Emotions!

When you talk about emotions to an engineer, you are treading on thin ice.  There is nothing they hate more than to hear about your emotions.  It is like throwing water on the witch.  However, marketers know that the most effective sales method is one that appeals to both logic and emotion.  You can convince someone that your product is the right choice, but an little emotional push will move them to make the purchase.


The problem is, "using emotions to sell a product" sounds manipulate to an engineer.  They want to give their customer all the facts so they can make a logical decision. This would make sense, given the logical nature of engineers, however, any good marketing person knows how to sell his/her product to his/her customer.  When left to pure logic, there is a lack of a sense of urgency to take action and the danger of "analysis paralysis."


Let's remove the word "emotion" and substitute "motivation."  How do we motivate the engineering customer to stop analyzing and to select our product without extensive research?  To do this, we need to determine what motivates them. About what are they passionate?

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

Digital Tonto

If you are not reading Greg Satell‘s (Digital Tonto) blog, you are missing some of the best marketing content on the internet.  He is always interesting and informative….and he always makes me wonder how I have gotten this far in life and know so little.  Here is an excerpt from his most recent blog posting:
From “Marketing Memes”

Two Hunters
Memes can spread in lots of different ways for lots of different reasons.  Susan Blackmore, in her book The Meme Machine, describes how altruism can spread memes through a story about two successful primitive hunters, Kev and Gav.  Kev, is a nice guy who shares his meat while Gav is a bit more selfish and keeps the proceeds from his hunt to himself.
Blackmore notes that Kev will come into contact with more people and they will be more likely to copy his style of hunting  (i.e. type of bow and quiver, etc.).   Moreover, other memes of his will be transferred as well, such as the type of feathers he adorns himself with, songs he likes to sing, etc..
Gav’s memes won’t be as successful.  He won’t spend as much time with others so, whatever his merits, he won’t get copied as much as Kev.  As information gets passed down, future generations will be more likely to adopt Kev’s memes than Gav’s.

Greg then goes on to compare Google, Microsoft, and Apple to Kev and Gav and to discuss how ideas spread.
For the complete post (and all his other excellent articles) go to www.digitaltonto.com

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

Ignite! Dallas, June 2, 2010

The Ignite! Dallas group is heavily populated with people who are active in the Social Media Club of Dallas.  I was fortunate enough to be one of 16 people selected (from a pool of 46) to speak at this rowdy event.  The topic of this blog was the topic of my presentation.  Please take a look:

                      James Snider's presentation at Ignite Dallas 2

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

All that useful fluff

To a marketer, features are "hooks" to help them get customers interested in their product.  The more features, the more ways the product can be sold and the greater the opportunity to get more people to love the product.  


Just look at the iPhone.  It had more features than the average smart phone and engineers love it.  It was those features that made people fall in love with it (and stand in crazy long lines to get the first one....and then again to get the updated version....and then again...) A significant portion of the people standing in line to get the new iPhone were engineers. That is because marketers did an effective job of marketing it.  


But wait!  There's more!  The Droid has plenty of features, but it lacks the "cool factor" of the iPhone.  There is nothing logical about standing in line all night long to get a new phone. This brings up the importance of "emotions" in selling a product. 

More on that in my next post.

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

Bells and Whistles...from the Engineer's vantage point

Ask just about any engineer and s/he will tell you that they do not like "bells and whistles."  They are a bit disdainful when they use the term.  Features on a product are seen as unnecessary "fluff" added by marketing for no good reason.

When you look at what engineers do really well, it is developing clean designs, making them as simple as possible.  They want to design products that work well all the time with minimal downtime.  Features add complexity and often bugs.  Additionally, most people never  use the features.

Example....When was the last time you used a microwave to do more than reheat a cup of coffee or pop a bag of popcorn, however, most microwaves have dozens of features.  You can not sell one that only has two buttons: "Coffee" and "Popcorn."

Admittedly, most features are just "fluff" but to the marketer, they are very valuable.  More on that in the next installment.

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

Left Brained...Right Brained

Part of the problem for engineers who want to move into marketing is the old "Left Brained : Right Brained" dichotomy.  

We are all a combination of left and right brained traits, but engineers tend to be more left brained.  They are more detail oriented and logical.  They reason through things in a step-by-step fashion.  They see problems as a series of dots to be connected sequentially with a line between each dot.  If they were a fisherman, they would bait one hook, drop one line in the water and catch one fish.  They tend to play it safe and follow the rules.  They are practical.


Marketers tend to be more right brained.  They are big picture and intuitive.  They gather random information together and weave it into a solution.  If they were a fisherman, they would cast a net into the water and catch all sorts of fish.  They tend to take chances and bend the rules.  They are creative.


By now, you are probably thinking, "But we are talking about technical products.  Engineers need to be able to talk to engineers.  If the customer is left brained, shouldn't the salesman be left brained?"  It is true that the technology marketer must have a good technical aptitude, but I assert that "marketing is marketing."  A good marketer will know how to sell the product to the customer, whomever the customer may be.


A few examples will clarify this.

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

 

Let Marketers do the Marketing

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