If a marketing agency has already burned you, hire for two things: someone who can hold a technical conversation with your engineers, and a process that pulls real substance out of your people. Everything else is secondary.
I have a chemical engineering degree and have spent the last 15 years marketing to technical buyers. I also run a firm that does this work, so read this knowing I have a stake in the answer.
Why did the last agency get it wrong?
Most agencies are built for volume. They run the same playbook across dozens of clients, which works when the product is a consumer subscription and fails when the buyer is an engineer evaluating a custom-engineered system.
The pattern is familiar. The first drafts arrive full of words like “solutions” and “industry-leading.” Your engineers read them, find the errors or the fluff, and fix a few lines. After two or three rounds, they stop sending drafts back. The agency reads that silence as approval. It isn’t. It’s your best people giving up on the process.
Who do engineers actually trust?
Engineers trust other engineers. The 2026 Specifier Marketing to Technical Engineers (SMTE) report from GlobalSpec asked technical buyers how much they trust different sources. A vendor’s engineering expert rated 66%, a technical product manager 58%, a publication editor 45%, an industry analyst 41%, an unaffiliated pundit 29% and generative AI 10%.
The same report found that buyers estimate about 62% of the buying process happens online before they contact a vendor. That figure is self-reported.
A caution on these numbers: the survey is global and skews older (roughly 72% of respondents were 56 or over), so treat them as directional, not as a measure of U.S. industrial buyers specifically. Verify them against the report before you quote them to anyone.
The takeaway holds up regardless. The most trusted voice in your category is a technical one, and the most credible content comes from your own experts. An agency’s job is to get that expertise onto the page, not to replace it with generic copy.
What to look for in an agency for an engineering firm
Can they talk to your engineers without a translator?
Put them on a call with your lead engineer for 30 minutes. Watch whether they ask follow-up questions that show they understood the answer, or whether they nod and take notes. If your engineer has to explain basic terms or a project manager relays every question, the drafts will reflect that gap.
Who will actually do the writing?
Ask for the name of the person who will write your content, and ask to talk to them. Some agencies put senior people in the pitch and hand the work to someone junior afterward. Red Evolution, an engineering marketing agency, describes a client who went through three writers in six months with no handover. Ask what happens if your writer leaves.
Where do the ideas come from?
Good technical content comes from interviews with your people, not from keyword tools alone. Ask how the agency pulls ideas out of your team, how long that takes, and how much of your engineers’ time it needs. A workable answer is a short interview each month, roughly one to two hours of your team’s time, with the agency doing the rest.
How do they handle what you can’t say?
Much of your best work sits under NDA or inside regulated programs. A good agency has a process for that: anonymized case studies, composite examples, a written approval step. Ask them to walk you through one. A vague answer here is a warning sign.
What will they measure?
In a long-cycle industrial sale, a handful of qualified conversations is a better result than thousands of page views. Ask what they’ll report on, and whether it ties to conversations with the buyers you actually want. Ask, too, what they would do if the numbers were flat after six months.
Run a paid test before you sign a retainer
A pitch deck tells you how an agency sells. A small paid project tells you how it works. Before any retainer, pay for one piece of real work:
- Have them run a 30-minute interview with one of your engineers.
- Ask for one article or LinkedIn post drawn from that interview.
- Give the draft to a skeptical engineer, the one who usually finds the errors.
- Ask that engineer two questions: “Is anything wrong?” and “Would you put your name on this?”
If the draft needs heavy rewriting, you’ve learned that for the cost of one article instead of six months of retainer. If your engineer says it’s accurate and asks when the next one is coming, you have a real signal.
Red flags in the first conversation
- They talk about their process before asking about your customers.
- They promise results on a timeline that ignores a long sales cycle.
- They can’t explain, in plain terms, what you make or who buys it.
- They agree with everything you say. As Red Evolution puts it, “If your agency agrees with everything you say, they’re not adding value.”
- They want to skip the interviews and work from your website and a brief.
- They can’t show or describe work for another technical audience.
When you shouldn’t hire anyone yet
If you can’t say who your best customers are or why they chose you, an agency will only produce nicely worded guesses. If no one on your team can give two hours a month, the content will come out generic. And if the sales team doesn’t follow up on the conversations marketing creates, fix that first. In each case, the better first step is a short diagnostic, not a retainer.
What to do this week
- Write down the one or two things the last agency got wrong. They become your screening questions.
- Pick one engineer you trust to review any sample work.
- Ask any agency you’re considering for the paid test described above.
If you’d like to talk it through, book a 45-minute fit call. If you’d rather start smaller, start with the diagnostic.
Sources
- GlobalSpec, Specifier Marketing to Technical Engineers (SMTE) 2026 report (trust ratings, p. 33; share of buying process completed online, p. 7).
- Red Evolution, What Makes a Great Engineering Marketing Agency (redevolution.com/blog/what-makes-a-great-engineering-marketing-agency).