Author: Dave J.

This is a great summation of current marketing thinking about selling to engineers. I will be using it to justify adding more technical content to our proposals.
BusinessOL: Six things you should know about marketing to engineers

To summarize:

1. Engineers look down on advertising and advertising people, for the most part.

   “Engineers want to believe they are not influenced by ad copy”

2. Engineers do not like a “consumer approach.”

   “Engineers respond well to communications that address them as knowledgeable technical professionals”

3. The engineer’s purchase decision is more logical than emotional.

   however: “preference for one vendor over another is often based more on gut feeling that actual fact”

4. Engineers want to know the features and specifications, not just the benefits.

   “engineers need to know the features of your product…in order to make an intelligent buying decision” i.e. there is no benefit to your equipment being 460V, but the engineer needs to know this detail.

5. 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.”

6. Engineers have their own visual language.

   “visuals immediately say to the engineer, ‘This is solid technical information, not sales talk’.”

After the previous post, a reader emailed me to point out that my website is actually being ‘framed’ by Thomas Register. I was going to check out how they actually link to me, before posting, but ran out of time.

What I dislike about the process is that after clicking on a listing on an EZ-search site, you go to that company’s basic TR contact info page. You have to really study the page to figure out to click the tab on the left that takes you to the listed company’s website. An extra click required, and its hard to find. Double doh!

I was just reviewing my website’s stats for July. Hits from TR were way up from normal. Cool I thought, their new programs are paying off. Then I thought to search out hits from their new ‘EZ’ site for my product category, environmentalchambers-ez.com. No hits! So I can only assume that they have figured out how to make the EZ hits look like hits from thomasregister.com.

Now to my headline…is this smart or sneaky? I am paying just one price to them to generate leads. Should I be concerned about the tools they use? In my stats, I normally rank thomasregister.com as a ‘search engine’, but not environmentalchambers-ez.com because the user is has already searched once to find that site (same goes for IQS). But what am I measuring now, and does it make a difference?

I was recently involved in getting bids from local contractors for phone/IT wiring of our company’s new building. For this type of custom-tailored application, I didn’t need to search the web or even look at the vendor’s websites for information. (One that I did look at screamed 1997, and this was from a classy company).

I sent out a two page ‘statement of work’ to four companies outlining our needs. I identified our needs clearly and made items I was unsure of as ‘options’ so that we could compare apple-to-apples on the basic wiring need. Its interesting to see what I got in return. I am listing in reverse order of my preference:

One page quote typed on a standard contract form, dropped off in a manilla envelope. Multiple items I asked for were not addressed. The final total price was calculated wrong by $4k.

Three page quote which described their solution and then listed a bottom-line price. Much of the bid was well above what I needed. I needed two-zone paging system, but he quoted two separate paging systems instead. Price was almost double everyone elses. This was the contractor for the electrical for the building.

Four page quote which clearly outlined the work and items to be installed. Not a lot of detail was offered. Paging and phone system integration were not addressed well. The salesperson was also trying to sell us the ‘whole package’ of new phones and carriers, which has its own issues.

The winner’s quote was only four pages, but he put it in a binder along with ‘cut sheets’ on the different products he would provide. He was the only one to offer up front to move our existing phone system. And his paging system included everything we needed (and his documents backed it up).

Perhaps I am being too cynical about the proposals. The real issue at hand is that the winner listened to my needs and responded with a proposal that shows he understands and cares about my needs. He earned my trust, and therefor, my business.

So I ask again, ‘what does your proposal look like?’

Well, I finally got a first-hand look at Thomas Register’s new pricing schedule. They’ve thrown out a lot of their convoluted system, but its still takes your undivided attention to understand. I’ll go easy on you, though.

What my rep told me is that TR has essentially removed the “rank points” associated with print ads. This means that my one page ad costs about $1,500. The price difference I am supposed to buy points with to boost my ranking on their website(s).

Now the ranking system shows more clearly as a ‘blind auction’ as no one knows what others will be buying for points. And all us advertisers have to work our way down from the recommended level by our reps, rather than bottom up like Overture or AdWords. And on a yearly basis? Geez.

To make a comparison of yearly prices:

Industrial Quick Search top tier: $4,800

Thomas Register “rank points”: $7,700 (recommended level)

GlobalSpec: $13,500 (last time I heard—we’re not a customer)

And just for fun, my assessment of each’s market position:

IQS is like Google, quick and to the point

Thomas Register is like Yahoo, a directory in search of a better way.

GlobalSpec is like Amazon, a more fully integrated e-commerce shop.

And I did get a nice book on Internet Marketing from my rep. I’ll provide a review as soon as I am done with it.

I found this posted by a number of blogs today. And no wonder. Its a good refresher course on web writing. Wait, we never got the course to begin with.

Seven deadly sins of web writing by Gerry McGovern: sample: “Headings are the single most important piece of content you will write on the Web”

In the last few days I have been cleaning up ‘brochure talk’ on my website, mostly on less popular products that few people click on. But what a difference. What did I do?

Targeted contents with the primary benefits of the product to the user

Added a header that summarizes the benefits

Made a bullet list of benefits

Put certain key passages in bold text

Added an in-line link to additional content about one feature

I look at what I did and think that a visitor will feel compelled to learn more about this model. Even if I’m too much of a fan of my own writing, the old content certainly didn’t have any compelling message.

Running a website, even a blog, is a combination of technology, content, and design, per Jeff Veen. I’ve spent too much time this week trying to figure out the technology of CSS layouts for this blog. The design is a nearly-stock template from Blogger. It has a problem (even unmodified) of not allowing the page to scroll past the bottom of the right-hand column when browsing in IE6. I thought I fixed it originally, but I was wrong. Now it is better.

So what did I have to do? I had to change the HTML header to a non-standard type, per the advise of Phil Ringnalda. Better to make the site usable for readers, than be use standard format rules–a hack, in other words.

Let me make my fix instructions even more explicit than Phil’s.

Fixing Blogger or other CSS multi-column scrolling problem:

1. Delete the first 1-2 lines in your HTML that look like this:

&lt !DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"&gt

&lt html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" &gt

2. Substitute this text:

&lt?xml version='1.0' encoding='iso-8859-1'?&gt

3. Post and yell ya-hoo!

I’ve often called the trade publications I use as “the devil you know”, as their editorial standards are pretty low. I don’t think the actually set them low, they trapped by their history. Justin Hitt makes some more detailed analysis: Iunctura Daily — Center for Strategic Relations.

UPDATE: The link now takes you to Justin’s full article.

An interesting article that basically says that in order to avoid marcom speak like “flexible, scalable solutions” (barf), you need to understand and be able to talk to potential customers. Then develop ‘positioning’ documents to record their interests and the company’s solutions. Multiple documents for multiple market segments. Then you have something to refer to when writing (or hiring a writer) to allow you to focus and engage the reader.

Because I interface with the customer in a sales function, I already do this instinctively without making such a document. But there is always room to learn more about their needs.

Product Marketing

I’ve recently been getting Brand Packaging Magazine for some reason. It’s cool to see how product packaging and design is thought thru, although it is something we don’t worry about in industrial marketing. Packaging is where a lot of commodity sellers are being able to become “Purple Cows”. Just think of what a pourable plastic container has done for Dutch Boy paints recently.

I found the article “Seven warning signs your culture is hurting your package” by Lee Sucharda III to be useful for any marketing program, especially product development/launch. These need to be overcome to even think about becoming a Purple Cow.

Here is my summary of the seven warning signs:

1. Working backwards from a key date, like a trade show, which can stunt innovation.
2. The budget isn’t designed to plan for innovations in product or process, just marketing.
3. Closely related, packaging (or another development item) is considered an expense and not an investment.
4. Research is rarely done–learn what the customer will really buy.
5. Existing products aren’t updated. Continous improvement as a culture is rewarded with market leadership.
6. Poor reaction to market changes. It is harder to recover market share than to maintain it.
7. Being engineering-driven versus user-driven, or the “inside-out” company.