, either from images created in your favorite data program, or from one of these awesome charting options.
