Marketing is all about your message. How you say something is equally as important, if not more, than what you’re saying. That’s why you need to adapt your language and your tone to fit your audience.

If you’re dealing with highly technical customers – like engineers – then your communications should be up to the technical level that they’re used to. Otherwise, it just might feel like you’re speaking two different languages. You need to come across like someone within their industries who knows what they’re talking about. Since engineers can often be the decision makers at their company on what products to use, you must convince them more than anyone else that you offer a quality product or service.

Some marketers talk instead about simplifying engineering content, about making it understandable to the layman.  Actually, at GGC we do the opposite: we take engineering content and keep it at an engineer-to-engineer level. While layman’s language may be the right strategy if you’re communicating in a B2C environment, in the B2B world, the technical buyer understands complexity and needs that complexity in order to make the right buying or spec decision.  So we must be able to communicate at their level.

I’ll admit that I’m a fan of industry studies. Among my favorites are the surveys conducted by publishers to document how engineers learn about new products and where they go to buy them. In an era of growing ecommerce, Amazon and other dramatic shifts in how companies market to engineers and other technical buyers, keeping in front of these trends is rather critical.

So, with gratitude to several engineer-focused publishers who share our interest in digital marketing trends, here are some highlights from a variety of studies we’ve seen recently.

1. Perhaps at the top of the list is the explosive impact Amazon is having in the b-to-b market. We’ve talked about it coming for several years. Now Amazon has gone from no where two years ago to a whopping 38% of electronic engineers reporting they buy products on Amazon for work-related purchases. It’s even more pronounced among younger engineers, as you’d expect: 55% of younger engineers report using Amazon.
   
   What it Means: If you don’t have an Amazon Prime store on Amazon, get one. Before the end of the day.
   
   

Can You Sell to Millennial Engineers on the Phone? 

Recently we’ve had some discussion here at the agency about the use of tele-sales, and whether that time has passed. Is it possible to reach people and sell on the phone anymore?  Is – gasp – cold calling still something to task salespeople to do?

We still believe that cold calling and phone selling has its place. In fact, we know of several clients that use call centers as their primary selling channel.

However, we also believe that cold calling and telesales is the single most costly method of selling.  It reminds me of an old McGraw Hill Publishing ad in which a grumpy prospect looked directly into the camera and asked, “I don’t know your company. I don’t know your products.  I don’t know your reputation.  Now, what was it you wanted to sell me?” 

The point of the ad, of course, is to remind marketers that you can certainly sell to someone who knows nothing about you, but it’s always going to be quite a bit easier to push that boulder up the hill if you walk in the door with some brand awareness and even preference already established.

Still, some companies are making it even harder for marketers to use the phone.  JPMorgan Chase and Coca-Cola recently eliminated voice mail for many employees as part of cost-cutting moves; others are considering similar initiatives. Vonage released a study showing annual declines in the number of voice mails left on their systems, and the number who even listened to their messages fell by 14%. In another story about voice mail, NPR interviewed a 26-year-old who said that “voice mail might evolve into something kind of special and exciting – like a telegram once was.” Oh my god!