In two weeks, I will be giving a presentation at Ignite Dallas (June 2, 2010). If you are not familiar with this international phenomenon, 15 or so speakers are selected to speak to a sizable audience on any topic they are passionate about. They are restricted to 20 slides and 5 minutes. The Ignite motto is,"Enlighten us, but make it quick."
I will be speaking on the topic of this blog...When Engineers Become Marketers. Too often, marketing is relegated to the web guy, PR person, a salesman, or (today) the social media guru. Marketing should be done by marketers. Even with technical products which require considerable technical aptitude to be marketed well, the fundamental rules of marketing stay in effect and need to be followed.
Engineers who are not trained in marketing should not be marketing technical products. On most college campuses, you will see a building called "School of Business" and a different building called "School of Engineering." "Marketing" is taught in the school of business. That is because it is not "Engineering."
Marketing is not something you can pick up by reading Wikipedia over the weekend. It takes some aptitude, some training, and some experience to do it well. Let a trained marketer do it. After all, you wouldn't have your SQL programmer solder your thermal vias to your ground plane, would you? That's crazy talk...
Over the next few installments, I will talk about how Engineers are fundamentally different than Marketers.
James Snider is a Global Marketing professional, responsible for developing the 3.4 billion dollar 1394/FireWire market. James spent 16 years in marketing with 7 years working at "for profit" companies, 8 years as executive director of a non-profit and the past year as an independent global business development consultant. www.linkedin.com/in/jamessnider
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