[hnick]

I think it's less narrow mindedness and more of the engineering mindset that deals with the tangible, the literal, the quantifiable, and the possible.

From that perspective, if you are not lying in your marketing, then you must just be telling truths about your product. So what's wrong with just writing the features and letting us decide instead of adding all the flowery weasel words?

Obviously this doesn't work for most people. Long feature lists can even be a turn off. But I think software people often see products through the lens of what it can do instead of how it makes them feel. That is the hurdle I think a lot of us have to get over because we are so used to writing code to make programs do things and not to make people feel things (I can't imagine how that unit test looks).

[walrus01]

> So what's wrong with just writing the features and letting us decide instead of adding all the flowery weasel words?

From the perspective of an engineer this works really well if your target market is also engineers, in a very clearly defined vertical market for a highly technical product. Such as components for UAVs or DWDM transport systems.

Some engineers choose specifically to work for companies in a niche field because they find it easier and less stressful to also deal with customers who are their respective companies' subject matter experts on the subsystem.

[hnick]

Yes, definitely. Know your audience etc. When I'm looking at SaaS software and it's missing key info, features, and has the old "ask for a quote" it's code for "go get your manager, kid".

As a side note, this is why landing pages exist. Another marketing gimmick of course, but having separate pages that people won't reach by mistake lets the message suit the audience. I struggled with that concept for a long time. Shouldn't every page on our site be nicely accessible from a menu just like the contents page of a book? Not always. Give the wrong first impression and you might not get another.