The Challenge of Technical Marketing
There's a natural tension in selling technical products.
R&D and marketing excel in different domains: one lives in technical depth, the other in broad communication. Both are essential. There would be no product without R&D, and no one would understand or discover it without marketing.
But because each team operates from different instincts, their strengths can pull in different directions. R&D gravitates toward architecture, internals, and precision. Marketing leans on clarity, reach, and storytelling.
The problem is that these perspectives don’t automatically align. Deep technical explanations can overwhelm most audiences, while high-level messaging can feel incomplete without grounding details. The result is a gap between what the product is and how customers understand what it can do for them.
That’s where technical marketing comes in. Your role is to bridge the gap – to translate technical depth into clear explanations of how the product solves real customer problems. You’re looking for the connection between what engineers built and the situations customers face, then communicating those solutions in a way that resonates.
Doing that well means finding your Lego Level.
The Lego Level Mindset
1. Focus on Specific Application and Outcomes
Think about how Legos are sold. They aren’t marketed as boxes of plastic. They’re shown as race cars, spaceships, and castles. The value is in demonstrating what you can build and how the pieces fit together.
Legos are intuitive because each piece exists to do something specific. Instructions don’t just describe a brick; they show where it goes and what it helps you build.
Your documentation and marketing should work the same way. Don’t stop at naming features or components. Show what they’re for and how to use them to solve a real problem.
Customers care about the outcome, not the internal machinery. Make the result obvious, then lay out the smallest set of steps required to reach it. That’s the difference between content that tells you what a brick is and content that shows you where it goes.
Features only matter when they're tied to concrete use cases. When you focus on the outcome, users gain confidence that the pieces you provide are the right ones for the job they're trying to do.
2. Abstract Away the "Injection Molding" Process
When you build a Lego set, you don’t want a primer on the chemical makeup of the bricks or the temperature of the molding machines. Those details may be technically correct, but they’re irrelevant to the problem you’re trying to solve: building the car, spaceship, or castle.
The bricks simply work. Pieces fit. Colors match. That reliability is expected – not a selling point.
Your product is the same. Stability, sane performance, working authentication, and basic compatibility are table stakes. If these are present, users barely notice them. They just get on with their build.
Technical marketing often gets stuck explaining the “injection molding.” We dig into backend architecture, component choices, or code complexity – details that matter to the people building the product, but not to the people using it.
To find your Lego Level, edit strictly. Ask: Does the customer need to know this to snap the pieces together?
If not, you’re explaining chemistry when you should be showing a solution.
People don't buy Legos because they want plastic bricks. They buy them for what the bricks can become.
3. Match Your Instructions to the Builder
To solve your customer’s problem, you have to understand two things: how complex your product is and how your users like to build.
Sometimes your product is a 9,000-piece Death Star. It’s huge, complex, and intimidating. Those users want detailed, step-by-step instructions. If you dump all the pieces on the table without a clear build path, they’ll walk away.
In cases like this, the Lego Level looks like a blueprint: clear sequences, expected outcomes, specific screens, commands, and configurations that carry them from unboxing to finished build. You do this without talking down to them or reteaching fundamentals they already know.
Other times, users just want to play with the Legos. They don’t need a full walkthrough. They want to know what pieces exist and how they can interconnect. For them, the Lego Level is a well-organized parts map: clean docs, schemas, modules, endpoints, and a handful of recipes that show what’s possible.
Once they know what’s in the box and how it fits together, the best thing you can do is get out of the way and let them build.
Putting the Lego Level Into Practice
Using your Lego Level isn't a one-time exercise. It's a habit you build into every asset you create. A few practical approaches:
- Start from the finished build. Before you write anything, decide what "castle" or "spaceship" you're showing. Choose a real problem, realistic environment, and clear outcome.
- Name the pieces in plain language. Translate internal project terms into labels users naturally understand. If a feature name sounds like an internal codename, it probably is.
- Show how the pieces connect. Use diagrams, short walkthroughs, and code samples that mirror real workflows. Think in flows, not isolated features.
- Cut the injection-molding details. Save deep internals for reference docs and architecture papers. In primary solution content, focus on what to do, when to do it, and what happens as a result.
- Adapt to different builders. Beginners may need step-by-step guides. Experienced users may want API references, quickstart repos, and high-level system diagrams. Both are valid – they just sit at different Lego Levels.
Technical marketing isn’t about describing bricks. It’s about showing what can be built.