What A Hacker Learns After A Year In Marketing

I'm Austin based.. and it's way better than SF. ;)

"As it turns out, the ones who do it well are rare and far less visible because - like good programmers - their work is a lot harder to notice."

This sums my experience perfectly. It takes a long time to be able to understand who is good at something and who is not.

Pardon my language but many marketers are charlatans. When I first started in marketing I thought the charlatans were the ones who were good (incompetent people [me at that time] are the least competent at recognizing those who are good). Now, after a decade at it I can firmly agree with the statement above and I think it bodes very well for the author.

I believe the 2nd point is the most important to understand when trying to get good at marketing. The rest is ancillary to doing a great job, but having the data is essential to knowing what to do.

I believe great marketers are like methodical scientists. They can put aside their own biases and test their hypothesis and analyze the data. Beyond that, they can look at the data in front of them, identify what they need to know more about, and discover things they did not expect. Through this they can affect change that improves the entire organization.

GREAT quote. Bravo. Way to put into words what I struggle to say. Thanks.

That's covered under points 1 and 2 in the article. I found GoDaddy's "informational" videos to be even worse than the ads (at least the ads were just driving traffic, but the videos were incredibly condescending and treated the models as furniture). But I know that those were A/B tested with a lot of variations, and conversion is highest with "booth babes" and saying awkward things.

Wow. The OP is right, this stuff is NOT easy. Here's one for you... a guy named Chet Holmes, who is a fairly well known marketing guru (and who unfortunately passed away recently, R.I.P.) spoke a lot about "core stories" and how "market data trumps product data," and suggests that the "story" you tell about your product be informed by data about the market of the people you're selling too. So, if you're selling software to,say, bolt & screw manufacturers in the Southeast, you need to know what's going on with bolt & screw manufacturers in the Southeast, what the trends are, what problems they face, and how to talk to them in terms that relate to their problems first and foremost, and NOT your product first and foremost.

So, here's your homework... go out and start researching bolt and screw manufacturing in the Southeast, identify some meaningful trends and patterns, come up with hard numbers, economic issues, etc., and then find a way to use that to use that to tie your product to a problem those guys are having. And now write up a compelling educational brief for that market, which tells a good story, and educates, while contributing to demand for what you do.

Now come up with a great headline for your story that will capture someone's interest.

Now figure out how to get it in front of the people that need to see it.

Now call them and try to get a meeting so you can talk to them in person about the issues at hand.

Now do this for each identifiable target market you're pursuing (note: I'm referring mainly to B2B scenarios here, since that's what we do).

But wait, there's more... you also need to think about your "ultimate strategic position" and how all of your messaging contributes to that positioning, and about how to achieve "top of mind awareness" among your audience. And for extra giggles, coordinate PR campaigns, manage events, do market research which is more "product focused," etc., etc., etc.

Nah, this stuff is definitely not easy. It's hard in a way that's different from hacking (which is what makes it fun, to be honest), but hard nonetheless. I really have a newfound respect for the really good marketing people out there, and it's growing as I learn more about what marketing entails. Hint: It's not just throwing a few Google Adwords out there and waiting for the money to roll in (well, not for most of us, anyway).

(aside: I'm taking a very broad view of marketing here. I see marketing as a strategic component, which entails selecting the ideal customer segments, driving product decisions, receiving input/feedback from customers, determining the vision the company wants to communicate to the market, and communicating that to the market... as well as the tactical elements such as "create brochure," "create whitepaper," "create screencast," "organize PR campaign," "do focus group," "take pizza and t-shirts to hackathon," etc.)