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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

#101

Post by cageface »

PeterisP wrote: post #93
cageface wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure. If anything they tend to be inversely related. But go build Maya or Ableton Live or Photoshop and get back to me on how "easy" it is to build software.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#102

Post by mirozoo »

bsaul wrote: post #97
trey_swann wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I would go a step farther: In many cases (esp. SaaS solutions) marketing takes even more time than the development.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#103

Post by nikatwork »

ericd wrote: post #94
nikatwork wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's still a decomposing dead animal, preservation just slows down the process. If you don't believe me, leave a pack of bacon in your fridge for two months then take a big sniff.

Of course, picked vegetables are also decomposing at a certain rate - but they don't have a dead animal smell. This is also why I'm excited about Soylent, and I haven't seen them play up the sustainable/ethical angle as yet.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#104

Post by rajjalan »

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.

You are taking that in a different context. It should be read as software development is easy compared to marketing that software.

For example, in a child comment you mention go build photoshop and get back on how "easy" it is. Problem is more complicated the software, harder the marketing part. In-fact, you might need a full fledged marketing and sales team if you were to successfully launch a complicated software.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#105

Post by noptic »

nikatwork wrote: post #103
ericd wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It's still a decomposing dead animal, preservation just slows down the process. If you don't believe me, leave a pack of bacon in your fridge for two months then take a big sniff. Of course, picked vegetables are also decomposing at a certain rate - but they don't have a dead animal smell. This is also why I'm excited about Soylent, and I haven't seen them play up the sustainable/ethical angle as yet.

Yes bacon is "a dead animal", but the typical bacon smell is not related to that. Bacon smells of cured meat, and there if you fry some cured vegatarian/vegan products you get a simmilar smell. (Deep fryed, thin sliced, King Oyster Mushrooms with smoked Salt).

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#106

Post by woodylondon »

First impressions are good, the main additional thing I would have done is to create a "video" overview. Most people just don't have the time to download, install, work out what is going on, etc etc. I do have 5mins to watch a quick video to see if this is for me. You can just do a screencast, voice it yourself. Keep it simple.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#107

Post by WA »

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

You working for Red Bull?

Edit: To clarify: Red Bull is, for me, THE epitome of marketing. They sell a tremendously unhealthy product (bacon-smell car) as something that is healthy, basically by connecting themselves with extreme sports. Red Bull IS extreme sports and lifestyle. How insane if you think about it.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#108

Post by melloclello »

gk1 wrote: post #12

This is the second or third post I'm seeing today where a dev person could use some help with marketing their product. This is what I consult in, so I'd be happy to try and answer any questions you or anyone wishes to ask. Fire away! If the answer requires more information then I'll ask you to email me instead.

Oh man nobody replied, guts

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#109

Post by manmal »

Wow that's the first non-crappy Mac app with JIRA support that I've heard of. While I'm really glad that I found out about Bee now, you should really dig into this pain point, IMO. JIRA is terribly slow, and in times of faster tools like Trello or Blossom people are really getting fed up with that. I imagine that marketing it mainly as JIRA client could work well.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#110

Post by ptr »

holgersindbaek wrote: post #5

I'd love to follow your journey of marketing your product. If you intend to go hard on marketing this app and exploring ways to do that, can you put up an email form, so I know when your next blog post is?!

I'd also be interested in following your work; it's a great product to learn marketing from.
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