For years, semiconductor marketing strategies have revolved around a familiar center of gravity: the corporate website. Product pages, datasheets, parametric search, SEO. All essential. All heavily optimized.
But a directional signal emerging from large-scale industry research suggests something important has shifted.
When engineers begin the design process, manufacturer and distributor sites are no longer the primary starting line. The first stop is elsewhere, and it has implications for how marketing leaders think about reach, influence, and media mix.
Across both control engineers and electronics engineers, engineering forums and communities rank as the most-utilized information source during the design process.
More than six in ten engineers turn to peer-driven spaces before almost anything else. These are places where real-world problems get discussed, edge cases surface, and vendor-neutral credibility still carries weight.
For marketers, this reinforces a reality that’s been quietly solidifying: awareness is no longer built primarily through owned channels. It’s built where engineers already trust the conversation.
Search engines remain a critical discovery layer, used by roughly half of engineers. But search increasingly acts as a secondary validator, not the original source of insight.
An engineer may encounter a concept, part, or approach in a community or forum first, then turn to search to dig deeper. That distinction matters. It changes how content should be framed, where it should live, and what success actually looks like.
One of the more striking differences between engineer types appears in distributor usage.
Electronics engineers rely on distributor websites at significantly higher rates than control engineers. This suggests distributor platforms are playing a more active role in shaping early-stage component consideration for electronics-heavy designs.
For semiconductor brands, this reinforces the importance of distributor visibility not just as a conversion channel, but as an influence channel earlier in the journey than many assume.
Manufacturer website searches still rank highly, especially among electronics engineers. But they are no longer the primary gateway. Instead, they function as a confirmation layer.
Specs, availability, documentation depth, and clarity still matter enormously once an engineer arrives.
The implication is subtle but critical: your website needs to convert interest, not create it from scratch.
Several signals point to an expanding ecosystem of influence:
None of these channels dominate on their own. Together, they suggest a fragmentation of influence that rewards brands willing to meet engineers in multiple, credible environments.
If you’re responsible for media strategy, demand generation, or brand presence, the takeaway isn’t that websites or SEO no longer matter. It’s that they’re no longer enough on their own.
The earliest moments of influence are increasingly happening off-domain, in environments defined by trust, peer exchange, and practical problem-solving. Winning attention there requires a different mindset. Less interruption, more participation. Less campaign-first thinking, more ecosystem thinking.
This single data point is part of a much broader set of findings that will be released in February. For marketing leaders navigating where to invest next, the message is already clear: the engineer’s journey starts earlier, wider, and in more places than many strategies account for today.
Based on industry research conducted by EETech, used with permission.
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