No matter where you look around in today’s world, you use things that were conceived and built by engineers. There were engineering-minded thinkers in ancient times like Archimedes and Leonardo da Vinci. industrial age thinkers like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford built on their ideas, to manufacture many things that improved the quality of our daily lives. Since then, engineers like Alan Turing, Thomas Watson and David Packard ushered in an electronic revolution that gave us the technology that makes possible the communication we’re having right now.
Engineers are great. But, they are also a breed apart. They have a stereotype of being way too exacting for most people’s liking. They put a new spin on the proverbial glass half-full or half empty debate. While the Pessimist says “The glass is half empty” and the Optimist says “The glass is half full,” The Engineer does some measuring and pronounces “The glass is exactly twice the size that it needs to be.”
They also have a reputation for being notoriously tough to market to. Today’s guest knows how to reach engineers, and in her 2020 book Content Marketing, Engineered, she gives us a formula so we can reach them as well.
Wendy Covey is a co-founder of TREW Marketing, an Austin, TX-based agency that serves technical industries such as engineering design and hardware manufacturing. Prior to starting the agency in 2008 Wendy produced global marketing and services programs at National Instruments. Another side of Wendy you should know about is how she loves outdoor recreations – in fact she is the current holder of a Texas fishing record.
People/Products/Concepts Mentioned in Show
Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm
SWOT Analysis:
- Strengths
- Weaknesses
- Opportunities
- Threats
- Influencers like Walt Mossberg, Leo Laporte and Robert Scoble
- Foreword to the book written by former HubSpot COO JD Sherman
- Wendy’s profile on LinkedIn and resources like the State of Marketing to Engineers Research Report, available on the TREW Marketing agency’s site.
- Wendy’s podcast Content Marketing, Engineered
Episode Reboot
Figure from Wendy’s book (used with permission) showing channels where engineers prefer to get their content. Note how high YouTube and LinkedIn are on the list.
