What effect does good or bad marketing have on the buying process for technologists?

I think it can have a profound effect on buyers. Good marketing is engaging with the prospect about the things i.e. content that is important and vital to them and can better enable and educate them to make an informed decision. Bad marketing is that which is vendor focused - all about product, feature and functionality.

Understanding that marketing plays a key role in the development of content (in conjunction with sales) for every stage of the buyers journey, it is key that they market well and develop the relevant and timely content. Those who do not will quickly be ruled out.

Carlos Hidalgo
@cahidalgo

In addition to the great answers by Andrew and Carlos, I would add "brand management" as a key aspect of the marketing process. Case in point - HP.

At the technical level, what has happened at HP over the last couple of years probably has little or no effect on the technical buying process. Engineers and architects are looking at the value propositions of HP through a set of technical (including all the life cycle elements) lenses/filters. Other than the latest hoopla between HP and Oracle over Itanium support, there's probably not much marketing stuff that will change their view one way or another on the technical merits of HP's products.

Moving upstream, IT managers and CIOs are probably a little more concerned - mostly from the perspective of product strategies and ongoing support. For example, if I've chosen HP laptops as my standard corporate productivity platform, then the last few months have probably been a little unsettling. And the hoopla between HP and Oracle is probably disruptive - especially if I am an Itanium user. And then the question of long term stability comes into play.

If I'm a CxO and am highly dependent on HP as a product or service provider, or if I'm a successful HP channel partner, then I'm probably wondering what the heck is going on and when HP is going to get its act together. So in this instance, it can be pretty unnerving and will probably have an effect on my buying/partnership strategy going forward.

So, again, what does this have to do with marketing? The messaging aspect and brand awareness/management elements of marketing are critical at all levels within the buying hierarchy. More so in some levels than others, but still very important. But at the "technologist" level, as described in your question, I don't think the extremes of good and bad marketing will significantly sway the buying decision - unless those extremes are *really* extreme...

More generally, decision making is the cognitive process of Marketers these days are all “We don’t own the brand, consumers own the brand” and I couldn’t disagree more. It is the mission of marketers to organize and direct the conversation around their products, selecting a course of action from among multiple alternatives. Common examples include shopping and deciding what to eat. Decision making is said to be a psychological construct. This means that although we can never "see" a decision, we can infer from observable behaviour that a decision has been made. Therefore we conclude that a psychological event that we call "decision making" has occurred. It is a construction that imputes commitment to action. That is, based on observable actions, we assume that people have made a commitment to effect the action

I believe that the answer entirely depends on what kind of technology solutions we're talking about. The big boys that deal with machines and software (i.e. Microsoft, Apple, HP, etc.) battle it out with each other,but even within that structure the right solution entirely depends on what it is solving.

If you're talking about the heart of technology, the carrier level solutions other than mobile, there is precious little to no marketing or advertising done at all, with the exception of AT&T. The other carriers, or CLEC's (i.e. Windstream, XO, etc.) don't do hardly any progressive marketing at all (TV or print ads, etc) but rely entirely on their outside sales staffs to get the word out and close deals. This makes it very difficult on the salesperson to create prospects and close sales...but then their pricing is more competitive than the incumbents (AT&T).

The flip side of the coin is that this marketing (basically word of mouth) has worked very well, generally speaking, over the years. Even AT&T, who terminated their outside sales efforts 2-3 years ago have brought them back into the picture to actively market their services at the field level. What is happening in the service provider arena is that, since 2008 and the current recession, the smaller CLEC's have lost so much ground that many are either closing or consolidating offices in large markets (i.e. XO) or selling out to healthier CLEC's, such as the case with Windstream gobbling up NUVOX and Paetec in the last two years.

I guess the bottom line is that marketing is a vital element of any business whether it is done on a large scale such as TV or widespread print exposure or on a smaller scale by way of word of mouth and active cold call prospecting. The key is the quality of the solution in any case. You can dress a sow up and call her Sally but she's still a pig.

As a technologist who has been exposed to good, bad, and horrid marketing over the past 45 years...

Good marketing is whatever proposes a solution for problems that I have, whether real or perceived. It engages and educates me. The time spent is valuable to me and the vendor.

Bad marketing is whatever proposes a solution in search of a problem to solve. Often, I would need to educate the vendor. It wastes my time.

Horrid marketing is condescending or just plain incorrect. (A good example is a "HIPAA compliant" security appliance. There is no such thing.) There is no knowledge transfer possible. It wastes my and the vendor's time.

I think good marketing can have a very powerful influence - though I rarely see examples of this good marketing. Instead, I find myself snickering at most technology marketing efforts because they are so condescending, simplistic, inaccurate, or outright misleading. This "bad marketing" is so omnipresent that I don't think it causes much harm at all. It gets written off as the "nature of the beast" and most folks simply ignore it or dismiss it - deferring to the list I provided at the beginning of this answer.

This is an interesting question. Marketing can serve a variety of purposes. The first is to create awareness, image, and perception. This is true for technology buyers as well as general consumers. Marketing can "create a market" or demand where none existed before. Apple comes to mind as being masterful in this area. As a technologist, I shy away from overblown hype and remember many examples of promises that went unfulfilled. Did anything ever really come from IMS (Integrated Multimedia Subsystems) and did anyone - other than the vendors on the bandwagon - really care? On the other hand, creating awareness of products and services or new families of these is helpful. That gets to the second part of marketing. After creating "the market," it needs to be followed up with details, examples, FAQs, and other resources that help to demonstrate real needs and issues crying out for solutions. At the end of the day, I can learn as much from bad marketing - such as who I want to stay away from - as I can from high quality effective marketing.