Question Page

How do you make copy engaging when marketing to a technical audience?

2 Answers
Ashley Faus
Atlassian Head of Lifecycle Marketing, PortfolioOctober 25

If you speak the language of your audience, they will be engaged!

I think it's a myth that technical topics are "boring" or "dry". These topics are VERY interesting to your technical audience, so mirroring their language on these topics is key.

A few tips to help:

  • Be specific.

    For example, I market to developers, so there's high overlap with interest in video games. The phrase "Level Up!" comes up as a marketing suggestion often. But what does "level up" actually mean? If you talk about leveling up a character in a video game, the game matters, which release of the video game matters, which character matters, and which spells/weapons/damage/visibility/etc. "level up" unlocks matters!

    Simply saying "level up" doesn't signal to the audience that you genuinely understand why they're trying to achieve by moving to the next level.

  • Quantify the impact.

    How much faster or more efficient? How many minutes or hours saved? What's the ROI? How many breaches prevented? It's not enough to say, "Ship faster" or "better performance". Most technical folks like to see the hard data, so quantifying the impact piques their interest.

  • Be concise.

    Sometimes marketers get into a narrative or prose mindset. We want to write a long story, describing each character, creating metaphors, and repeating the same information in slightly different ways.

    NO. Technical audiences want you to get to the point! Long-form copy or extended narratives tend to signal "created by a marketer" to this audience, so trim, trim, trim and share the core message.

1779 Views
Katharine Gregorio
Adobe Sr Director of Product Marketing, Creative CloudApril 18

Just because an audience is technical doesn't mean the messaging needs to be boring.

The core way to approach messaging is to understand as much as you can about your target - where they spend their time, what resonates with them, etc.

Once you have these insights and also have the positioning for your company or product you can then test your way into the messaging that will resonate the most by creating several iterations of the messaging and testing it with current or target users. You may (and likely will) find that what you think is different than what resonates so I'd encourage you to be open to whatever you find resonates.

Good luck!

1785 Views
Developing Your Product Marketing Career
Thursday, January 23 • 12PM PT
Developing Your Product Marketing Career
Virtual Event
Ilana Sacknovitz
Cynthia Akupue
Flor Ortiz
+74
attendees
Top Product Marketing Mentors
Mary Sheehan
Mary Sheehan
Adobe Head of Lightroom Product Marketing
Amanda Groves
Amanda Groves
Enable VP of Product Marketing
Michele Nieberding 🚀
Michele Nieberding 🚀
MetaRouter Director of Product Marketing
Jeffrey Vocell
Jeffrey Vocell
Panorama Education Head of Product Marketing
Jackie Palmer
Jackie Palmer
ActiveCampaign VP Product Marketing
Kevin Garcia
Kevin Garcia
Anthropic Product Marketing Leader
Sahil Sethi
Sahil Sethi
Freshworks Vice President - Global Product Marketing
Susan "Spark" Park
Susan "Spark" Park
Monzo Director of Product Marketing
Christine Sotelo-Dag
Christine Sotelo-Dag
Close Head of Product Marketing
Candace Marshall
Candace Marshall
Zendesk Senior Director of AI Product Marketing