211–220 of 280 posts
Marketing is hard. I have a personal charityware project Video Hub App that I've tried to promote. The most sensible place seems like Reddit, but even when posting to a fitting subreddit, my posts sometimes get taken down because you're not allowed to "self promote". Which means there is almost no avenue I can find. I had success with my first post of the app on HN, but it feels rude to re-post it to HN often. It's b…
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> my default view is that I don't want to lie or over-promise This is the greatest prejudice around marketing in the tech community. A simple exercise you can do that debunks that frame of thought: lies are unsustainable. Unless you're a government or a monopoly that has their predictable flow of revenue, lies aren't affordable. You can lie and scam people, but that's not a long term strategy, because you'll burn off…
A lot of tech marketing boils down to dishonest comparisons- for example perhaps Product X is really inferior to Product Y except on some contrived workload or an unfair comparison (eg Product X was configured to optimize for the workload and Product Y wasn’t). A market doesn’t see a problem with that. It’s technically not a lie, just misleading, and I think most engineers would find it dishonest. For an example with…
But in some countries the law regarding comparisons between products (in advertising) it's very strict and it can easily blow on the faces of those who do it.
That's why there are laws and regulators, to keep marketing in check, and ethical - at least within the margins of the law...
... this is one of the major problems that paints marketing as a shady practice: apparently there's no Law online, and no regulators are acting on it. In their defense, it's probably impossible to regulate it as it stands today... it's left to Facebook and Google to do part of this job.
It's very common to see stuff that wouldn't even be put on air on TV, Radio, or printed in a magazine. But since it's online, all good.
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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.
Hmmm....did you mention lasers? That might have triggered their "sketchy" Algo. How do they know you are misleading anyone? People clicking "misleading" because they saw your ad in the wrong context?
Google's customer support just provides form responses linking to this policy my store violates: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6150127?hl=en
But they won't provide any concrete information specific to my store, and I can't figure out what they're hung up on. I talked to a Shopify expert and they told me to make sure I have a contact page, refund policy and accept credit cards -- all of which I do.
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…
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…
> I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. I fully agree. I've worked with an incredible b2b salesman before. He wasn't very technical, but he was always curious about what was possible and how difficult it would be to accomplish. Going to a conference with him as the technical expert was amazing. Customers were a gold mine for information. We always looked deeper to find the proble…
You're right, all you have to do to eliminate it is get rid of all of the ridiculous metrics that people try to apply to human interaction, ban billion dollar "platforms" like the social media companies, and reduce everything back down to face to face scale.
We would be better off, I'm not being facetious.
I have a simple rule for marketing which has proved to give nice results. Give a generous demo. Not that lame 15 days demo that most services provide. No one will manage to test your product in just 15 days. And even if they do it won’t help create a habit out of using it. Give three months instead. It gives them time to schedule a period of using it, and then it provides a cushion to get accustomed to it. I was test…
How many products of yours have you tested this on? How many days on average did your customers have before conversion? In my tests, users try the product for an average of a few minutes before converting. If they haven't bought by the end of the day (at least for my product), they'll basically never buy. Given that, I might as well change my trial period to one day, which very much contradicts your results.
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> I think marketers and developers need a stronger culture between ourselves. I fully agree. I've worked with an incredible b2b salesman before. He wasn't very technical, but he was always curious about what was possible and how difficult it would be to accomplish. Going to a conference with him as the technical expert was amazing. Customers were a gold mine for information. We always looked deeper to find the proble…
Engineers tend to have this conception of all salespeople (and, to the point of the GP, marketers) as con-artists: "how can I convince this rube to buy my crap?" When in reality, as you discovered, the best salespeople are the ones who are able to really, truly understand the problems of their customer base and help them find solutions. That is an incredibly special skill, and one that should never be underrated.
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What's your opinion of the Georgia Tech course? I'm just on their website checking out the curriculum, seems pretty straight to the point.
Can you drop the link to it? I'm not sure if you mean the bootcamp.
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…