2.  Coming back to face-to-face – and the value of top-of-mind branding! Surveys from UBM Publishing, MarketingSherpa, Hubspot, and our own research show a bit of a back to the future effect: face-to-face marketing, word of mouth, trade shows and colleague referrals are assuming new prominence (or returning to prominence!) in generating leads and driving brands. In fact, when we ask engineers what their #1 source of information is, it’s not search engines – it’s colleagues! That’s not to say search isn’t critical, of course. It’s just that people are so time stressed they rely on trusted co-workers to help them in the technology search, evaluation and selection process.

Here’s an interesting insight: a magazine editor at EDNtold me once that when he was a new engineer who needed to buy something, he remembers feeling like he had all the time in the world! He would create an elaborate matrix with 20 specs along the top and a dozen vendors down the side, and study which component he ought to purchase. Today, engineers have no time for such luxuries, so they ask the engineer in the next cube— not because they’re lazy, but because they’re pulled in too many directions. The meaning for marketers? If your brand is not the first one people think of in your market for your category, you’re going to lose out on these word-of-mouth referral conversations to the brand leaders in your space.