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Marketing is scary for a solo developer

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Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#71

Post by xwdv »

magicroot75 wrote: post #26

I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…

> Developers should be asking themselves during the development process: "Is this feature going to excite a group of users, and do we have some statistical mechanism to predict that excitement?"

This is such a user-facing mindset. I’d say most of the development work I do isn’t even something the user will know about and definitely not get excited about. Also, I do not care about what happens after a feature gets built, my job is not to make sure the right things are being built, it’s to make sure things are being built right. Do your job and I’ll do mine.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#72

Post by ianbutler »

fny wrote: post #52
magicroot75 wrote: post #26

I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…

No. Marketing and sales should be siloed away from devs. This is why you need a product person to intermediate. Marketing and sales has very different incentives from developers. Marketers are often trigger happy with features because they "sell" despite the fact that these feature may have a short shelf life and may take resources away from developing of more essential product features. Developers are similarly alle…

I think this is a bad take depending on the context, especially for small companies. First you’re painting developers with a rather broad brush. I know plenty of developers who like to think about how features impact end users and like to interact with people in general to figure out how to build the right features that create that impact. Good developers are perfectly capable of interacting with broader teams to create something that really benefits users.

Similarly not all marketers are “trigger happy with features” a lot of marketers understand how feature work impacts developers and actually take time to figure out the most important features to build and market and don’t have short shelf life.

In my experience you’ve basically just described people bad at their jobs all around.

Following your advice would just be adding potentially unnecessary headcount and creating an unnecessary communication gap between two critical teams, again with a focus on small business or startups. I do think larger companies could do well with less compartmentalization as well though.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#74

Post by kdelok »

magicroot75 wrote: post #26

I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…

> The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project.

I strongly agree with this! If you're working towards a product (and not just a hobby project) then these are crucial requirements. If they can be found out before writing any code, then they should be, since it will save time in the long run.

For me it's also the kind of thing that can lead to costly changes after the fact, which is prone to rub developers up the wrong way. It seems like the principle of phase containment might apply - if you found it early in the development cycle, then it would have been easier to fix.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#75

Post by hluska »

fny wrote: post #52
magicroot75 wrote: post #26

I work solely in marketing/advertising and have no clue how to code. I generally enjoy technology, which is why I'm on HN. I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. The tools of marketers (data mining, consumer behavior analysis, surveys, market testing, etc) aren't just a veneer to be applied at the completion of a development project. Marketing, when done correctly, informs UX. Mar…

No. Marketing and sales should be siloed away from devs. This is why you need a product person to intermediate. Marketing and sales has very different incentives from developers. Marketers are often trigger happy with features because they "sell" despite the fact that these feature may have a short shelf life and may take resources away from developing of more essential product features. Developers are similarly alle…

I catch your point but honestly, developers are in a better place to make those kinds of decisions. It just takes some mindset training.

When a potential customer has a problem, they go through several hoops before they have any hope of finding a solution. First, they have to recognize and identify a problem. Second, they have to motivate themselves to solve that particular problem over all others.

Once a potential customer has made those leaps, they are potentially your potential customer. That’s when the language leap comes into play. My favourite example is “I built a scraper but it turns out the market wants an automated tool to crawl their entire website and return some data.” Catch what happened there?? I built a scraper but the paying market doesn’t know what a scraper is.

If your language matches up with a potential customer’s language, there is a chance they will see you, pay attention and decide that you could solve their problem. That’s around the time when marketing campaigns will make you question Darwin but try to act surprised…:)

Once you catch that stuff, it’s easier to push back on shitty bloatware marketing feature requests. What’s the real problem here? Does that new feature solve a problem or does it just increase the chances that a potential customer will find you??

If it increases the chance a customer will find you, it might be a good feature. In my experience, it usually means you should do some tech support calls so you can figure out what words your customers use…

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#76

Post by XCSme »

I struggle with marketing so much. I built an amazing product, existing customers love it, but spending any time on doing marketing feels like either wasting development time or spending time to try to force people into buying something they might not want.

Most ads are trying to trick you into buying stuff you don't really need. I know there are cases in which you actually see a relevant ad for something you really want to buy and that will bring value to your life, but that's usually an edge case.

What I am working on doing now is to combine development + marketing. Instead of creating marketing material to sell, I am creating marketing material to educate: create how-to instructional videos, technical blog posts, improve the documentation, etc. If you sell a tool I think this is the best way to go, instead of advertising how cool your tool is, teach people how to use your tool and what they can do with it (eg. if you sell a hammer don't show people how to drive nails and give a 50% limited time discount code; teach them how to build a chair and let them decide themselves if they need a hammer or not).

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#77

Post by dangrossman »

konschubert wrote: post #37

I've started to sell a physical product that I make and have had my google merchant account suspended twice. The algorithms claim that my ads are misleading. I don't think they are, I hope they aren't. The first time, I appealed and it got un-suspended. No reason given. I thought: Cool, must have been a mistake but it's been sorted out. Then, after a couple days, another suspension. Now I don't know what to do. Googl…

I'm in the same situation.

I bought a laser cutter and some other production equipment, and started making home decor. I sell pretty simple stuff, like door signs and coasters.

Google Merchant Center also suspended my account for being "misleading". I have no ads, just a product feed for Google Shopping. They won't tell me what's "misleading" about my products.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#78

Post by evancoop »

How does one distinguish between "marketing," a process that can be analytical with respect to consumer behavior, survey data, market testing, etc. and "hustling," which is less rigorous, and more ado about effort in generating exposure? It seems as though devs can get behind the former, once there's a product to sell, but the latter is somewhat antithetical to the general disposition (at least for me personally).

Is this really a plea to recognize that some of this isn't about a skillset as much as a temperament?

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#79

Post by davnicwil »

I you like this post, I wrote a blog post 'Negative Feedback is Positive' [0] a while ago that you might also enjoy, to further drive home a related message.

You're never one more CSS tweak away from not embarrassing, and you're never one more feature away from useful. Things aren't binary like that.

Just ship / promote it now, in its current state, and see what useful feedback you can get. Hint: likely none, as nobody cares.

[0] https://davnicwil.com/negative-feedback-is-positive/

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#80

Post by codpiece »

I'm a marketing technology consultant. I've built or optimized systems for many tech companies you know and love.

I've always wanted to share my knowledge; write a book, do a training series, etc, but I simply can't market myself. The hustle needed to be seen feels too...gross.

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