Marketing got engineer’d!
Be an engineer to become a successful marketer…
Now that you have managed to discover this post and are reading it, I presume you are no foreigner to online ads, campaigns, posts, tweets, and apps. Let us say you are an “exposed”, savvy surfer…
Marketing — the way you like it!
Back in the day, when marketing was in its original form, a marketer would either do sales or show advertisements to you on TV or a magazine. Today, you hate them both. Don’t you?
Over a period of time, you have acquired sophisticated consumption tastes and trust issues, expecting Today’s marketer to be bloody damn good at all the below:
- Story telling
- Technology (Beyond being Minimal — HTML & CSS)
- Data segmentation and analysis
- Design
Starbucks @Tweet-a-coffee campaign
— An engineering marvel (here)
Let us say, you are the one planning the currently trending twitter campaign of Starbucks @tweetacoffee. Your workflow would look something like this:
- Technology: Sync up users’ credit card, Twitter and Starbucks accounts
- Data: Set up a sophisticated analytics dashboard to track the first 100,000 users who link their accounts with their Visa cards
- Technology again: An incentive algorithm that sends a $5 gift card based on users’ actions
- Content & Design: Create a funky promotional web video and an email campaign
- Analysis: Measure the success of the campaign on metrics like reach, purchases and loyalty
This is what I am talking about. What was earlier possible with just charisma and attitude, now, requires skills & aptitude. Therefore, a traditional marketer may no longer be sufficient to drive marketing.
Engineers who fit the bill
Why are engineers an ideal choice for marketing? The way I see it, engineers are wired to think in a certain way. John Coleman, CEO of The VIA Agency, a full service marketing and advertising agency in the US, stole the words from my mouth, highlighting the inherent characteristics of an engineer that fit marketing like a T.
“First, engineers are always taught that there is a better and simpler way of doing everything. Just apply this attitude to advertising.
Second, engineers are often tech-obsessed geeks, so when the Internet started changing everything about marketing, engineers found it thrilling versus petrifying.
Third, engineers are trained to be data-driven. So in this era of big data, having a quantitative-heavy education makes analyzing insights from information a concept that’s not foreign.”
Deep inside, engineers have it in them to drive great marketing.
Engineers who broke the path
Today, storytelling plays a very important role in marketing, driving content, social and inbound strategies. Now, as convincing as it is, to think that engineers can handle technology and data pretty well, there is always an iota of doubt about their storytelling abilities.
Sir Alfred Hitchcock
If you knew that Alfred Hitchcock — the best story teller ever born — was an engineer who went to London County Council School of Engineering and Navigation, would it help in making up your mind?
Now moving on to Today…..a few great, follow-worthy marketers.
April Dunford
Follow her @aprildunford
She is a startup marketer, helps numerous startups achieve marketing success and shares ready to implement tactics, here on her blog http://www.rocketwatcher.com/
If you are a startup, don’t miss out on this gold.
Dave Mclure
Follow him @DaveMcClure
A computer science engineer. Ex-Marketing Director of Paypal, and Simply Hired. Now, the co-founder of 500 startups. Know more here
Nikesh Arora
He is the Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer, at Google. Oversees marketing and partnerships.
Johnna Marcus
Follow her @johnnasmarcus
She is the Director of Mobile & Digital Store Marketing at Sephora
Having sung the praises of these digital marketing engineers (See Wikipedia definition here), let us face it - Though they exist, they are very few in number.
Engineering means way more than HTML & CSS
There are tools available in the market that compensate for a marketers’ inadequacy in doing HTML, CSS coding, analytics and data segmentation.
Unbounce, KissMetrics, Shopify, WordPress, Google web designer, Moz etc.
But the limiting reality is they are basic and engineering is not a minimum viable proposition. These tools do not think and strategize. For instance, if the same @tweet-a-coffee campaign had to be run with just these tools at disposal, the job is only half done.
Marketing now takes an engineer, a marketer and an end user — preferably, all in one.
Marketing — as on date
I have 2 key observations that conclude this post.
- Disproportionate to the need, very few startups and enterprises have gotten serious about driving an engineering-led-marketing culture, right from the hiring point. Most of the traditional agencies, non-tech enterprises and others are yet to realize the need.
- With too little supply in the market, there is a huge demand for digital marketing engineers.
P.S. I am an engineer by background, marketer by profession.
