[HN Gopher] Marketing to Engineers (2001)
___________________________________________________________________
Marketing to Engineers (2001)
Author : herbertl
Score : 225 points
Date : 2024-08-27 15:23 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bly.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bly.com)
| drbig wrote:
| Sensible. And as much as I too do not like the whole "marketing",
| and especially video ads that try way, way too hard to "be
| clever", the truth is that if I don't know about a material,
| component, device etc. I cannot possibly even consider it.
|
| Or in other words: we still need some way to discover stuff.
| Having less fluff and more specs is the way I prefer.
| karmarepellent wrote:
| I agree with you in general, but to quote another point made in
| the article:
|
| > Engineers are not turned off by jargon--in fact, they like
| it.
|
| If a video or marketing-focused website tries to be clever, but
| without "fluff", and maybe alluding to some technical quirks or
| general behaviour of the product, I think I would like it.
| Extra points for being capable of not taking things too
| seriously, e.g. when some aspect of your product seems to be a
| weird design choice that is sure to get some flak from the
| engineering crowd.
| pzo wrote:
| The hardest sell for engineers is having a button "please call us
| to know details". Article seems showing good points and found it
| quite accurate.
|
| PS. I like also the style of author. Each point starts with short
| title then longer sentence with description and lastly few
| sentences with elaboration regarding that point but not too long.
| edu wrote:
| Totally agree on your P.S. This is the Inverted Pyramid[1]
| writing stle, commonly used in journalism, and it helps get the
| points clear even when the reader might just skim the content.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_pyramid_(journalism)
| karmarepellent wrote:
| Sorry for drifting a little off-topic, but I think this is also
| true for recruitment. When I get messaged from recruiters, most
| try to get into a call or video conference right of the bat to
| discuss an open position that would "fit my resume". Then I
| have to ask what the actual position is about and if there's a
| job ad with more (technical) detail. I'm perfectly capable of
| evaluating if a position is likely to appeal to me when I see a
| document describing it.
|
| There is also the added benefit of saving a lot of time on both
| sides, because I do not even want to get into a lengthy
| conversation about a position I have zero interest in.
|
| Again, sorry for hijacking your reply to talk about something
| entirely different!
| atoav wrote:
| Sales people like to talk and hate to write.
|
| I got regular calls from my cellphone provider about offers
| until one day I had enough and told them if they call me once
| more I will cancel my contract with them and go out of my way
| not to do any business with them again. If they want to show
| me an offer they can just send me an email. They didn't.
|
| Generally my advice is to never agree to anything via phone.
| Tell them to send you the details. They always try to use the
| heat of the moment to make you do things that might not be in
| your interest. If it is really a good offer it will still be
| good hours later when you read the actual details.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| > There is also the added benefit of saving a lot of time on
| both sides
|
| My realization: it doesn't save them any time, as talking to
| you is seen as one of their goal.
|
| The type of personality in that line of work usually thrive
| in live calls more than in factual chat, so there's
| absolutely no downside for them most of the time.
| karmarepellent wrote:
| Yes, that's a fair point, it's part of their job to spend
| time in calls.
|
| Ironically this gives me even less confidence that I would
| be interested in what they offer. Maybe the mere fact that
| they conveyed the offer and spent an hour in a phone call
| is all they wanted actually?
|
| Maybe I'm just being overly pessimistic on the matter
| though.
| rbetts wrote:
| Sales people are trying to discern what pain you are
| facing, your level of urgency for solving that pain, the
| consequences if you don't solve it, your budget, and your
| authority to make a purchasing decision.
|
| SDRs/BDRs are often compensated by a "meetings set" goal.
| They may linger on the phone with you if they think you
| will agree to a meeting with an account exec. But outside
| of this initial marketing outreach, effective sales
| people don't want to waste their time with you. Much more
| so than engineers, they are measured and paid on
| objective results and specific productivity metrics.
| cloverich wrote:
| My read on it, roughly in priority: 1.
| Getting you on a call (anyone, not just recruiter) is a
| way to drive the interaction to a conclusion, one way or
| the other. 2. Getting you on a call gives them
| the opportunity to read you. 3. Getting you on a
| call gives them the opportunity (if they are of the
| type), to make you feel a social obligation to
| reciprocate (information, time, etc)
| teekert wrote:
| Very ChatGPT-y :)
| yowayb wrote:
| I felt like the article itself was a good example of speaking
| to engineers! I also think, at least in the software world, the
| websites of popular software like VS Code and Docker are great
| examples of marketing to engineers.
| pbd wrote:
| if the advert is not in monospace, I am not buying.
| jraph wrote:
| It needs to be reachable from a combination of netcat and the
| openssl cli.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| If I can't order with POST, I'm out
| HPsquared wrote:
| Surely they POST, and you GET.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| Depends if we're talking the initial advertisement or my
| order :P
|
| Consider they POSTed their advertisement, I had interest
| so I sent a request to some for myself! Now, I didn't
| just want the standard-fare...
| inopinatus wrote:
| This is how informational RFCs get written.
| bravetraveler wrote:
| RFC 1-800-..., is protocol Blorp right for you?
|
| or Blorp and the applications for $customer_ailment
| KingMob wrote:
| Tell me more about this Blorp protocol...
| creesch wrote:
| Woah, this must be an old website. I was going to grumble about
| the text width being the entire page, but then had a look at the
| code. They are still using the `face` attribute for fonts. This
| website must be well over two decades old at this point.
|
| Talk about advice for the ages...
|
| Also, just quickly threw it in jsfiddle for a bit better
| readability. https://jsfiddle.net/hkwsy473/
| bugtodiffer wrote:
| I didn't even notice. I think I wish all websites would just
| use the full screen instead of leaving blank space (for ads)
| creesch wrote:
| While I am sure some websites leave that space for ads. There
| is decades worth of research regarding readability. The
| amount of characters on a line influences readability a ton.
|
| Certainly, on 16:9 ratio displays, text taking up the entire
| page width is just not ideal for most people. Most research
| points at roughly 70 characters per line being the ideal.
| Which means that even on a contemporary 4:3 display with a
| 1024x768 resolution, there will be some space on either side.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| Content should span the entire width of the viewport,
| because guess what?
|
| Users can just resize the window to suit their reading
| preference.
|
| I know, it's mind boggling that windows don't need to be
| fullscreen.
|
| Pardon the sarcasm, but authority for user preferences
| should be left to the user instead of assumed/forced by the
| designer.
| creesch wrote:
| Yeah, no. I am not about to resize my browser window
| every single time when I switch tabs.
|
| Line width is not something a designer came up with and
| just decided to force on to people. It is well-supported
| by research and actually proven to make text more
| pleasant to read.
|
| Also, don't you think it is a bit silly that you are
| effectively just arguing that we all should go back to
| plain text with no formatting?
| Dalewyn wrote:
| >I am not about to resize my browser window every single
| time when I switch tabs.
|
| That's sincerely and squarely your problem to deal with.
|
| >Line width is not something a designer came up with and
| just decided to force on to people. It is well-supported
| by research and actually proven to make text more
| pleasant to read.
|
| Doesn't change my point that user preferences should be
| left to the user to decide.
|
| >don't you think it is a bit silly that you are
| effectively just arguing that we all should go back to
| plain text with no formatting?
|
| No. That is actually the ideal internet. Browsers are
| user agents, users should be rendering web pages as they
| see fit.
|
| Practicality dictates the correct answer is somewhere in
| the middle, but authority resting with the users is a
| good thing.
| lexicality wrote:
| > That's sincerely and squarely your problem to deal
| with.
|
| User testing suggests you're very strongly in the
| minority here. Surely web pages being too thin is
| actually your problem to deal with? Can't you just
| configure your user agent to render the page as you
| prefer?
| creesch wrote:
| > No. That is actually the ideal internet. Browsers are
| user agents, users should be rendering web pages as they
| see fit.
|
| Alright, fair if that is your base stance I can
| understand your reasoning.
|
| If we are talking about the territory of practicality, I
| am fairly confident to state that most people (general
| audience) will have their browser window either in full
| screen or at the same size. So, when catering to "the
| masses". When dealing with longer form text, dictating
| the line width, given the studied benefits, to me seems
| like a sensible practical thing to do. Which benefits
| most people, except for purists like you.
|
| Which is a long-winded way of me saying that maybe it is
| more your problem than it is my problem ;)
| frant-hartm wrote:
| Why would you do it for every tab switch? You do it once
| to fit your preferred width and all websites adjust. You
| would probably have a shortcut for that in your window
| manager.
|
| There was a great time at some point in the past where
| everyone went all in on responsive design and most
| websites behaved well, what we have nowadays is a
| regression in usability (at least for power users).
| Kiro wrote:
| No, I'm not going to start resizing my window just to
| read your article.
| frant-hartm wrote:
| While I agree with the research, let me be the judge of
| what works (for me..), span the text across the full width,
| so I can resize the window as I see fit.
|
| It's a shame that one needs to use scrips to modify
| websites used daily (e.g. I do that with Github to span the
| full width).
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| Looks better than modern crap.
| bux93 wrote:
| The first capture on archive.org's waybackmachine is from 2001.
|
| Looks great on mobile though.
| creesch wrote:
| Yup, the portrait display of mobile phones means that text
| taking up the whole width of the screen (assuming normal font
| sizes) often lands neatly around the 70 characters mark.
| vanschelven wrote:
| 2001, apparently
| ramchip wrote:
| Some definitions for "nixie":
| https://directmailproduction.wordpress.com/2012/04/21/nixies...
|
| > Nixies are records in a mailing list that should not be there.
| Nixies also refer to mail that gets returned to sender when mail
| is sent to undeliverable addresses or deliverable addresses but
| unknown or incorrect names.
|
| > Nixie: Individual, family, or business has moved but no
| forwarding address has been provided, possibly for privacy
| reasons.
| atoav wrote:
| If it is for engineers they probably mean a nixie tube which is
| a (old) cold cathode display device:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixie_tube
| lukas099 wrote:
| In the article it's actually used as an example of direct-
| marketing jargon.
| immibis wrote:
| So SMTP is a series of Nixie tubes. Neat.
| Simon_ORourke wrote:
| In full respect, this guy validated his first point about lack of
| trust in his opening remark "I am a chemical engineer". If he'd
| have said something about being an expert marketer I'd have
| stopped reading there and then.
| monooso wrote:
| Here's the full sentence, in case you really did stop reading
| after the fifth word:
|
| > I am a chemical engineer and have been writing copy designed
| to sell products and services to engineers for 10 years.
| 000ooo000 wrote:
| >Engineers have a low opinion of advertising--and of people whose
| job it is to create advertising
|
| Yep. I have a low opinion of anyone who tries to manipulate
| others using deceit and trickery. Marketers just happen to have
| made a career out of it.
|
| The irony here is that this 'article' is just an ad for this
| guy's consulting services.
| karmarepellent wrote:
| Well there is marketing and then there is marketing. Given the
| fact most of us would be out of a job without advertising of
| some kind, I cannot condemn it the way you do.
|
| However I despise deceitful marketing as well. I am also not a
| big fan of the way my company markets itself. It is neither
| deceitful nor misleading, but just ... irrelevant to people
| working in the space and thus hard to align with.
|
| But I also know companies (that we have worked with) who spend
| their marketing budget on hosting small-ish conferences and
| choose to post content from their (technical) blog in their
| LinkedIn. For me personally, that way of marketing themselves
| just inspires more confidence than ... overconfident
| salespeople.
| sabbaticaldev wrote:
| > Given the fact most of us would be out of a job without
| advertising of some kind, I cannot condemn it the way you do.
|
| the same way cars brought the end of many professions. If
| there were no advertising we would all still have jobs and
| they would be much better too
| mcmcmc wrote:
| Do you think revenue just magically appears in your
| company's accounts receivable? do your customers cold call
| your sales reps?
| meiraleal wrote:
| OP mentioned that people have jobs because of
| advertising. sabbaticaldev mentioned that this wouldn't
| be true for more than a few hours because humans need
| jobs, advertising existing or not.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Exactly as the sibling said, you would have nothing to
| program for because nobody would no you exist. You don't
| randomly search for Reggy, the product I made. But now you
| know about it because I just told you. All advertising is,
| is telling people you exist. You can do that by posting
| your spec manuals, making memes, making a landing page or a
| website, whatever you want.
| meiraleal wrote:
| FYI I know about "reggy" and would never visit it because
| it was "advertised" by a random guy wanting to use a
| place for technical discussions to sell their product
| which is lame.
| motoxpro wrote:
| I would be very surprised if you, or anyone on this
| message board, had a use case for it. It was a niche
| example that I knew you wouldn't know. But you made my
| point that advertising is about awareness first.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Maybe we wouldn't even exist, nobody would use this
| mostly-for-webdevs website, because we'd all be busy
| programming machines in factories that make things.
| cloverich wrote:
| > All advertising is, is telling people you exist.
|
| If that is all advertising was, I don't believe this
| conversation would be happening. People (ITT) dislike
| advertising because of the other parts (tracking, subtle
| manipulation, etc). There's a side to it that has obvious
| benefit: Knowing you reach your target market with
| truthful and engaging content is something ad targeting,
| seo, etc, enable. The problem is they also enable deceit,
| manipulation, spam, etc. When I see the impact that has
| on people I know, I start to wonder if maybe it is worth
| throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Programming also enables hackers, viruses, etc.
| Advertising enables good things like knowing there is a
| cure for your rare cancer (even if you search, there has
| to be information, which is advertising). It also enables
| the bad stuff you mentioned.
|
| It is literally impossible to do anything without ads.
| You go to the store and it says peaches on a can of
| peaches. That's an ad.
| weezin wrote:
| Idk the ad for the new windows terminal was pretty well
| received by developers[1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gw0rXPMMPE
| neilv wrote:
| The slick ad for chocolate-flavored paste was pretty well
| received by the people who eat paste.
| karles wrote:
| Anyone who tries to manipulate anyone in any matter is a fool.
|
| Sales is necessary to every organisation however. There is no
| "built it and they will come".
|
| Marketing in my mind should be about providing easy access to
| the right information so that human beings can make informed
| decisions. Sometimes you have to "push" that information or
| your message to the people you want to reach. Not everyone will
| magically find your wisdom.
| auggierose wrote:
| So in what category were those commercials for smoking?
| Clearly these campaigns were based on disinformation,
| manipulation, and they were highly successful.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _So in what category were those commercials for smoking?_
|
| Awareness, (increasing) interest and desire:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purchase_funnel
|
| Smoking dates back millennia:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_smoking
|
| It is was just more productized in the (mid-)1900s, just
| like everything else was.
| auggierose wrote:
| If you were aware, you would never smoke. Same for
| interest. Why would you be interested in a black lung.
| Furthermore, desire. Not sure what a cowboy riding on a
| horse has to do with smoking.
|
| So, none of those commercials teach you what smoking is
| actually about. It is about getting you addicted so you
| become an ATM for big tabacco.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _If you were aware, you would never smoke._
|
| Not in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.
|
| The Marlboro Man first appeared in 1954:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlboro_Man
| yowayb wrote:
| haha I didn't realize he was a consultant. I found myself
| nodding the whole time!
| moffkalast wrote:
| Business consultants make the worst/best marketers, you get
| used to bullshitting 24/7 about shit you don't know fuck
| about.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I've managed tens of millions of dollars running direct respond
| ads and would never lie or mislead in ad copy. I've also never
| seen a lie in ads run by people I know.
| YurgenJurgensen wrote:
| So in all of those tens of millions of dollars you never once
| advertised a product or service that had any flaws? Seems
| pretty unlikely.
| havefunbesafe wrote:
| Every conceivable thing on earth has some flaw or trade
| off. Good advertising communicates information about the
| product while illustrating the next best alternative's
| trade offs.
|
| I dislike being sold to, but I enjoy getting info for
| products that are relevant to me.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I've never claimed any of the businesses we promote are
| perfect!
| aantix wrote:
| Ever thought about starting your own company?
|
| I'm a software engineer of 24 years. Maybe there's some
| synergy here.
|
| Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn (in my profile).
| cm2012 wrote:
| Just pinged you!
| aantix wrote:
| Perfect. I set up a time for next week. Looking forward
| to it!
| syndicatedjelly wrote:
| > The irony here is that this 'article' is just an ad for this
| guy's consulting services.
|
| Why is this bad? What is the preferable way one should
| advertise their services, if they choose to be an independent
| consultant? Should they sit quietly in a dark room and wait for
| people to find them, like some sort of monk in a cave?
| closewith wrote:
| > The irony here is that this 'article' is just an ad for this
| guy's consulting services.
|
| Is that more ironic than you commenting on what is ultimately
| just an ad for a VC accelerator?
| atoav wrote:
| As an engineer thinking about products that really got me. This
| seems a little bit outdated, but it is largely correct. If you
| sell a thing that I know (e.g. let's say a new Operational
| Amplifier or transistor) just give me the specs. A fluffy "ten
| times less noise" sentence is cool and all, but which firstborn
| was sacrificed to get there? Maybe the THD is really bad now. If
| you really managed to cover new ground just show all the graphs
| and how it is better than previous generations of parts.
|
| With other more subjective devices show me why I would want it.
| And that isn't flashy looks. My equipment could look like a
| people from the Back to the Future franchise, if it has the right
| specs, the ergonomics are right and it covers the features I want
| covered I am all ears. Also: your Smart CloudBased thing is
| considered an anti-feature unless you open sourced your backend
| and I can self-host it.
| Laremere wrote:
| > 5. Engineers are not turned off by jargon--in fact, they like
| it.
|
| I think the point is right, but the reasoning is off. Jargon (at
| least in engineering) isn't a secret language for the benefit of
| confusing outsiders, but more words that have more specific
| meaning than more common words. Eg, "Use our API to run your
| container images" tells me a lot more than "Use our product to
| run your software". Software could've been compiled binaries,
| virtual machine images, raw code, excel macros, whatever. This
| ties into other points about how engineers evaluate products.
| hyperman1 wrote:
| I think there are 2 mechanisms for jargon, and he misses them
| both;
|
| 1) Easy filtering caused by precise communication. A non-jargon
| term is missing nuance. The audience can't tell if they should
| be interested (probably not). This is your API vs Software.
|
| 2) courting the customer by speaking their language. If a
| marketeer indicates some level of knowledge, the engineer is
| more willing to spend time: The chance to gain something
| usefull is higher. If a marketeer sells an API, I might ask if
| he also has a library, because I know he understands the
| question.
| dghf wrote:
| He explicitly mentions the second of those, in exactly those
| words:
|
| > Why is jargon effective? Because it shows the reader that
| _you speak his language._
| sjamaan wrote:
| > courting the customer by speaking their language
|
| Ugh, that's like trying to use urban slang in your ads to
| appeal to youths - probably not going to go down very well
| unless you're very, very on point.
| kalaksi wrote:
| Right, their reasoning in 5 and 6 sounded like the point is to
| just appear like an engineer. It may be enough for the ad guy,
| but I don't think it's strictly what the engineer wants. IMO,
| it relates to the previously made point that engineers want
| clear and accurate technical communication.
| krisoft wrote:
| Also important to mention that engineers don't like jargon for
| jargon sake. If you use the right words wrong people will sniff
| you out.
|
| We had a vendor who was trying to sell us some cryptography
| solution. They were loosely talking about quantum cryptography
| in their presentation. Some of our security minded engineers
| stopped them talking and questioned what they are exactly
| selling. Is it quantum encryption where the secrets are encoded
| in the quantum state of the transmitted photons? Or is it
| quantum-resistant cryptography where the crypto primitives are
| selected such that they should be resistant to attacks
| employing quantum computers? Turns out they could not answer.
| Seemingly they were just using the word because it sounded
| cool.
|
| So talking jargon without having the technical depth can
| seriously backfire. In our case it made the whole meeting have
| an adversarial tone going forward and I haven't heard about
| that vendor since.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It is quantum cryptography: the smallest possible discrete
| piece of cryptography. Please buy my xor gate.
| rout39574 wrote:
| We call that "Precision in language" in my team.
|
| Some of our neighboring teams call it "A bunch of pedantic
| bullshit".
|
| We agree to disagree.
| ozim wrote:
| I would say the way one communicates with others makes it
| "pedantic bullshit".
|
| If someone corrects me on each small thing and feels smug
| about it - I call pedantic bullshit.
|
| If someone takes time to ask what I mean and explains why
| they would use other term so we align that's precision
| language.
| mihaaly wrote:
| Most of the reasoning seems off, probably because the writing
| is based on those subset of engineers who eventually bought the
| product after being approached. For one reason or the other. :
| )
|
| Probably the "doesn't like advertising" is spot on, but that is
| so for all human beings, except marketing lifeforms (some would
| argue that there is little or no overlaping between the two).
| ahartmetz wrote:
| There is a form called whitepaper that is a kind of neutrally
| worded technical spec with a hint of advertising. I haven't
| seen many, but the ones that I saw I liked!
| cwbrandsma wrote:
| Containers is a good example of how things can go wrong as
| well, especially when you aren't familiar with them, and you
| are looking into related technologies, like kubernetes, and
| suddenly you fine out you have 10 layers of terminology to
| understand before you can even get started.
|
| There is a joke about functional programming: in order to
| understand functional programming you must first understand
| functional programming, and once you understand functional
| programming you lose the ability to explain functional
| programming.
| inSenCite wrote:
| Great article but I find the increasing instances of identifying
| someone as an 'Engineer' stereotype bizarre and alienating.
|
| What is that? a degree? job? title? is there only 1 type of
| person who becomes an engineer? and if it can't be a degree
| because there are 5 million different types of 'engineers' and it
| is definitely not a homogeneous group.
| libertine wrote:
| You're onto something, and I can say that I still haven't found
| a way to define this group of people.
|
| I'm a marketer, with some technical background, and as a
| consumer, I fit into the bucket OP talks. And clearly, I'm not
| an engineer. The only thing is that I'm more self-aware of
| emotional purchases disguised as logical ones, and I recognize
| that no one is immune to being influenced, but that came with
| the trade.
|
| I guess that maybe more software engineers fit into this
| bucket, or more software engineers care to voice their stance
| making them a "loud minority" because they witnessed what the
| internet became and they care about it.
|
| But certainly isn't exclusive to them.
|
| I tend to think it is more related to people who experienced
| several instances of a communication channel without
| advertising, which ended up having their user experience ruined
| by advertising.
|
| For example, in Television for many decades advertising was
| part of the medium. No program airs without ad breaks, product
| placement, etc. In a way, for many of us, it was always there
| and is part of the medium. Heck as a kid TV Christmas ads were
| a form of entertainment.
|
| While on the internet, it is true that advertising has also
| been present for decades - but throughout the years you had
| many communities, products, and platforms that at some point
| didn't have ads, and many lived long enough to have ads ruined
| the experience -> I think this is where antibodies started to
| arise, and the feeling was validated by others who shared their
| bad experiences and concerns because, you know, its the
| internet :)
|
| This is a complete anecdote based on personal experience - but
| I agree with you, there are more out there, and it isn't just
| engineers.
|
| I'd say they're curious people (pioneers/early adopters) who
| value their experience but were defrauded several times by
| having companies trade their trust for many variations of ads.
| This can be anyone, it isn't limited to tech-savvy people,
| nerds, engineers, gamers...
|
| Like people who started to search "reddit product name" +5
| years ago (before Google picked up on it) in their decision-
| making process when buying something. How do you define that?
| stagger87 wrote:
| I suspect you're overthinking it. Consider the difference
| between someone wanting to know the technical specifications of
| an iPhone and the electrical engineer wanting to know the
| technical specifications of a resistor they want to use to
| build the iPhone. The marketing efforts for the iPhone and
| resistor should be different. Replace "electrical engineer"
| with anything you want and it still can work, for instance, how
| about a marketing person that wants to know the specifications
| of some cardboard materials when designing the product box for
| the iPhone. No longer engineering but the marketing for the
| cardboard will probably look more like the resistor than the
| iPhone.
|
| It's really the product and it's intended use case that's
| driving the audience, which the link is just generalizing to
| "engineer".
| nicbou wrote:
| I would like the opposite article. I'm an engineer type selling
| to average consumers.
|
| For example, I learned that literally telling people what to buy
| is sometimes better than a neutral comparison of all options.
| They don't want the absolute best product. They just want to feel
| like they made a good purchase.
|
| I also found that engineer types can become really good marketing
| people if they treat sales as understanding requirements, and
| highlighting how the product fulfills them. I didn't get better
| at manipulation; I got better at understanding what people want.
| fire_lake wrote:
| Not an expert, just my experience:
|
| Engineers gets excited by the details of a solution and try to
| sell on those. But end users typically want the problem to be
| solved with minimal fuss and effort. Details are off putting
| because they require effort to understand! Focus on how you
| will make things simpler.
| yowayb wrote:
| Am an expert, and I think this speaks to the crux of how bad
| software sells: you can hide the shortcomings by leaving out
| details, and a lot of customers are fine (and sometimes
| happy!) with that. On the other hand, a truly excellent
| product lets you keep the marketing simple too; so simple in
| fact, I would argue that the most popular software products
| out there don't require much marketing at all since they're
| fully word of mouth now, or even de facto mandated like git
| and various shells.
| motoxpro wrote:
| Think of yourself in your daily life. You don't compare
| features between snap, TikTok, Facebook and instagram. You go
| on one that feels good, that your friends are on, where there
| is interesting content. THOSE are the features. Not "we have
| disappearing videos and the other guy doesn't"
| kstenerud wrote:
| You can't compare social media companies because they work
| based on critical mass - where your friends are is the only
| measure that counts.
|
| You can compare TVs, refrigerators, cars, ebook readers,
| shoes, couches, holiday getaways, vegetables, text editors,
| etc.
| plaidfuji wrote:
| I must be squarely in this guy's target audience because I read
| this and think, "well yeah, anyone who _is_ fooled by regular ad
| copy is just gullible". If I'm buying a product I want the best
| product. If you have the best product, you won't need to hide it
| behind layers of content-free art, copy and "call for details"
| links.
| trabant00 wrote:
| One thing I know for sure about marketing to engineers: they are
| only human and vulnerable to the same tricks. They have
| particularities of course, but every consumer group has them.
|
| For example I've seen this play out multiple times during my
| career: old tech has some problems. New tech products come in to
| solve those problems. They buy awareness at conferences, they
| invite influencers (yes, those exist for engineers) to use their
| product, they give incentives to the first wave of customers,
| they undercut the existing competition by initially taking a
| loss, they offer excellent support in the beginning (and only
| then), all the classical schemes from any market targeted at any
| buyer group.
|
| By the time the new product establishes itself the fact the it
| isn't actually better - it just makes other compromises and thus
| introduces new problems - starts to become apparent. But guess
| what. The new shiny turd is already in production, may even be
| the new industry standard. And even if you are a marketing immune
| stellar engineer who saw through all the smoke and mirrors you
| have no choice but to use it. So the marketing worked.
|
| And all of the above might be pointless theorizing because let's
| face it, engineers rarely hold the decision of what to buy.
| kentonv wrote:
| Common marketing wisdom is that you need to focus on "solutions"
| -- what problems does your product solve?
|
| As an engineer, though, this isn't what I want to know. I want to
| know what your product _does_ , and then _I_ will decide how to
| use that to solve my problems, which may or may not be the ones
| you anticipated.
|
| Moreover, if you only tell me what problems you solve, I can't
| tell how _well_ you solve them. I need to see what the product
| does to evaluate that.
| CM30 wrote:
| I suspect this could probably be broadened to "how to market
| industry specific software to people in that industry", since I
| don't think it's just engineers that figure out the worth of a
| product this way.
|
| A doctor, lawyer, graphics designer or scientist probably also
| has industry specific jargon they expect to see, a certain type
| of visual presentation that matches how they expect data to be
| presented, a need for actual specifics about the product and its
| features, etc.
|
| It's likely less engineer specific, and more the difference
| between marketing general purpose consumer goods and art (where
| emotions are the key differentiating factor) and industry
| specific tools (where a checklist of features is likely seen as
| more useful).
| louwrentius wrote:
| The other day I was shopping for a redundant fiber internet link
| for our company.
|
| Vendor A had a sales person that started a 20 minute presentation
| without asking us any questions. Most of what they told us wasn't
| relevant to our needs or not informational.
|
| Vendor B had a sales person that just asked what we needed and we
| had a detailed technical discussion about how they implemented
| redundancy.
|
| You'll never guess which vendor we chose.
| JohnCClarke wrote:
| Your leadership was impressed by the powerpoint and so it was
| Vendor A.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| And they negotiated an Enterprise rate that was 20% higher
| than the small team rate!
| wslh wrote:
| Putting on my "engineer hat" [1] for a moment: the title of this
| article is misleading, and there's no introduction to clarify the
| mistake, which makes me trust the author less as a copywriter.
| The article discusses copywriting, which is only a small subset
| of marketing, not equivalent to it. The rest of the article
| covers points that are quite obvious to the HN audience: we don't
| buy a notebook or mobile phone because of good copy; we look at
| the specifications, often knowing them even before the products
| are released.
|
| [1] https://www.debonogroup.com/services/core-programs/six-
| think...
| napoleoncomplex wrote:
| Very much agreed on a lot of the points there, and on that note,
| how new frameworks market to developers is probably a great
| lesson in that. Pieter Levels (of nomadlist.com and similar fame)
| recently talked about it on a podcast, how he basically sticks to
| PHP and jQuery, and how often he sees developers jumping on a new
| framework, not realizing it's likely a marketing tactic that's
| pulling them in.
|
| Time-stamped to that part of the podcast, roughly 2 minutes of
| relevant answer: https://youtube.com/watch?v=oFtjKbXKqbg&t=2613
|
| The part that feels most like the advice above: "And same thing
| what happens with nutrition and fitness or something, same thing
| happens in developing. They pay this influencer to promote this
| stuff, use it, make stuff with it, make demo products with it,
| and then a lot of people are like, "Wow, use this." And I started
| noticing this, because when I would ship my stuff, people would
| ask me, "What are you using?" I would say, "Just PHP, jQuery. Why
| does it matter?"
|
| And people would start attacking me like, "Why are you not using
| this new technology, this new framework, this new thing?"
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Worse yet is when the influencer is being paid to peddle the
| bundling of a handful of technologies that have existed for
| years and that you're already using, and everyone who doesn't
| understand that you're already doing that won't listen when you
| tell them.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| > The engineer's purchase decision is more logical than emotional
|
| I truly wish this were true, but looking at my own purchases,
| it's not.
| FearOfTheDuck wrote:
| But don't other people (not only engineers) also slowly realize
| that all these emotion-appealing ads are deceiving? Don't they
| want to be informed, and not brainwashed and exploited?
| MauranKilom wrote:
| Do they? I think it's mainly about how much energy you are
| willing to invest into making rational decisions over
| emotional/"gut" ones. I mean, in the end, it probably doesn't
| matter which kind of shaving cream you buy, so it's easiest to
| go with the one that (due to e.g. ad-created familiarity bias,
| or just "niceness" of visual presentation) you have the best
| feeling about.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| > Engineers look down on advertising and advertising people, for
| the most part.
|
| Worse, we know how to filter it out and actively do so. We know
| all the tricks. Most successful advertising platforms are built
| by skilled engineers.
|
| > Engineers want to know the features and specifications, not
| just the benefits.
|
| Replace engineer with people here. If you are selling something
| and you can't articulate what it is that you are selling, you are
| wasting your time. If what you are selling is very complicated
| (and many products aimed at engineers are), people are going to
| have questions that need answering. A lot of those questions
| start with the word 'How'. Avoiding to talk about the complex
| parts of your offering comes across as evasive and untrustworthy.
| Or worse, as clueless and incompetent.
|
| A lot of successful marketing actually starts with these how
| questions. People will find their way to your website or your
| sales people if you have good answers to such questions. Maybe
| they'll checkout your product and give it a try. Maybe they'll
| sign up even. That starts with you providing something they need
| that they were looking for anyway.
| iamacyborg wrote:
| > Worse, we know how to filter it out and actively do so. We
| know all the tricks. Most successful advertising platforms are
| built by skilled engineers.
|
| I don't think there's any evidence to this whatsoever. Humans
| are susceptible to advertising full stop, being a software
| engineer does not give you magical brain powers and frankly
| it's just textbook Dunning-Kruger.
| AnonCoward42 wrote:
| > I don't think there's any evidence to this whatsoever.
| Humans are susceptible to advertising full stop, being a
| software engineer does not give you magical brain powers and
| frankly it's just textbook Dunning-Kruger.
|
| I am not OP, but my interpretation was, that he knows how to
| remove injected ads. Not that he is invulnerable to ads. I
| might be wrong tho.
|
| For myself I can definitely say that I am susceptible to
| advertisement, but I fulfill mostly the engineer cliche - for
| better or for worse.
|
| Some examples are:
|
| - technical details from manufacturers themselves (which are
| by definition advertisement)
|
| - someone presenting a use case and solving it with a
| specific tool. If that use case sounds interesting to me I
| might actually try that tool. I cannot know if it is "real"
| advertisement or a genuine user in this case.
|
| - looking for reputation on Reddit; again I cannot know if it
| is genuine users or advertisement - at least most of the time
| I can't
|
| edit: formatting
| orwin wrote:
| I think you're both correct. Engineers are still susceptible
| to ads, but are more often than not able to remove them.
|
| Also, you have engineers/developpers like me who actively
| boycott products when the ad was too intrusive/take me for an
| idiot (sexualized ads do that for me). I've never bought a
| Ubisoft game since 2013 or a for the first reason (and avoid
| Razer), and the second one makes my toiletry shopping
| interesting.
| containedgravel wrote:
| >Humans are susceptible to advertising full stop
|
| In the same way we're still "affected" by rain because we
| have to use an umbrella or a raincoat, sure. Compensating for
| a known effect can come near or exactly the desired outcome.
| nprateem wrote:
| Keep telling yourself that.
|
| There are plenty of examples of us knowing our biases but
| still being caught by them.
| sellmesoap wrote:
| Many of us view the internet with the help of ublock:origin
| https://ublockorigin.com/
|
| and Sponsor Block
|
| https://github.com/ajayyy/SponsorBlock/wiki/Android
|
| Added onto our web browsers.
|
| It frees up a lot of computer and mental resources to use
| tools that save you time and screen realestate.
|
| The down side is if we all do it then the money must flow
| from somewhere other then your favorite advertizer.
| drewcoo wrote:
| > If you are selling something and you can't articulate what it
| is that you are selling, you are wasting your time
|
| That's not how advertising works, though. Ads want to
| communicate how the product will make you feel or be. Cars are
| freedom!
| yodon wrote:
| That is an example of knowing what your are selling
| kstenerud wrote:
| Except that many engineering types don't work that way. Cars
| are freedom? In what way? What - specifically - can they do
| for my freedom? And what - specifically - makes this car
| better? How can I know that it will do all the car things I
| want it to?
|
| I've bought many cars in my life, and only once have I bought
| one without spending months beforehand digging through specs
| to find the best set of possible cars for my use case: a 1970
| Opel GT came up on Craigslist, and I had fun fixing it up and
| then drove it across America. Actually, I already knew all
| about them, so I'm not sure if this qualifies as no-
| research...
|
| I still remember one car purchasing occasion where I demurred
| because they were asking too much and I was trying to decide
| if another cheaper option would serve my needs. Then the
| sales guy said "Well, maybe it's just too much car for you."
| I said "You know what? You're probably right. Thanks for your
| advice!" and never went there again.
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| definitely don't know all the tricks, just some common ones
| maccard wrote:
| A fool think's himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself
| to be a fool.
|
| It's dangerous to assume that you are above being advertised
| to, and naive to think that you are immune it
| yowayb wrote:
| I would love to see a remake of The Network (1976) about
| modern marketing with this quote in it.
| kstenerud wrote:
| I really wonder how valid this "truism" is. It sounds more
| like a word trap, wherein anything other than "I'm
| susceptible" is the wrong answer.
|
| It's a lot like those silly word games in the early 2000s
| where saying anything other than "I'm secretly gay" was
| simply taken as further proof of latent homosexuality.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| You are not special. The placebo effect works even if you
| know it's a placebo.
| kstenerud wrote:
| Riight... And everyone's the same. And we can decide
| what's true without scientific evidence.
|
| The older I get, the less I believe the old wives' tales.
| Terr_ wrote:
| In this context, I think the "Mere Exposure Effect" of
| branding might be more relevant.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect
| wavemode wrote:
| A nit: don't confuse the terms advertising and marketing. The
| goal of marketing is that the product's website clearly
| explains how it will benefit you. The goal of advertising is
| that you visit the website in the first place.
|
| So, clearly the advertising -did- work on you.
| whiterknight wrote:
| If you don't think marketing works on you, then that means it's
| working even better.
| havefunbesafe wrote:
| I'd argue well-designed documentation clearly linked from a
| website is a type of marketing.
| RaftPeople wrote:
| My 2 cents:
|
| I'm impacted by advertising+marketing, and I have no problem
| with products being presented in a good light.
|
| The key is no BS. Let me easily see real value, not pretend
| value.
| VeejayRampay wrote:
| what engineers like above everything else is correcting people,
| weaponizing that is the way to selling to them
| anal_reactor wrote:
| Engineers love being told how smart they are.
| containedgravel wrote:
| I doubt liking compliments is unique to engineering
| diego_sandoval wrote:
| Maybe it's better to give a compliment when the receiver
| already believes it.
|
| With an engineer, you can be almost sure that they think
| themselves to be smart.
| trustno2 wrote:
| (2001)
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20010126204100/https://www.bly.c...
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| Six Things I Know For Sure About Marketing To People Who Know
| What The Hell They're Doing
| Macha wrote:
| One of the more frustrating experiences with commercial vendors
| as an engineer evaluating solutions is that, at some point in
| every B2B vendor's life, they pivot their web page from selling
| their product to selling "solutions" targeted at execs, which
| apparently means removing all detail on what the product does.
| Usually this is also accompanied by moving the dev docs from the
| top header to a link on some page under a subsection of
| resources, below the link to contact a sales advisor.
| yowayb wrote:
| This made me laugh! I'd say it's a good indication to steer
| clear :)
| ctrlGsysop wrote:
| Engineers nodding to this fall right into our marketing funnel.
| First thing we do is show you that we know how highly intelligent
| you are. Then we find the actual decision maker.
| containedgravel wrote:
| Wouldn't people evaluating your product usually be the people
| to decide whether to use it? How often do people just hand out
| their manager's numbers to random sales people?
| gk1 wrote:
| A good sales person will find your manager. "Hi, I see
| containedgravel and two others from your team are already
| testing [product] for [use case] in order to [benefit]. If
| you have 30 mins this week I can show you how to add
| governance, how to model and reduce your costs, and introduce
| you to our solutions engineers to help with a smooth
| rollout."
|
| And the first thing the manager will do is turn to their
| engineers and ask, "So, what do you think of [product]?" And
| that will determine whether the manager takes the call or
| not. Which is why winning over the engineer is critical.
| javier_e06 wrote:
| Engineer mantra: Less is more. Marketing mantra: More or die.
|
| Buy strings.
|
| "W: "DESTROY NINETY-NINE PERCENT OF KNOWN HOUSEHOLD PESTS WITH
| PRE-SLICED, RUSTPROOF, EASY-TO-HANDLE, LOW CALORIE SIMPSON'S
| INDIVIDUAL EMPEROR STRINGETTES, FREE FROM ARTIFICIAL COLORING, AS
| USED IN HOSPITALS!" - Monty Python The String Sketch.
| MalcolmDwyer wrote:
| It's everything! It's waterproof! -- No it isn't. -- It's water
| resistant! -- No it isn't. -- It's... water absorbent! Absorb
| water today with Simpson's Individual Flood Preventers!
| drewcoo wrote:
| This is missing: 1a. Listicles Suck
| indymike wrote:
| For about a decade of my life I was looked down upon by engineers
| because I made advertising that targeted engineers :-) I agree
| with a lot of what is in this article, there's one thing missing:
|
| Highlight differences. Especially those that are quality of life
| improvement for the engineering organization.
|
| AWS was weird (literally - it was very unique) and slower than
| dedicated servers when it came out. But there was a difference,
| and AWS let me know: No need to talk to people to provision, and
| once you activate an instance it will be available in minutes.
| That alone was enough to switch from on prem or managed colo
| resources.
| acedTrex wrote:
| people extol the benefits of cloud for fast scaling, powerful
| managed services etc and those things are absolutely true. But
| in my mind, the real "value add" in many industries was not the
| services. It was the API...
| mejutoco wrote:
| These are nice. Still IMO the real value was moving from the
| CAPEX column to the OPEX column.
| baxtr wrote:
| Because outsourced CAPEX become OPEX. Virtual bro-fist!
|
| Funny thing though: Apple still has high amounts of CAPEX.
| I guess they buy their machinery at Foxconn.
| indymike wrote:
| I just remember being in a meeting about colo and on prom
| where people argued about why the colo was better... I
| provisioned a working instance of our web site (a big job
| board) with load balancer and fresh databases via the API...
| and the arguments stopped when I showed the team. "While you
| were arguing, I deployed our entire infrastructure into AWS.
| Try it out at http://somewierdawsurl.something"
| barryrandall wrote:
| The first database server I bought required 3 months of
| negotiations and approvals, multiple vendor meetings, ~100
| sheets of paper, 4 hours of capital asset tracking paperwork,
| and annual meetings with auditors to show them where the
| expensive metal box was.
|
| My last database server just had to comply with a tagging
| policy.
|
| That's what prompted me to switch (for work, anyway).
| mgdev wrote:
| This is one of the reasons why I disagree with point three of
| the article.
|
| The emotion that AWS helped overcome was frustration that
| individual developers faced when trying to build something new.
| Suddenly, hardware was in their control from their keyboards.
|
| That was a magical experience, and it definitely filled me with
| emotion the first time I uploaded an object to S3.
|
| (I loved it so much, I later worked for that team!)
| mihaaly wrote:
| Difficult to look down upon people who are positioning
| themselves above others (know what you need better than
| yourself, power of influencing into what they sell,
| revenue/benefit ratio, deceiving undetected, etc.), but this
| way when we look up all that we see are a bunch of asses. ; )
| hindsightbias wrote:
| There might be a difference between engineers, admins and all
| the people who want to get work done and are tired of technical
| gatekeepers.
| ayewo wrote:
| Another thing AWS did that was really out there back then was
| to allow on-the-go, only pay for what you use workloads. EC2
| instances were billed per hour instead of per month.
| isuckatcoding wrote:
| Would be nice to pair this with some actual real life example ads
| jt2190 wrote:
| I feel like this piece itself plays to an Engineering audience
| ("ooh you're _soooo_ rational not like those others"). A bunch of
| this stuff is directionally true, but I'll add that engineers
| often fall prey to "bullshit baffles brains" in marketing, so you
| can, say, emphasize individual performance metrics which in
| aggregate don't make much difference but the Engineer will use to
| compare against competitors.
|
| Also, making things sound complex ("I'm telling you this because
| you're the only one smart enough to understand") is a great
| approach. Your marketing material should look technical to
| support this.
| yowayb wrote:
| As a former Sales Engineer in enterprise software, I agree.
| "Engineering audience" includes less skilled and more gullible
| individuals, the degree steadily increasing up the hierarchy.
| (And since decisions are made higher up, you can see how
| valuable this article would be to a sales rep...). A common
| "individual performance metric" is "single pane of glass",
| which is aggregating multiple systems, often with a dashboard.
| It often takes more work than they're willing to put in to get
| it to make a difference.
| cainxinth wrote:
| I also market to engineers and I have thoughts:
|
| > _Engineers look down on advertising and advertising people, for
| the most part._
|
| Most everyone in every industry dislikes advertising.
|
| > _Engineers do not like a "consumer approach._
|
| What people say they like and what they respond to in ways that
| marketers want are not always the same thing. Also, people almost
| invariably underestimate the impact that marketing has on them.
| They think they can't be swayed by it, but they can (why else
| would GEICO spend $2b a year on it?). More broadly, there has
| been a major shift towards using B2C-style, informal marketing
| for B2B campaigns. Even in long, complex B2B sales cycles,
| attention spans are shorter and audiences are engaging with more
| consumer-style content like short explainer videos, and not just
| the traditional 5,000 word whitepapers and such.
|
| > _Engineers are not turned off by jargon--in fact, they like
| it._
|
| In my experience, that's not always true. What is true is that
| they use jargon involuntarily and unconsciously because they are
| so immersed in their niche they don't even realize they are doing
| it. Often, when an outsider like me is brought in and I retell
| their marketing story without the acronyms and jargon, they are
| extremely pleased to hear it told more plainly.
|
| > _Why is jargon effective? Because it shows the reader that you
| speak his language._
|
| If you've done your homework and you truly understand their
| business and technology, that familiarity will come across in the
| content even without jargon.
| yowayb wrote:
| >What people say they like and what they respond to in ways
| that marketers want are not always the same thing. Also, people
| almost invariably underestimate the impact that marketing has
| on them. They think they can't be swayed by it, but they can
| (why else would GEICO spend $2b a year on it?). More broadly,
| there has been a major shift towards using B2C-style, informal
| marketing for B2B campaigns. Even in long, complex B2B sales
| cycles, attention spans are shorter and audiences are engaging
| with more consumer-style content like short explainer videos,
| and not just the traditional 5,000 word whitepapers and such.
|
| Agree, but would argue this is not marketing to engineers, this
| is marketing to the business which is interested in things like
| size and certifications.
| kstenerud wrote:
| I actually don't mind advertising copy (which I'll just gloss
| over), so long as there's an easily accessible "tech specs"
| section that lays everything important out in clear tables.
|
| Yes, I want to see pictures of the product in action and the
| situations in which it shines, but that's a distant second to the
| actual specifications you're guaranteeing.
|
| Those progressive-reveal pages that hijack scrolling to display
| beautifully vacuous showcases that Apple popularized are
| everything I HATE in advertising.
|
| The stuff that you found in the printed version of Chip Magazine
| were about right - probably because they did their homework. The
| ads on their website? Utter trash.
| frant-hartm wrote:
| > Engineers look down on advertising and advertising people
|
| I don't think this is entirely true. We certainly look down on
| marketing fluff and playing on emotions, but I certainly
| appreciate well-made marketing material full of facts and specs.
| gk1 wrote:
| It's not universally true but some of the comments here play
| into this stereotype perfectly.
| athenot wrote:
| This is generalizable to "know your audience" and "meet people
| where they are at".
|
| Generic sales people who are good at appealing to the emotional
| in their target demographic will only go so far when the audience
| is specialized in a field. That's not to say those people are
| completely immune to emotional tricks. But if that's the only way
| the salesperson tries to connect, they will have a hard time
| getting through.
|
| I'm not a salesperson but I witnessed a coworker who was insanely
| good at selling our Healthcare SaaS product, and the way he
| connected with his target audience didn't feel sales-y at all. In
| fact, he genuinely cared about finding a solution for the people
| he was selling to. He believed in our customers and knew our
| product was going to help them in their goals--even with the
| warts & bugs we had.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| The tone of this article is moderately condescending to
| engineers.
|
| > Engineers want to believe they are not influenced by ad copy--
| and that they make their decisions based on technical facts that
| are beyond a copywriter's understanding. Let them believe it--as
| long as they respond to our ads and buy our products.
|
| Engineers prefer to buy from ads where it is clear the copywriter
| understood the product they are selling.
|
| > There is a raging debate about whether engineers respond better
| to a straight technical approach, clever consumer-style ads, or
| something in between.
|
| You can be creative, as long as the critical facts are present
| and easy to find.
|
| > Engineers are not turned off by jargon--in fact, they like it.
| ... Why is jargon effective? Because it shows the reader that you
| speak his language.
|
| Maybe, maybe not. Too much jargon is as much of a turnoff as not
| enough jargon. It's more about knowing when to turn it on and
| when to turn it off.
| neilv wrote:
| Note that this is regarding communicating _to engineers_ about
| technical products. Which is not the same thing as communicating
| _to non-engineers_ about technical products.
|
| At least in IT (if not in TFA author's domain of chemical
| engineering), a lot of technical product sales has to appeal to
| _non_ -engineers.
|
| Sometimes appealing to engineering is just plain skipped. Like,
| the less the purchase is on the radar of customer's engineering
| people, before the enterprise sale is closed, the better.
|
| This is one of the reasons that, if I found a startup doing B2B
| solutions, I'll try to market first to people within the customer
| company who have good understanding of the problem, even if I
| know they're not the final approval for the purchase.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Sometimes appeal to engineering is skipped because if the
| engineers knew what the product was really about, they would
| revolt against it before the sale was closed.
| FigurativeVoid wrote:
| > 3. The engineer's purchase decision is more logical than
| emotional
|
| I think the author wishes this were true, but it's not. Engineers
| have emotional attachments to tools just like everyone else. I
| often reach for a tool I like over the logical choice, and that's
| just fine.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| Yeah I think the article outlines much of how engineers
| perceive themselves, rather than how they actually behave. Look
| at all the VC-funded tech products with fancy landing pages.
| Webflow, Vercel, Warp, etc. They may list out more technical
| detail than a typical product, sure, but they're appealing to
| your emotions just the same.
|
| Just head over to vercel.com; the tagline is "Your complete
| platform for the web." If you think that's not an attempt to
| appeal to you on an emotional level, you need to introspect
| more.
| cm2012 wrote:
| I've done a lot of advertising to engineers. The article is good,
| but I'll add - they want a self serve flow.
|
| Gated content to sales works surprisingly well for everyone else
| but heaven help you if you try to get an engineer on a sales
| calls.
| Hasz wrote:
| I mean, you've got to know your audience. There is an inherent
| trade off between specificity (which should hopefully improve
| your conversion rate) and generality (which should hopefully
| bring your message to more people).
|
| Personally, when doing technical presales, I prefer to start very
| broad and keep cutting the domain in half as we go. To use an
| example from the article, if we're talking semiconductors, we can
| start broad with the problem ( I want to do x functionality for y
| price) then discuss solutions in various depths (eg all-in-one ic
| that's faster to market, or a discrete solution that is cheaper
| on the BOM), slapping on additional requirements and parameters
| as we narrow in on a solution.
|
| Usually, defining the solution is a big part of the process, but
| there is a strong tendency to only talk about the solution,
| especially from engineers and marketers.
|
| You don't want to alienate prospects by going to deep too quick,
| but you also don't want to insult them by telling them things
| they already know (or know more about than you!). It's a fine
| line.
| nuancebydefault wrote:
| > The engineer is a human being first and an engineer second. He
| will respond to creativity and cleverness just like everyone
| else." Unfortunately, there is much evidence to the contrary.
|
| Fortunately. Now I understand why marketing people sometimes feel
| looked down upon their profession...
| layer8 wrote:
| The problem with the advocated approach is that you'd have to
| market your product based on its actual merits, of which there
| may be few, rather than on some fantasy. ;)
| mgdev wrote:
| I disagree with point three. Engineers do make purchases based on
| emotions, just different ones than typical consumers.
|
| Engineers are driven by emotions like:
|
| - Desire for intellectual respect: Choosing innovative products
| to appear forward-thinking.
|
| - Risk aversion: Preferring established brands to avoid project
| failures.
|
| - Professional pride: Selecting high-performing solutions for
| personal satisfaction.
|
| - Peer validation: Making choices they believe colleagues will
| approve of.
|
| - Cognitive bias: Favoring solutions that confirm existing
| beliefs.
|
| What looks like logical decision-making is often an emotion-
| driven choice justified with technical arguments. This is evident
| in online discussions where product critiques are framed
| logically but stem from emotional responses or biases.
|
| Effective marketing to engineers should recognize these emotional
| drivers while providing the technical depth needed to rationalize
| decisions. It's not about ignoring emotions, but addressing the
| specific emotional needs of a technical audience.
| leetrout wrote:
| These are outstanding observations
| IMTDb wrote:
| And non-engineer are driven by which emotions ?
|
| The entire article considers engineer to be fundamentally
| different than << normal people >>.
|
| Here is the trick: we aren't. People like concrete arguments as
| much as we do. People buy product they like as much as we do.
| People like to play with stuff before buying as much as we do.
|
| We ain't special folks.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I think I can elucidate what the author was going after, in
| the context of advertising.
|
| Most people want shiny things in nice boxes. The aesthetic
| and aesthetic experience is extremely important.
|
| In engineering it is the functional characteristics which we
| are ooing and enamored by.
|
| In my line of work (power engineering) there is -zero-
| thought put into aesthetics and experience. In my girlfriends
| line of work (cosmetics development) there is a whole team
| larger than the technical team that puts an enormous effort
| into things like bottle design and "vibe".
|
| Perhaps at a base level the same brain chemicals get stirred
| up, but what the author is saying is that the paths there are
| different.
| kaffekaka wrote:
| This is very true. Failing to recognize the role emotions play
| in ourselves and other people is the source of many conflicts
| and misunderstandings. What motivates us and drives our actions
| and responses to things is not something that can be easily
| observed, especially in ourselves. When people describe their
| preferences they are often just describing what is in fact the
| rationalization for their emotionally driven choices.
| andrenotgiant wrote:
| I think it goes even further.
|
| I'm not sure if it's unique to developers, but many have tools
| and vendors that they HATE or LOVE with an irrational passion.
|
| HATE - Seems often about tools or vendors that they had no
| choice in, but had to spend a great deal of time working with.
|
| LOVE - Seems often about tools or vendors that they associate
| with advancements in their career.
|
| These feelings of LOVE and HATE lead to emotional decisions.
| ozim wrote:
| I would expand on risk aversion.
|
| If I am running a service as an engineer I already have huge
| amounts of stuff that can go wrong. If that stuff is in my
| control so I can do something about it when it breaks I feel
| safe and confident.
|
| As soon as I get to depend on a 3rd party who might or might
| not have resources to fix my issue I feel nervous because I
| have my own stuff to deal with and now I get 3rd party tool
| that might bring more problems.
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