21–30 of 69 posts
If you're a marketer, try and build something. Then, and only then, you'll understand development.
There's no better way to learn than to fail miserably.
I come from a marketing background, and I have to say that sometimes the negative view of marketers is completely deserved. All it takes is some kid in business school to watch The Social Network and decide he needs a "code monkey" to build his awesome idea. He becomes the "idea" guy, tries to find someone to give 10% equity to build everything, and gets ready to snort cocaine in Palo Alto. But if you've ever worked…
I think marketers would be well served to do some self-marketing and figure out a way to spread the word that "idea guy" != "marketer". As you say, a truly talented marketer is something special. Most random "idea guy" types know bugger-all about marketing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"In programming, there is a culture of calling people out for their bullshit. In most other business cultures, it's a bit less belligerent." Marketing can be every bit as confrontational, but it's usually more passive aggressive. You'll rarely get called out in a meeting, but you'll get outmaneuvered or back-channeled after the meeting is over. The field is incredibly political. When I worked in marketing, I felt lik…
ENTIRELY dependent on company culture and this goes back to the lack of performance measurement for marketers. Everyone involved in the process is looking over their shoulders. If a company values marketing and gives their marketers "free reign" as it were, all is right in the world. When marketers are micromanaged, that Game of Thrones comparison is spot on. The passive aggressiveness in the industry is suffocating.
The problem with the discipline of marketing is that it's often a complementary discipline. It's sort of like the Steve Nash or Magic Johnson of company operations: if it's performing well, it's enhancing the performance of everyone else on the team.
In certain industries, by contrast, marketing rules the roost. The consumer packaged goods (CPG) business, for instance, is directed by marketing. A marketer at a CPG firm, known commonly as a Brand Manager, is exactly that: he or she is running almost every aspect of a major brand. Accordingly, the performance of brand managers is (relatively) easy to measure. You've got sales, margins, market share, etc., and all of them tie fairly directly to your business decisions. Brand management is akin to general management, and many brand managers would argue that what they do is full-spectrum marketing; everyone in marketing in other industries is just performing a subset of what the brand manager does.
I come from a marketing background, and I have to say that sometimes the negative view of marketers is completely deserved. All it takes is some kid in business school to watch The Social Network and decide he needs a "code monkey" to build his awesome idea. He becomes the "idea" guy, tries to find someone to give 10% equity to build everything, and gets ready to snort cocaine in Palo Alto. But if you've ever worked…
He becomes the "idea" guy, tries to find someone to give 10% equity to build everything, and gets ready to snort cocaine in Palo Alto. I think marketers would be well served to do some self-marketing and figure out a way to spread the word that "idea guy" != "marketer". As you say, a truly talented marketer is something special. Most random "idea guy" types know bugger-all about marketing.
That was a great little read. Whenever I try to explain to my developer friends why my job is important, I'm usually shrugged off rudely. This guy gets it, experience is the only way to learn WHY marketing is so essential. My humble request to developers: Stop being dismissive of marketers, they are an essential part of the equation.
I think it goes back to what Rob highlights in the post.. the bad marketing is what sticks out. When we think of marketing, we think of booth babes, commercials with bad actors saying awkward things, and airheads who don't understand their business or product. The best "sales" guy I ever met was a guy who just stopped and listened. He would ask a few questions, work to understand the underlying problems, and if he co…
I think most of the people who speak negatively of marketing think only of the advertising function, and then only of the worst of the ads.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He becomes the "idea" guy, tries to find someone to give 10% equity to build everything, and gets ready to snort cocaine in Palo Alto. I think marketers would be well served to do some self-marketing and figure out a way to spread the word that "idea guy" != "marketer". As you say, a truly talented marketer is something special. Most random "idea guy" types know bugger-all about marketing.
Actually in my experience, a lot of the best people in marketing are very much "idea guys". Some of them along the HN-hated template of "well just get some coder to knock it up" (being good at marketing doesn't automatically mean you understand anything about what technical people do..), some of them realise this isn't realistic or sensible.
Right, marketers can (and probably should) be "idea guys", but not all "idea guys" are marketers. Most "idea guys" (in my experience) don't know much about anything at all. It's that distinction that I think real, professional, talented marketing people should try to make... otherwise they risk getting lumped in with the chumps.
Some of them along the HN-hated template of "well just get some coder to knock it up" (being good at marketing doesn't automatically mean you understand anything about what technical people do..)
So this is where my opinion may be biased by my technical background, and where I may go against the grain a bit... but I think really good marketers (of technical products, that is) should have at least a modicum of technical knowledge, and should understand exactly what their product does (if not the deep details of how it does it), and should be able to articulate - in some detail - how their product addresses a customer problem. To my mind, not being able to do that, as a marketer, is shooting yourself in the foot.
That was a great little read. Whenever I try to explain to my developer friends why my job is important, I'm usually shrugged off rudely. This guy gets it, experience is the only way to learn WHY marketing is so essential. My humble request to developers: Stop being dismissive of marketers, they are an essential part of the equation.
I think it's a culture thing. There are good marketers and there are terrible marketers. In programming, there is a culture of calling people out for their bullshit. In most other business cultures, it's a bit less belligerent.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually in my experience, a lot of the best people in marketing are very much "idea guys". Some of them along the HN-hated template of "well just get some coder to knock it up" (being good at marketing doesn't automatically mean you understand anything about what technical people do..), some of them realise this isn't realistic or sensible.
Actually in my experience, a lot of the best people in marketing are very much "idea guys". Right, marketers can (and probably should) be "idea guys", but not all "idea guys" are marketers. Most "idea guys" (in my experience) don't know much about anything at all. It's that distinction that I think real, professional, talented marketing people should try to make... otherwise they risk getting lumped in with the chump…
But anyway, when I was talking about good marketers who don't understand tech stuff, I didn't mean people who are marketing the same tech products (such as Twilio). For example I was speaking to a client this morning, a fairly important guy in a company that makes certain types of consumer PC components. Ask him about several areas, such as PSUs, and he knows everything, in so much detail. But my conversation this morning was helping him work out who in his company he needed to speak to about creating a small landing page, and how to get the subdomain he wants. He doesn't know the meaning of any of the following: "DNS", "IP", "sub-domain". Great at marketing, great at understanding the products he markets, but if he had an idea that involved any coding, he wouldn't have a clue.
Good stuff. I guess, as hackers go, I was always a little weird, in that I always found marketing fascinating. But over the past year or so (and especially the past 6 months) I've been diving into marketing big time , studying as much marketing (and, to a lesser extent, sales) material as I can, and starting to do things like putting together a tentative marketing plan for our startup. Wow. The OP is right, this stuf…