5 things an engineer learned about PR and marketing

Eight months ago, my company opened the door to a new career path in the marketing and PR field and encouraged me to pursue it. I’ve always had a passion for understanding what makes people tick, and I relish the opportunity to learn about marketing and PR from my team.

But I quickly realized I had a lot to learn. Here are five observations thus far:

1. It ain’t just lollipops and rainbows

For outsiders, it seems that marketing is all about sunshine and happiness. “How hard can it be to make a video or rebrand a company?” Folks just see the creative element and believe that marketers do some of the “fluff” work. After being in this role, I can tell you that it ain’t all lollipops and rainbows.

A great deal of thoughtful analysis goes into campaigns, including detailed analysis of the people who may interact with campaigns; consideration of the ways consumers will interact with landing pages; A/B testing for very minor tweaks to messaging; and thoughtful creation of content to reach a very specific audience.

Possessing a background of math and science, I’m impressed by how much attention is paid to the numbers; marketing is every bit as focused on analytics as some engineering projects upon which I have worked.