Engineering

Marketing CEOs vs Engineering CEOs

There are pros and cons to both/either.

Pros:
Marketing CEOs might be more likely to inspire market/customer orientation, differentiation, and brand equity focus.  This kind of leadership might seek to inspire cooperation and collaboration across departments.

Engineering CEOs may empower development teams to be more creative, have more power, and reduce “feature creep”.  This kind of leadership might be more organized and measured.

Cons:
Marketing CEOs might put too much fluff into products, and not truly enable disruptive innovation.  This kind of leader may also have trouble leading engineers, and other technical types.

Engineering CEOs may invest too heavily in non-market-driven ideas and be inclined to ignore customer needs in favor of their own ideas.  This kind of leader may be too rigid for creative types.

Which am I?
Early in my career I would say I was definitely an Engineering CEO.  I had a vision where I wanted to go; and the market be damned (disruptive technology is like that).  Now, I lean more towards Marketing CEO… with a tighter focus on customer/market, and more faith in the power of brand.  However, having experience in both, I think I also have a good ability to know when to be which.  I can work with engineers or creative types equally well, and see a disruptive idea (and support it) when needed.

Best of both worlds? 🙂

Engineers hate “Pre-launch” activity.

Never tell an engineer that you are doing “pre-launch” marketing.  You will get anger, pleading, and hatred in ways you cannot imagine.  Why is this?  Why do engineers hate “pre-release” marketing activities?  And why do marketers love it?

Engineers hate it for an obvious reason: “what if that feature doesn’t work or live up to the hype?”  Fear of under-delivering is a healthy fear for your engineers, but it is also irrational.  If the product under-delivers, you’ve got bigger problems, usually, than the fact that you made bigger promises early.  My advice: deliver! Also commonly, engineers can’t understand the need for pre-launch buzz and hype. 
Marketers want pre-launch buzz and hype.  Why?  Three simple (and one sad) reason.
1. Sad reason: because many don’t know how to add much value in “pre-launch” phase.  It’s sad because there is much that can be done: competitive analysis, pricing studies, etc.  Those are not the sexy parts of marketing however, so they get “not done”, and pre-launch becomes the exciting focus.
2. Simple Reason: Economics.  Increase demand!  If you can get an early start on “creating unfulfilled demand” than when the product does launch, there will be a rush to buy and be proud you got one!
3. Simple Reason: Measure Demand.  If you do the buzz marketing, and get no buzz… you may have an issue (or need to tweak your marketing/positioning).
4. Simple Reason: Press.  Getting press involved early means getting 2 stories instead of just 1.  Without a pre-launch story, all you get (often) is the “launch” story.
Now get out there and “pre-launch” something!

Got Marketing Questions? I’ll answer them here!

I know a lot of my blog readers already are marketers… but I would welcome questions from you or anyone.  Feel free to be specific with your situation/example.  If I’ve ever encountered a problem like yours (likely) I will answer it with an example from my past.  Are you an engineer-type?  My answers will be logical (hopefully), and use an engineering problem-solving methodology.   So, ask away.  Comment below, or message me… I’d love to learn more about your specific marketing challenges.  And remember, Marketing INCLUDES product design and development… so those questions are welcome too!

Engineers should NOT start a business.

I’ll say it again, Engineers should NOT start a business… unless they are prepared to run a business. So many people I meet are hungry to “have no boss” and “work on what they want”, that they forget that to start a business is to run a business. If you are not willing to “work on stuff that needs doing”, then starting a business is probably a very bad idea.

Consider the ideal case. You are an engineer. You love doing engineering. You start a business that is just consulting your engineering skills.

  1. Do you think you will always be able to pick and choose your contracts? -Wrong. You work on what the client wants… and if jobs are scare, you take work where you can get it.
  2. Do you really think you have no boss?  -Wrong. The client is the boss.
  3. No accounting? -Wrong. You now track hours, expenses, invoices, etc.
  4. No sales? -Wrong. You have to sell yourself for every bid.
  5. No marketing? -Wrong. Every client is a Word-of-mouth marketer for you.
So… by “starting even the simplest business”, you’ve just made a bunch of work that you probably don’t like doing.  You’ve just created a bunch of bosses where you used to have only 1.  And now you are working harder than ever.  So why do it?
1 word: Profit.
The reason you work harder, you do the extra yicky work, etc. is because you can charge WAY MORE than you were before.  As a variable resource, people will pay more for your services. You just have to keep the pipeline of work filled and you will rake in the extra 25-50% due a contractor/consultant.
If you are starting a business for more “freedom”, you might get some… but Profit is a far better reason.

Marketing is WAY harder than Engineering

I’ve written on this topic before, but I just thought it would be worth a mention again.  I do think Marketing is harder/more challenging than Engineering, and I’m starting to think I understand why…

  1. Marketers have to figure out “what” to build… Engineers figure out how to build it.
  2. Marketers have to choose what to say, and when to say it… Engineers get to stay quiet in public.
  3. Marketers have to figure out why something isn’t selling well… Engineers get to work on the next thing.
  4. Marketers stress over business success and deadlines… Engineers fret over deadlines (sometimes).
  5. Marketers micro-optimize the un-measurable… Engineers optimize the measurable.
  6. Marketers have to deal with shifts in culture, business, and fashion… Engineers work with laws of physics.
Having been (and loved being) an Engineer, I can also make 1 more statement that I think perhaps most interesting of all….
Engineers get to see, daily, their progress and fruits of labor… they are appreciated for it.
Marketers often can’t see the effects of their work at all… and many question a Marketers value.
So, pat a Marketing guy on the back next time you see one… believe me, they are likely stressing more than you are!

Video: Engineers Make Better Business People, because they MEASURE!

I have a strong core belief that (if they wanted to) Engineers (and other mathematically trained professionals) would make better business people than “business graduates” or MBAs.  An Engineer-MBA is the best combination, because they learn the MBA lingo, but not the bad habits.

Watch the video to see WHY I think Engineers make better business people, and what you can do about it.

Measuring Marketing: An Engineering Challenge.

Engagement is quite the word.  It means getting in touch, getting together, and the promise of a union.  To Marketers, this means getting attention.  In 2010, Marketers find Engagement to be their #1 priority.  But what will they do with this engagement?  How can we measure its effect.  Show me the money!

Engineers and Scientists have striven for hundreds of years to go about measuring things.  Measurement and observation are the keys to enlightenment.  Modeling comes next, followed by theory, and then sometimes law.  So why then do Marketers have so many theories, and so few models?  Where are the measurements?  The answer is troubling and disheartening.  Marketing, alas, is no science, yet science shall be its salvation.

My journey into Marketing through my new company Karmaback and beyond, is leading to answers we engineer-type business folks have sought for decades.  The struggle between marketing science and art WILL come to a head in our lifetimes, and maybe Karmaback will bring it there.

The $600 Billion question: does engagement lead to marriage?
E.g. can marketing lead to sales?

New look/feel of Tytus-Blog.

After analyzing Google Analytics, and feedback from people who read my Blog, I’ve discovered that an apparent bias I have towards “Engineers” as better than normal folk comes through a bit too loudly. In fact, it’s not “entirely” untrue, as it relates to how many normal folk view problems. Reality is though, that I truly do value diversity. Diversity of thought, diversity of opinion, and especially diversity of viewpoint.

With that in mind, I’ve renamed the blog “Tytus’ Business for Engineer-type Brains.”, with the hope that it help not just engineers, and people who think like engineers, but also all the diversity of other personality types out there who would simply like to know “how engineer-type brains” think.

With the new theme, and the new “black” (easier to read) look, I hope that EVERY ONE OF YOU will subscribe to this feed over RSS or via Blogspot follow, or similar.

Enjoy,
Harlan

Engineers don’t have a clue what Marketers do… but would be better than Marketers at it.


In fact, most engineers I know have very little respect for marketers, and think that they don’t “do” anything.

If anything, engineers, and lets face it, much of the “non-marketing workforce”, think Marketers are about ‘making advertisements’. You know the TV spots, the Web Banners, and that stuff.

Well Engineers with experience do have a sense that there is another side to marketing that is SUPPOSED to be there, namely the inbound marketing function (or product marketing). However, engineers have been so burned by this concept, so left “dry” and “hanging” by product marketing concepts, that many are left feeling that Marketers don’t DO anything…

The funny thing is that if Engineering knew what Product Marketers were supposed to be doing: they would do a VERY fine job of it, and perhaps be better than most marketers at it.

I will explain why Marketers are struggling in a second, but first, here are a few of the functions of “inbound”/product marketing that engineers would knock out of the park and why:

1.) Surveys. Why? Because engineers can learn how to craft unbiased surveys, cull the data into actionable information, and summarize it all in a usuable format… its second nature for engineers.

2.) Customer Interviews. Why? Because engineers are usually less “fake seeming” than marketers, and would take DETAILED notes and then… SHOCKINGLY, cull the data into actionable information.

3.) Product Features & Feature Details. Why? Because engineers KNOW the pain of not having detailed information about a desired feature. Also because they will undoubtedly understand ‘realisim’ as well as ‘what IS possible’… and tie it together in a nice, well documented, fully culled feature set.

So, why are marketers supposedly so bad?

Short answer: “culling the data” into ‘actionable information’. This skill takes patience, confidence, and frankly, engineering talent to pull off… and you have to be willing to put in the work, learn statistics, and believe you are right.

Many marketers may “do these things”, but fail to deliver the results in any meaningful way.

To my marketing friends (some of whom follow this blog), do not despair. YOU CAN do it. You just have to take the time, and for goodness sakes… if you’ve done some research… do yourself a favor: present it with the feature set (on the Marketing Requirements Document: MRD), and earn yourself some credibility with the folks that do the REAL work!

Engineers make better models of business.


The reason is simple. Engineers understand not only the idea of a “dependent variable” and an “independent variable”, but its practical use.

For example, an engineering business model would undoubtedly have a page full of seemingly “independent” variables which control the actual income statement/cash flows/and so forth. How do I know this? Because I’ve made dozens of such models myself, and undeniably people are amazed and appreciative that on one page of the spreadsheet they can see all the variables that (when changed) cause an effect to the master model.

But engineers are (hopefully) wise enough to know that just because a “model” has seemingly independent variables… it is likely and almost certain that many of these variables are not independent at all.

A simple example I will use from a business model I crafted recently. By the way, if it doesn’t roll into a full set of Income Statement, Cash Flows, and Balance Sheet, then its an incomplete model for Business (this is one of the things engineers often miss, and stop at the revenue/cost model).

Here is the example:
I want to model how I am going to acquire customers. For this, I assume that I will advertise. I assume that my cost to “expose” a customer to my product is A (e.g. Google is about 10cents). I then assume that it takes B exposures to gain an interested lead. I then assume that C% of interested leads become paying customers… yielding the following ‘dependent’ variable:

“Cost to acquire a customer” = A * B * C

Engineers are fine with this math, and then quickly fill out a line for “Marketing Expense” in the Income Statement, based on the number of customers I wish to acquire, and maybe even get so complex as to write a routine that “balances the budget” for 5% growth of customers… or some-such.

Of course, Engineers also know that this seeming dependency is only as good as the assumptions behind it… and that reality may be far from this. For example, is it true that a % of customers will convert? Is it true that the cost to gain interest are ‘fixed’? In fact, having been in management, I can say undoubtedly this model is not at all close to ‘reality’…

Nevertheless, it does give a good base starting point (one heck of a good one), especially because with this model, you can see the effect of any changing assumptions in the model. For example, what if it costs $1 to expose a customer!!! EEK!

So, engineers do make better models of business, hopefully know they are wrong… and experienced entrepreneurs know how and when to use these models.

Hint: Don’t use these models to ‘predict’ customer growth, only to estimate Marketing Expense!!! Customer growth has FAR too many variables to rely just on advertising!