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We are not normal people

justinjackson.ca

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Re: We are not normal people

#41

Post by mindcrime »

janj wrote: post #21

I'm one of those developers who thinks that marketing in general is 'scummy' and this article has done nothing to change that perception. I'm willing to acknowledge that there can exist marketing that is not scummy but it's hard for me to think of real world examples. Can someone describe for me the difference between scummy marketing and, I guess I'll call it 'ethical' marketing? I love building things that people e…

I love building things that people enjoy using but I hate sales and marketing.

If you think that, you probably don't understand what "marketing" actually is. Marketing is really just everything you do to communicate with your customers, to find out what they need, and communicate to them that you have a solution for them. There's nothing inherently "scummy" about marketing.

Let's say you talk to your barber about scheduling software. That's marketing. Let's say you write some scheduling software and put it up on GitHub. That's marketing. Let's say you go further and post a "Show HN: My Rad New Barbershop Scheduling Package". That's marketing.

Or maybe you go to the National Barber's Association Annual Convention and rent space for a both, and setup a PC (or iPad or whatever) to demo software, and as people walk by you talk to them about their problems and your solution. Again, that's marketing. Or maybe you buy some Google Adwords for your software. Marketing.

Let's say your thing really blows up and you're making money hand over fist and you buy an ad during next year's Super Bowl. That's marketing. Now maybe you find sales are dropping off, and you don't know why, so you create a SurveyMonkey survey asking about Barbershop issues, and email it to all of your existing customers. That's marketing. But maybe that doesn't generate enough responses, so you Tweet the link along with hashtag #barbershops and buy a couple of Facebook ads, and maybe share the link on LinkedIn. That's all marketing.

Running a few focus groups to solicit customer feedback? Marketing. Replying to blog posts related to your topic? Marketing. Blogging about your topic? Marketing.

There's just so much to marketing, and nothing about any of it requires unethical behavior or typical "used car salesman" stuff.

"Marketing" is also strategy... segmenting your market for example, by, say, geography and demographics: deciding "We're only targeting barbershops in the Southeast USA, in cities with at least 40,000 people". And that decision was probably based on market research, which is also part of marketing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing

Re: We are not normal people

#42

Post by badman_ting »

Pxtl wrote: post #18

On the barber anecdote, I think something that a lot of software solutions miss is how fast and flexible paper is. It's ready for you the instant you need it, and you can draw arbitrary shapes quickly and easily in addition to text. We're still feeling out getting this convenience into user's hands. Keyboarded platforms suck for drawing/using standing up, tablets suck for typing. Ultimately, the only thing I could of…

Yes, paper is direct. There are no silly abstractions getting in the way of recording a quick piece of info, and surely a barber is mostly dealing with small quick bits of info.

Sometimes I wish nerds would think a little more about what computers shouldn't be used for instead of trying to figure out how they can fix everything with software.

Re: We are not normal people

#43

Post by janj »

jh3 wrote: post #34
janj wrote: post #21

I'm one of those developers who thinks that marketing in general is 'scummy' and this article has done nothing to change that perception. I'm willing to acknowledge that there can exist marketing that is not scummy but it's hard for me to think of real world examples. Can someone describe for me the difference between scummy marketing and, I guess I'll call it 'ethical' marketing? I love building things that people e…

> I love building things that people enjoy using but I hate sales and marketing. What do you do to get paid?

I'm building a community around the cruising industry. It was recently sold to a holding company who is now throwing some decent money behind marketing efforts. I stayed on and am strictly on the technical side. From what I've seen so far I wouldn't consider the marketing behind what we're doing as scummy.

Re: We are not normal people

#44

Post by samolang »

janj wrote: post #21

I'm one of those developers who thinks that marketing in general is 'scummy' and this article has done nothing to change that perception. I'm willing to acknowledge that there can exist marketing that is not scummy but it's hard for me to think of real world examples. Can someone describe for me the difference between scummy marketing and, I guess I'll call it 'ethical' marketing? I love building things that people e…

"If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would said a faster horse" - Henry Ford

Sometimes it is hard to know what you want and marketing can help you figure it out.

Re: We are not normal people

#45

Post by agilebyte »

janj wrote: post #21

I'm one of those developers who thinks that marketing in general is 'scummy' and this article has done nothing to change that perception. I'm willing to acknowledge that there can exist marketing that is not scummy but it's hard for me to think of real world examples. Can someone describe for me the difference between scummy marketing and, I guess I'll call it 'ethical' marketing? I love building things that people e…

I was in that camp, but then I was honest with myself and realized that I just did/do not want to talk to people and face a rejection.

Ultimately, if I were to be helpful to others, I would ask them what they want and figure out a way to help them (sales & marketing if you will). For how can I truly build useful products, when I don't actually talk to the people that use them?

Even if you want to give fruits of your labour for free for others to enjoy, you need to market them, because there is a stack of software already doing the same thing for the same cost.

Re: We are not normal people

#46

Post by mindcrime »

tbirdz wrote: post #35
ryanio wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you think this article was scummy? Probably not, it provided some real value and insight. And guess what, it was a piece of content marketing for his new book. I was pleasantly surprised at the end with his CTA (call-to-action). Marketing is just finding a way to communicate your value proposition to your target market. Yes, there are plenty of scummy ways out there -- but some awesome real-world examples come fr…

In all honesty, I starting reading the article because I was lured in by the title (even though it's a bit link baity). Why are these people not normal, and why am I one of them? Then I started reading, realized it was about developers marketing. I have never really considered marketing my strong suit so I continued reading. When he started talking about his book, I felt as though I had been tricked, and I got a litt…

At that instant I knew he had posted this link on Hacker News not to be informative, but to prey on developers with weak marketing skills, and get them to pay for his book.

OK, the fact that you would use a term like "prey on" in this context tells me that we probably have radically different worldviews, so there may be no point to this exchange, but...

I would say this is an unethical advertisement because it pretends to be an article, but it actually was an advertisement

There's no particular reason a piece of content can't be intended to be both legitimately informative, AND serve to drive awareness of something your selling. In this case, ask yourself this: If you took away the last paragraph or two of the article, would the rest of it still have been informative? Would you have gotten value from it? If so, how is it not an informative article, just because of the blurb tacked onto the end, sharing information about the author's book? Especially when the book is relevant to the audience who would likely discover that article?

OK, I get that a lot of developers just have a sort of general aversion to "all things commercial". Hell, I used to be that way to some extent, but yet I always found marketing fascinating, and now that I run a startup, I find marketing essential, so maybe my views have shifted a bit. Anyway, I understand - to a point - that a lot of us find that commercial interests take away from some notion of essential "purity" or whatever when it comes to technical content. But to call this kind of content marketing "unethical" is a bit extreme, IMO.

Re: We are not normal people

#47

Post by tbirdz »

mindcrime wrote: post #46
tbirdz wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all honesty, I starting reading the article because I was lured in by the title (even though it's a bit link baity). Why are these people not normal, and why am I one of them? Then I started reading, realized it was about developers marketing. I have never really considered marketing my strong suit so I continued reading. When he started talking about his book, I felt as though I had been tricked, and I got a litt…

At that instant I knew he had posted this link on Hacker News not to be informative, but to prey on developers with weak marketing skills, and get them to pay for his book. OK, the fact that you would use a term like "prey on" in this context tells me that we probably have radically different worldviews, so there may be no point to this exchange, but... I would say this is an unethical advertisement because it preten…

If it has value on its own without the paragraphs about buying his book, surely it would have just as much value if the author moved the final paragraphs to the front, and clearly identified it as an advertisement for his book. The fact that he did not do that indicates that he thought less people would read it if they knew it was an advertisement right from the start. So then the author thought he would have to trick people if he wanted to get them to read the advertisement, so he sneaked it in at the end. This intent to deceive is what I am calling unethical. Now, sure this could be an effective technique, but the kind of deceit and trickery usually involved in such marketing leaves me with a bad taste.

Re: We are not normal people

#48

Post by nine_k »

At Yandex (Russia's largest search engine) among engineers they/we used to have a motto: "I am non-representational" ("я не репрезентативен"), reminding about just that. Another useful motto was "I'm not your target audience". Some even had these on T-shirts.

You, the developer, are not a normal user, by definition (unless you're building tools for fellow developers). Anything user-facing should be tested on real users, on members of the target audience. What they find convenient and useful may seem inconvenient and useless to you. This is OK; such a view is usually reciprocal.

BTW this is often a point of contention in open-source software. It is built mostly by engineers. If the target audience does not also consist of engineers, users may find the UI confusing and inconvenient, despite authors' best effort to make it clear and convenient for themselves.

Re: We are not normal people

#49

Post by mindcrime »

tbirdz wrote: post #47
mindcrime wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that instant I knew he had posted this link on Hacker News not to be informative, but to prey on developers with weak marketing skills, and get them to pay for his book. OK, the fact that you would use a term like "prey on" in this context tells me that we probably have radically different worldviews, so there may be no point to this exchange, but... I would say this is an unethical advertisement because it preten…

If it has value on its own without the paragraphs about buying his book, surely it would have just as much value if the author moved the final paragraphs to the front, and clearly identified it as an advertisement for his book. The fact that he did not do that indicates that he thought less people would read it if they knew it was an advertisement right from the start. So then the author thought he would have to tric…

The point is, there isn't a binary distinction between "it's an advertisement" and "it's informative content". It's a legitimately informative and interesting article, whether or not he mentions his book. So what difference does it make if he mentions the book at the beginning, or the end, or not at all?

And putting that stuff at the bottom has nothing to do with being tricky, or sneaky, or unethical. It just makes more sense to mention the book after the author has demonstrated some credibility through the content in the earlier part of the article.

Re: We are not normal people

#50

Post by janj »

mindcrime wrote: post #41
janj wrote: post #21

I'm one of those developers who thinks that marketing in general is 'scummy' and this article has done nothing to change that perception. I'm willing to acknowledge that there can exist marketing that is not scummy but it's hard for me to think of real world examples. Can someone describe for me the difference between scummy marketing and, I guess I'll call it 'ethical' marketing? I love building things that people e…

I love building things that people enjoy using but I hate sales and marketing. If you think that, you probably don't understand what "marketing" actually is . Marketing is really just everything you do to communicate with your customers, to find out what they need, and communicate to them that you have a solution for them. There's nothing inherently "scummy" about marketing. Let's say you talk to your barber about sc…

That's just one side of marketing. A large part of marketing is in understanding how to manipulate the thoughts, desires and behaviors of people. If Coca-Cola was focused on finding out what their customers needed they would be out of business. If their marketing consisted of honestly informing the public of what their product is, their market share would be a fraction of the size it is now.

I agree, marketing doesn't require unethical behavior. But marketing in an unethical way is required for many (most?) large business to grow.

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