In a recent BtoB magazine feature "Connecting With Engineers", author Roger Slavens points out the need to get away from the stereotype of the geeky engineer.



Slavens quoted results from McClenahan Bruer Communications' 2005 survey "Breaking the Code: A Look At Engineers' Attitudes and Behaviors". Slavens still seemed to advocate treating engineers in a general way, even after considering what he called their 'deeper psychographics'.

Terms like 'psychographics' drive me ballistic. Even if you're going 'deeper', they're just another way to pigeonhole people. But discover prospects' biggest worries, and you have the heart of a campaign on a silver platter. You need those specific problems just to plan a product, long before you offer your specific solution. Survey data doesn't begin to tell the whole story.

How do you find out your prospect's problems, the ones they lose sleep over?

You gotta talk to 'em!

BE SPECIFIC

I was disturbed enough to respond to the feature's excerpt in McClenahan Bruer's blog:

"Broad surveys tell you things like affinity for Star Trek and preference for friends with technical backgrounds. But they don't give you the specifics of the biggest problems an engineer faces."

A RESPECTED INTERVIEWER GETS CRITICAL ANSWERS

I added, "Interviews with the client's customers or field applications experts many times will reveal the big problem I can build an article or case study around. The emotional factors come out, too.

When you want to understand a prospect, there's no substitute for an interviewer the subject trusts. An interviewer with a technical background like the customer's can find out things surveys won't tell you.

Surveys can establish broad strokes, but specific information about your target market shows you what a prospect really needs. Most technical advertising is too generally focused, and many ads are unmeasurable. Claude Hopkins wrote about the importance of providing service tailored to the prospect's specific needs in his classic 'Scientific Advertising' in the 1920s. He also was among the first to measure response to a campaign. Many manufacturers today ignore his principles."

YOU CAN'T TALK TO ALL OF THEM

McBru's Senior Communications Counselor Jeff H. brought up the impossibility of interviewing every engineer:

"In reference to your post about whether to rely on surveys or not, do you think that b-to-b technology marketers should interview each engineer with whom they're communicating before embarking on a communications campaign of some sort?

Obviously, individual interviews can help color an entire integrated marketing campaign with application examples (for example). But wouldn't it be inefficient to interview each and every target before planning, say, an online advertising campaign? That's one instance in which surveys come in handy."

BUT INTERVIEWS FIND OUT WHAT THE CUSTOMER VALUES MOST

I agreed on the impossibility of talking to every engineer. But "...talking with the client's FAEs [field applications engineers], or one of the client's primary customers reveals what the customer values most. A trusted interviewer gets answers a focus group or survey never could.

Those specific answers are the key to that conversation with the prospect any successful campaign needs, online or in print.

Last year I spoke with a fastener distributor to research copy for a postcard promo. I discovered the most important benefit was on-time delivery of what was actually ordered to customers like Fender Musical Instruments. That was not one of the benefits I'd guessed before the interview. The marketing agency I was working with hadn't discovered it either."

DISCOVER AND ENTER THE CONVERSATION

I continued, "Granted, a product's customers won't give you every answer you need for a promotion. Survey data give you the broad outline. But it comes down to a specific conversation your marketing piece has with the prospect. You need to talk to enough prospects or the client's customer contact people (or both) to understand what that conversation should be."

Jeff responded:

"Couldn't agree more. That's why I like working solely with b-to-b technology clients and am a big proponent of customer reference programs. Both give you the opportunity to talk to all types of folks involved in making the tech industry hum."

Jeff's reply still left the feeling of a generic agency approach. If you don't know your customer well enough to zero in on his worst problem, your marketing won't reach him.

It's all about the conversation. Enter the prospect's world, that talk they're having with themselves about their biggest problem, and you'll get their undivided attention.