Engineers demand facts? But of course!

Our clients are primarily engineers. I think one of the benefits in starting in sales is that I learned that engineers want—need—the facts. Actually, with a degree in mechanical engineering, I was already ‘speaking their language’.

I enjoyed this article in the latest BtoB Magazine: Sparking Interest; Electronics engineers demand facts, not fluff. Enjoyed? Yes, is was nice to hear other marketers thinking sensibly about how they approach engineers. A number of marketers are quoted in the article, all reinforcing the title. Here’s a good sample:

1. “They’re introverted, they’re very technical, they love the Internet and they don’t like salespeople,” said Jeff Curie, VP-marketing at SupplyFrame, a vertical search engine for electronics components. “They really don’t want you calling them and e-mailing them. They want to pull what they want, when they want it.”
2. “We find that they are really, really savvy and capable of cutting through marketing mumbo jumbo and getting right back to the key message that we’re trying to communicate.” -John Mannion, exec VP-director of client relations for ad agency Doremus
3. Yet communicating brand to an audience of engineers can be somewhat tricky because they want information with substance, Jan Spence, director of brand for TI, said. “We feel like first and foremost we have to get out there with that technical data,” she said.
4. One challenge with reaching engineers online is that many marketers are still spending too heavily on banner advertising, Curie said. “You go to a site and there are pop-ups, and towers, and pop-unders and all kinds of things that engineers tend to be somewhat annoyed by,” he said. “But that’s still how a lot of marketing people think.”

Okay, that last one is a reminder of the struggle we face…we need to approach engineers with low-key, fact-driven marketing. But how do we get them to notice what we have to offer in the first place?