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Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

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Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#91

Post by ekianjo »

zaidf wrote: post #90
ekianjo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd add that Marketing is about value creation ultimately. You have to start with the right mindset, i.e. that you product has no value per se, and that marketing is everything you are going to do around your product/service to create the perception of its value. Your customers don't know how time you spent on it, they don't care how complex it is, they don't even want to know how it works (at least not until they ar…

We operate with this mindset for each of the roles in our org: Sales: assume the product sucks and your job is to convince customers to buy a really shitty product Product: assume that there is no sales and your job is to create a product that people cannot stop raving about after using it for few minutes Client Services: assume the product sucks and your job is to still keep the customer satisfied

Haha, I like your way of putting it. I'll save your comment and re-use it when I have the chance :)

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#92

Post by ekianjo »

ekianjo wrote: post #56
ChuckMcM wrote: post #6

Nice. So one of the things that happened to me when I came to the Bay Area was I was working at Intel and I had to talk to a lot of marketing folks (who were talking to 'the public' about Intel's chips). I realized I didn't have a clue what they did. I set out to correct that before I started my own company and looked for a job that would let me work closely with marketing but still be engineering based. I found one…

I'd add that Marketing is about value creation ultimately. You have to start with the right mindset, i.e. that you product has no value per se, and that marketing is everything you are going to do around your product/service to create the perception of its value. Your customers don't know how time you spent on it, they don't care how complex it is, they don't even want to know how it works (at least not until they ar…

Just one thing I wanted to add. If anyone has a startup idea "Marketing as a Service", HN is probably a good place to start your service since we see this as a regular need: people making applications they have no clue how to market. There's probably a ton of unmet needs in this field.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#93

Post by PeterisP »

cageface wrote: post #36
quaffapint wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to reply with just a me too - but, absolutely agree with you through my own spend a year developing a product I can't market experiences... Software Development = Easy Marketing that Software = Wicked Hard

Software Development = Easy This is only true because most people are building fairly trivial software.

The size of a need and the complexity of software for that need tend to be completely unrelated.

People are paying in proportion to the pain/joy you solve, not in proportion to how hard it is to solve that. The difficulty affects only supply - i.e., if you do make it, how large the competition will be.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#94

Post by ericd »

nikatwork wrote: post #85
vertis wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm vegetarian, but bacon still smells good.

This is going to sound sanctimonious, but I'm vegetarian and to me bacon smells like rotting corpse (because that's what it is).

Except it's not - it's well preserved, and not decomposing in the way that a rotting corpse would be.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#95

Post by RyanZAG »

ekianjo wrote: post #92
ekianjo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd add that Marketing is about value creation ultimately. You have to start with the right mindset, i.e. that you product has no value per se, and that marketing is everything you are going to do around your product/service to create the perception of its value. Your customers don't know how time you spent on it, they don't care how complex it is, they don't even want to know how it works (at least not until they ar…

Just one thing I wanted to add. If anyone has a startup idea "Marketing as a Service", HN is probably a good place to start your service since we see this as a regular need: people making applications they have no clue how to market. There's probably a ton of unmet needs in this field.

Lots of people have had that idea, but it doesn't work because you just end up with "Sales as a Service" to use your words.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6686977

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#97

Post by bsaul »

trey_swann wrote: post #61
austenallred wrote: post #43

This is exactly why I've been writing "The Hacker's Guide to User Acquisition" (first chapter: http://www.austenallred.com/the-hackers-guide-to-the-first-1... , next chapter will be about getting press). I would point out a few things. 1. The notion that you "build a better mousetrap" and people will beat their way to your door is true maybe 1% of the time. Many more companies have had to fight a little to become suc…

Exactly! Well said austenallred. Most startups fail because they aren’t hitting their target growth rate, not because they failed to build a product that works. You have to fight to grow. Evaluate how much time you spent building your product, and then invest just as much time in growth-related activities.

that's exactly the conclusion i've reached, at least for b2c apps. marketing needs the same amount of time/money as software development.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#98

Post by kennethtilton »

vertis wrote: post #76
ChuckMcM wrote: post #6

Nice. So one of the things that happened to me when I came to the Bay Area was I was working at Intel and I had to talk to a lot of marketing folks (who were talking to 'the public' about Intel's chips). I realized I didn't have a clue what they did. I set out to correct that before I started my own company and looked for a job that would let me work closely with marketing but still be engineering based. I found one…

I'm vegetarian, but bacon still smells good.

Mmmm, bacon! I am a vegetarian and thank God that bacon is the only flavor that can be faked well.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#99

Post by codecrusade »

Getting to the top of HN should fix a lot of your user issues. I like your UI Style, but maybe the product is not very clear to me. Im not a pro perhaps, but you could still work a lot on your product site, make it more concise and easy for an idiot like me to understand too? Are you on the Mac App store? If I were you and If I had a product half as good as this, Id relentlessly blog about it with gorgeous screenshots till around 500 people bought this-Takes patience. Marketing ooutput = Intensity* Focus

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#100

Post by codecrusade »

Continuing..

1. Use Cases- If your product aint selling, you need to illustrate use cases for your product. If you manage to showcase a very contextually relevant use case, it could literally explode. Like Youtube instant- Its a relatively unused but incredibly useful feature that got its share of sun because it came quick on the heels of Google Instant.

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