Marketing does not have a good press in “engineering companies”!
Often associated with what is perceived as the excesses of mainstream marketing or the lies of advertising, the word itself is sometimes explosive. Common expressions such as “we don’t sell yoghurt or peas” or “it’s all marketing” bear witness to this. When a high-tech engineer says “it’s all marketing”, he has said it all about the esteem in which he holds mainstream marketing.
The word marketing is associated with advertising and worse, basically with lying, which is fundamentally at odds with the ethics of the engineer who is asked to establish reliable scientific or technical truths.
However, if we restore the word marketing to its original meaning of “all the practices that ensure the success of products on their markets”, it can be perfectly applied to the world of technology companies, provided that the approaches used are not solely modelled on those of the general public and that they give full scope to technology.
The goal: product/market success
So, whether one prefers to avoid the overly connoted word “marketing” by preferring the expression “product/market success” or whether one agrees to use and promote it internally, in the end it does not matter. The main thing is to understand the specific product/market problems of technical companies, to make people understand what approaches and experiences from “classic” strategy and marketing can contribute and to use the useful concepts in an appropriate way.
We prefer to use the terms “technology marketing” or “techno-marketing” to show both the relationship of this discipline with the concepts and tools of strategy or marketing and the profound difference in applying them to the particular world of technology.
Techno-marketing objectives
One can therefore decide whether or not to use the word marketing in the B2B/B2G high-tech company, depending on whether or not one appreciates the possibility of making it clear internally what it is about.
It is essentially about analysis and action in two areas, whatever you want to call them:
- To break down the overall strategy of a business into finer granularity, that of market segments, and to define for each market segment what the market strategy is and what the product strategy is, including what the product and service offering is. This area is generally referred to as “marketing strategy” or “strategic marketing”.
- Supporting the commercial action in the field with promotion and communication: this area is generally called “operational marketing”.
So let’s use the word marketing in technology or not, but let’s practice its essential activities effectively!
