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Marketing is scary for a solo developer

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Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#231

Post by demadog »

XCSme wrote: post #76

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…

Took a quick look at your product and I’d be a good fit.

Here’s the thing, for non-technical marketers, they’ve become so used to SaaS/cloud because it’s easy.

The moment I see “self-hosted” and “own server” my brain freezes up and I think about how much work that might be to set up.

You can keep it self hosted but maybe say “3 steps and set up in an hour”

Or just submit to the cloud because most marketers and business owners don’t value self-hosted as a net positive!

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#232

Post by biztos »

libertine wrote: post #99
lbriner wrote: post #83

Here's the thing. Developers are generally perfectionists and marketers are realists. As a Developer, I am naturally uncomfortable with marketing because my default view is that I don't want to lie or over-promise and I don't like fluffy claims. Marketers and sales people can be less bothered about facts but I think much of the time, we just think that, the truth is that there can be a lot of fact-based marketing but…

> 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…

> lies are unsustainable

Lots of lies are perfectly sustainable, but I have a feeling they tend to be the flattering lies (to someone).

We only hire the best.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#233

Post by ghaff »

hippich wrote: post #224
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…

There is one more possibility (relevant to solo devs) - lack of trust that marketing professionals can deliver results. Personally, I do realize how important marketing is and how inadequate my skills in marketing are. But at the same time, my experience contracting out marketing taught me that there are very few good pros and i am much more likely to at best hire someone who has about the same level of experience as…

In general, contracting something out can be useful if you have some specific task to perform. We use a bunch of agencies and other outside firms. But it's almost always for something specific like running a webinar series on $X or providing social media tooling or other things like that.

Marketing also covers a very wide spectrum. For a small operation, the person you might hire to create content and/or messaging for a product is probably different from the one you would hire to create a digital demand generation program.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#234

Post by granshaw »

lbriner wrote: post #83

Here's the thing. Developers are generally perfectionists and marketers are realists. As a Developer, I am naturally uncomfortable with marketing because my default view is that I don't want to lie or over-promise and I don't like fluffy claims. Marketers and sales people can be less bothered about facts but I think much of the time, we just think that, the truth is that there can be a lot of fact-based marketing but…

It's likely your product serves a certain segment better than others. By targeting just that segment (assuming it's big and profitable enough) the "lies" factor is greatly reduced cause it is indeed a great fit for them

Then it becomes purely a marketing problem... how can I make everyone in the world in this segment aware of my product? :)

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#236

Post by datavirtue »

kordlessagain wrote: post #161

If you are solo, any time you spend doing anything else than coding and improving product is a complete waste of time. A well done product will raise interest in a given market or segment. There’s a joke in there somewhere about a well done AI based product will literally market itself. Marketing is raising interest. Nothing more.

Marketing is the identification of customers with a need (a market), and all of the associated activities involved with making the solution (product) and getting it to those people in need for a price they can justify. It encompasses the entire company, which is a bit more than "raising interest."

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#238

Post by conductr »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #153
tymm wrote: post #43

As a solo developer ( https://simplepush.io ) that hates marketing as well, I often find myself trying to make use of paid ads. Probably because it is easier to spend some money than writing a good article. However it hasn't really worked for me so far. Wondering if other solo developers had some success with paid ads?

Some suggestions for your site. Explain what a push notification is. I'm a developer and I only have a vague idea of what you're talking about. Why would I want to do a push? What benefit does it have? Am I possibly already doing notifications a different way that's less efficient/less effective/slower than your method? Right there are a bunch of blog articles you could write and share that provide free marketing for…

I'm going to pile onto this parent because I too am trying to figure out what this does. I originally think of this as allowing me to push notifications to my app's users devices (eg One Signal, Airship, etc.). As I scroll and read I find that it's likely for uniquely sending notifications to MY device.

Perhaps a vertical, but I'd go after the DIY/hobbyist/maker developer market. Arduino and such. You can write tutorials about how to get X to notify you when Y and they have very active forums. I dove deep into this during COVID lockdown and it actually felt like 90s/early-00s web as the community is great and they still mostly use wikis/forum software to help each other. There's a lot of folks hosting their own tutorial websites. Just make content teaching people of different ways to use your product and I feel like it would be discovered.

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#239

Post by sergioisidoro »

holler wrote: post #230
sergioisidoro wrote: post #22

I'm going through the same thing right now. I have an MVP ready for use, sitting in the drawer because I'm too afraid to take the next step. It's encouraging to see stories of others going through the same.

Right there with you! Spent two years building a project, got some initial users, but need to shift to marketing and I feel an immense mental block... I actually took time off because I became so stressed thinking about the next step of shifting to marketing.

Hey, if you're interested in connecting, so we can help each-other let me know. Peer support could be a way out of this mental block?

Re: Marketing is scary for a solo developer

#240

Post by GnarfGnarf »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #134
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…

> 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…

Interesting. Although I'm a developer, I was forced to take some sales training courses when I worked for Xerox. Imagine spending three weeks in a hotel suite in El Segundo with thirty salesmen & programmers.

The essence of what Xerox taught was: to sell, find out what problems your customer has, and figure out how your product/service can help him/her solve the problem. That's it.

Xerox was very good at sales.

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