jr conlin's ink stained banana

Hi there Marketing Folks! It's sure been a while hasn't it?

Well, congrats on discovering that a vibrant section of your target audience are a bunch of shy, smart folks with great heaping wads of disposable income. Yep, geeks are suddenly cool. Those loners you used to tease because their hair was no where near as big as yours are now an interesting metric, aren't they?

Ok, it's been a bit since my post about how your target audience isn't who you think it is, so let me talk a bit about how to market to geeks. And when i use that term, i mean the sort of folk, who like myself, have spent far too much of their time sitting in front of a keyboard staring at a screen and whistfully remember youthful days of working out the finer points of technology you're going to be using in about three years. Surprise! The folks you couldn't understand in high school are now your preferred demographic. So, how do you, successful go-getter with a fresh MBA successfully synergisate to provide them radical empowermental buying opportunities?

Here's a few things you've been missing:

1. Geeks don't like you.
   Really. They don't. In fact, here, let me provide you with an example.
   
   Yeah, that's pretty much how geeks tend to react to most marketing types.

   You see, they remember the fact that you stood them up at the dance, stuffed them into lockers and stole their lunch money. They remember the fact that your buddies passed them buy at the car dealer. What's more they blame you for ruining their favorite toys.

   So, why the hostility issues?

2. Geeks are trained to be highly critical and suspicious.
   Maybe they got taken on one too many snipe hunts in college. Maybe they took one too many logic class. Maybe they fell in love with MST3K. Thing is, if you tell them that X is fantastic and a real opportunity, they're not going to believe you.

   Now, this isn't like the usual "hard sell" where you toss out meaningless metrics and razzle dazzle in order to win them over, whatever metrics you provide will be analyzed, examined in detail, compared against other accumulated metrics, re-analyzed, discussed, debated, counter-debated, placed before a peer review committee, posted for comment on slash-dot, and generally beaten to death with it's own percentile until any minor flaw or "half-truth" is discovered. Yes, they will do this. Yes, they will have the time and will power to do so.

   That's because:

3. Geeks are highly social creatures
   This is probably the hardest thing for non-geeks to understand. "If they're so damn social, how come you don't see them gathering?" They do, but much like baby pigeons, you don't see them. You're not invited, or simply don't go. Geeks gather in forums, they attend tech conferences and seminars, they play video games against each other, and they generally hang out online. A geek can sit, alone, (yes, in his parent's basement) and be surrounded by fellow geeks also sitting alone generally not interacting with non-geeks. Just because they're not talking to you doesn't mean they're anti-social. So, why aren't they talking to you?
4. You can never talk to a geek.
   Well, ok, you can try. Remember though, i've kinda already pointed out that geeks are shy, reclusive, hypercritical creatures, so walking up to one and asking them if they'd like to try a moisturizer isn't going to work. You'll have slightly better luck trying to sell that stuff to a passing Yeti.

   There are two ways to start a dialog with a geek, but the sure-fire way to do it is to let the geek start talking to you. Do something that gets their attention. Avoid the hard sell, or heck, don't do the sell at all. Show them what your product does and let them play with it. That's how you get them interested in whatever it is.

   The other way is to talk the same language. Crack jokes between yourselves about screwing with object models just to mess with folks. (like the time you subclassed 1 to add a method called asInt() and got a guy convinced that it was the only way to get past strict typing. Oh, wait… yeah, you better do more than just know the pitch points for your products.) Remember how i said that geeks hyper-analyze things? It's fun for them. You'd also better be able to talk about any problem they had and offer suggestions about how to fix it. Bonus points if you file the bug while they watch.

5. Geeks love to argue.
   Really, they love mentally sparing against someone and spend days hashing and rehashing points. They live to look past the hand-waving and ask the questions you don't want them to. They will ask endless questions about trivial details and methodologies that you don't think are important because you've failed to explain them sufficiently.

   You have to be willing to spend time on these debates because they frequently tag-team. One geek starts the debate, another joins in, and the first geek leaves meaning you have to re-explain the minor details that the second didn't hear only to begin with the third that just showed up.

   The worst thing you can do is dismiss a concern, or bluster or try to bully the geek. Or (God forbid) waste their time, because:

6. If you annoy a geek, you will never have another chance.
   Again, this isn't like ticking off a customer and having them leave the restaurant. It's more like ticking off the customer and having them figure out a method of survival that doesn't involve eating, is cheaper, easier, and over-all preferable to what you have, and setting up a stand outside your restaurant handing out free pamphlets detailing how to do it.

   These folks run adblockers, custom spam filters, and run pages through scripts to strip out everything but what they want to see. They backhole hosts so that it is literally impossible for you to reach them, regardless of what you try. They add you to lists so that friends, family and anyone who's computer they touch also blackhole you. Your company ceases to exist to them, forever.

7. Geeks have very long memories.
   Very– long memories. They don't forgive or forget. Well, actually they do. They forget about you. These are expert wall builders. They have no trouble at all cutting you off and never even telling you why. "A little mistake" is often a huge deal for them, particularly if you've betrayed the trust they had in dealing with you. (Remember, shy, retiring creatures that got stuffed into lockers and beat up a lot.) You go from "friend" to "threat" as quickly as it can take to type "echo yourcompany.com localhost >> /etc/hosts"

So, there you have it. Avoid the traps, do the right things and you win. Simple, huh?

Yeah, there's an obvious solution to this that only a few companies seem to get.

No, i'm not going to spell it out for you.

It's because you're not geeky enough to figure it out for yourself.