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Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It

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Re: Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It

#31

Post by k3n »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #28
k3n wrote: post #13

I'm not trying to take anything away from you at all, because what you've provided is very good. However, I'd like to say something about marketing vs sales , in that it seems like your material is more geared towards sales than marketing. I'm going to go off on a tangent here somewhat, bear with me... To explain in my eyes, I see marketing as everything you do to promote your project (i.e. brand/product/etc.), which…

Hey Ken, can't find a way to contact you but drop me an email at mqudsi@neosmart.net - you seem to know what you're doing when it comes to actual marketing (and sales) for products, there may be something we could work on together (and you'd be well compensated)! EDIT: Anyone else that would consider themselves to be the equivalent of a (to use a very-much cliched term) rock-star hacker in the field of sales, PR, or…

I'm flattered, but I'm really not into marketing or sales at all, just a developer that reviews many poorly-marketed projects. So, I'm not really qualified to do much more than rant about it here on HN :) Thanks though, perhaps the OP would be more than willing to help you out as he definitely sounds like he specializes in it.

Re: Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It

#32

Post by k3n »

tptacek wrote: post #27
k3n wrote: post #13

I'm not trying to take anything away from you at all, because what you've provided is very good. However, I'd like to say something about marketing vs sales , in that it seems like your material is more geared towards sales than marketing. I'm going to go off on a tangent here somewhat, bear with me... To explain in my eyes, I see marketing as everything you do to promote your project (i.e. brand/product/etc.), which…

Four classic functions of marketing teams at product companies: * Product management: the feature/function/benefit of the product and (most important function in all of marketing) pricing/packaging. * Marketing communications (marcom): what you've defined "marketing" as: promotion, promotional writing. Also, advertising. * Sales support: awareness campaigns and events and, particularly, lead-gen. This is what the CEO…

Thanks for the info. I was mainly speaking of the audience that the OP was addressing, i.e. engineers who likely haven't had much if any formal marketing training (I've only had 1 semester worth), as they are the ones on small (or solo) teams that are likely to not pay much attention to any sort of marketing. It's good to see a top-down perspective from a large organization like you've laid out too, though.

Re: Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It

#33

Post by patio11 »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #29

I'm super sorry to have just learned about microconf only to find that it is completely, totally sold out for this year (plus being only a few days away). Any other good conferences like this one? From what I can see, this is all content and zero fluff, not cheap but not outrageously expensive either. I'm more than ready and willing to book even if it's a few hours from now for something like this. Share your thought…

BaconBizConf and Business of Software are the other two software business conferences that I'd fly to America to attend even when not speaking.

Re: Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It

#34

Post by krallja »

ComputerGuru wrote: post #29

I'm super sorry to have just learned about microconf only to find that it is completely, totally sold out for this year (plus being only a few days away). Any other good conferences like this one? From what I can see, this is all content and zero fluff, not cheap but not outrageously expensive either. I'm more than ready and willing to book even if it's a few hours from now for something like this. Share your thought…

I can recommend Business of Software. patio11 has spoken there, as have many other HNers, Seth Godin, Richard Stallman, etc.

Re: Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It

#35

Post by biot »

My $0.02 worth:

  For many of you, assistance directly from the CEO in integration is a really
  compelling offer, because wow, you can’t get that anywhere else. [...]
  We’ll do the copy‑pasting for you ... and it will actually be done by a freelancer
  that we’ve hired and told them how to FTP stuff.
If one claims "assistance directly from the CEO", I would be disappointed to learn that access credentials to my website were handed out to some third-party freelancer who performs the integration rather than being handled directly by the engineer-owner. If you mean something different such as "our CEO ensures the job gets done to exacting standards" then that's freelancer-compatible as the statement makes no claims about who provides the assistance.

Re: Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It

#36

Post by [deleted] »

patio11 wrote: post #33
ComputerGuru wrote: post #29

I'm super sorry to have just learned about microconf only to find that it is completely, totally sold out for this year (plus being only a few days away). Any other good conferences like this one? From what I can see, this is all content and zero fluff, not cheap but not outrageously expensive either. I'm more than ready and willing to book even if it's a few hours from now for something like this. Share your thought…

BaconBizConf and Business of Software are the other two software business conferences that I'd fly to America to attend even when not speaking.

[deleted]

Re: Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It

#37

Post by ScottBurson »

k3n wrote: post #30
ScottBurson wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi k3n, I would love your feedback on a project of mine. It's not a FOSS project, but is related to them. You'll see more about it in my profile. If you're willing to help me out a little, please contact me (my email address is in my profile).

Hi! I'll preface this by letting you know that I'm not a marketing professional -- I'm in development, and so my POV is going to be more technically-oriented, but I did give your site a glance and it's very approachable by my standards: * a simple, non-distracting design * text is easy to read and there's no feel of keyword stuffing or buzzword bingo * you define the problem and offer product differentiation both in…

Thanks very much! I was going for a clean, simple design, so I'm glad that came through. I agree, the calls to action need work.

Users will normally enter the site through a link given them by a developer, that will take them to one of the developer's proposals; that's where their call to action should be, I think. (There is one, but it needs to be more prominent and a little easier to use.)

But I have a more fundamental problem: I have yet to find any developers who actually want to use this thing. I mean, any at all. Admittedly, I haven't been looking much yet outside my own circles, which are fairly small. But it seems at first glance that there aren't that many OSS developers who are even interested in being paid for their work. It appears that a fairly focused search is going to be necessary to find the ones who are.

So what I wanted to ask you is this: in your reviews of OSS projects, what fraction would you say evince a reasonable degree of marketing savvy? Would you be comfortable sharing any names of those who do? My thinking here is that those who actually think about their project as a product, to some extent, are likelier candidates to be interested in my site.

Any general observations you might have about OSS developer psychology would also be of interest.

Re: Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It

#38

Post by zerr »

k3n wrote: post #31
ComputerGuru wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey Ken, can't find a way to contact you but drop me an email at mqudsi@neosmart.net - you seem to know what you're doing when it comes to actual marketing (and sales) for products, there may be something we could work on together (and you'd be well compensated)! EDIT: Anyone else that would consider themselves to be the equivalent of a (to use a very-much cliched term) rock-star hacker in the field of sales, PR, or…

I'm flattered, but I'm really not into marketing or sales at all, just a developer that reviews many poorly-marketed projects. So, I'm not really qualified to do much more than rant about it here on HN :) Thanks though, perhaps the OP would be more than willing to help you out as he definitely sounds like he specializes in it.

Just rant? Well, what do you think all those marketing people do? :)

Re: Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It

#39

Post by pknerd »

patio11 wrote: post #4
orangethirty wrote: post #3

Everyone who has a startup should watch this at least once a day (me included). This is great stuff, Patrick.

Thanks, glad you liked it. What would you like to hear more about? (I'm shamelessly fishing for ideas for this year.)

I am sorry if I missed earlier but I need some tips about stand alone softwares instead of SAAS. How one can sell them efficiently?
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