Marketing for Growth in Engineering & Tech
Being in an Engineering and Technical environment for almost 40 years and having the opportunity to be part of Sales and Marketing in this milieu, something that I have experienced is that we, as Engineers and Technically orientated specialists, tend to view marketing as not being as value adding as generally believed to be.
I have pondered on this thought extensively, and in my view, the mindset that technical and engineering professionals have, stems from various reasons, and perhaps the main reason being on how we are wired to focus on solving complex technical problems, which then lead us to misjudging the role of marketing and communicating the value of our solutions.
The Engineering vs. Marketing Mindset
Our priorities are different. We focus on features, functionality, performance and facts. We work in a very "unbiased" environment, whereas marketing favours toward a "subjective" environment. Let's face it; a millimetre will stay a millimetre no matter how much you window dress it.
We need to understand the essentialness to recognize that marketing plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between the technical capabilities of a product and the customer's needs and expectations.
Changing Our Perspective
Our scepticism toward marketing will only change once we allow ourselves to fully understand the importance of displaying our products and solutions, thereby driving business growth and ultimately expanding our market share.
By fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of marketing within technical teams, you can create a more collaborative and effective approach to product marketing. We should adopt cross-functional collaboration and provide training to help engineers understand the value of marketing in driving business success.
Moving Forward Together
Let's rather encourage our Technical and Engineering fraternities to contribute to marketing initiatives, such as creating technical content, participating in product demos, or providing input on marketing materials than confining them to their objective, day to day routines of measuring, checking, verifying, rechecking.....the list goes on.
