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Product Marketing for Engineers

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Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#31

Post by TeMPOraL »

allendoerfer wrote: post #27
Gravityloss wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. If you're on the market for a time period, customer A who bought your shady competitor's product will see all its warts quite soon. Meanwhile, your own customer B will be happy with your honest product. The fence sitters on the marketplace might ask both A and B of their experiences and opinions. They will then calibrate that against A and B marketing. Maybe one or two customers might be random, but if it re…

Which I would counter with another short phrase: The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Your competitors earned some money and will gain interest on it, if they are smart.

And because they saved the money that you spent on building a good product, they now have more money to spend on marketing than you.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#32

Post by dynamite-ready »

Been looking for a guide like this.

Recently finished an MVP as a personal project, and was thinking about how promote it. It's a daunting task.

It's nice to think that l337 design (well... It's functional, hopefully) and a Reddit/HN post will be enough, but that's probably analogous to writing the first test record to your dev database, techwise...

On top of that, confidence is a big thing. What if my core hypothesis is flawed, or it's just a silly product? It's natural to want to innoculate yourself against criticism and rejection... That's a fundamental psychological feature of all nerds afterall.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#33

Post by luckylion »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #18
luckylion wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure it's narrow mindedness, I feel like it's mostly principles and not seeing that marketing isn't only spam, lies and shit. I think most engineers associate marketing with sleazy SEO/affiliate/self-promotion people who offer little to no added value to the web, society or humanity, who will lie, cheat and steal to make a buck. Most engineers don't want to be like those people in any way, and that's a good t…

I think your view on this will depend on what do you believe the distribution of good vs. evil in marketing looks like. Is it like this? ^ DECENCY PROFIT | ---> /---- EVIL GOOD Or like this? ^ DECENCY PROFIT | -> |\ | \ EVIL GOOD I personally believe it's the latter. I added arrows indicating opposing incentives at personal level, and I believe the profit motive is much stronger than personal morals, for two main rea…

I agree completely, but that's no reason to not engage in marketing at all. If you're not touching it, you're losing by default.

Dark patterns will yield great results, but you don't want to trick your users into buying something? There are alternatives besides having a website that's thrown together, doesn't pitch your product and requires the potential user to really, really want to try your product to suffer through the website.

It's true even in open source projects imho. If you want users to try and eventually use your software, it's good to make it easy for them.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#34

Post by dynamite-ready »

shirak_untel wrote: post #14

Great resource! One of the main problems with project that launch their marketing campaign is their attempt to create an image of something they are not yet to become. I think that by being transparent along the way with your target audience, telling them about the progress you've made and the difficulties your company face and overcome, that's worth more than any marketing trick. That's when your company becomes a b…

That sounds great, and it's how think I'd like to try and introduce my site to others. But do you have any case studies to support this idea of your?

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#35

Post by jagtesh »

harryf wrote: post #11

I’ve often found engineers really struggle to jump over their own shadows when it comes to marketing. Things like... - “Marketing is evil!” ... perhaps but it’s also a necessary evil if you want anyone using your product - “Build it and they will come” ... except they won’t unless you tell people - “I hate spam/push messages/ads therefor everyone else must do to” ... but engineers tend to be the grumpiest about this…

> You could _almost_ argue that some jobs, like PM, UX researcher, designer, digital marketeer largely exist because of the narrow mindedness of engineers

I'd argue it's a simple division of labor. Engineers need to stay focused on solving technical challenges. Also, when it comes to PM - it's more than just writing product stories or prioritizing them. Doing stakeholder interviews is as art. Asking the right questions is crucial.

So while Engineers stay focused on the how, the PM stays focused on the what. And the UX translates the what into an interactive map easily understood by target audience.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#36

Post by ghaff »

philshem wrote: post #16
dang wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, changed from https://github.com/michael-andreuzza/Marketing-for-Engineers .

I would petition to add “Software” in front of “Engineers” in the title, and perhaps adding “Product” in front of “Marketing”. I’m supporting a mechanical engineer get his remote services business going, and as far as I can tell this resource is _not_ of interest.

Curious why not. It does seem to be oriented towards things that can be sold to an audience that can be reached through email campaigns, social media, Medium (uggh), etc. The emphasis would almost certainly be different if you have a much narrower industrial focus where F2F interactions/sales may be relatively more important.

I will say that the list of resources seems to be oriented towards tactics more than thinking about what your strategy around the product is.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#37

Post by chris_f »

dynamite-ready wrote: post #32

Been looking for a guide like this. Recently finished an MVP as a personal project, and was thinking about how promote it. It's a daunting task. It's nice to think that l337 design (well... It's functional, hopefully) and a Reddit/HN post will be enough, but that's probably analogous to writing the first test record to your dev database, techwise... On top of that, confidence is a big thing. What if my core hypothesi…

"On top of that, confidence is a big thing. What if my core hypothesis is flawed, or it's just a silly product? It's natural to want to innoculate yourself against criticism and rejection... That's a fundamental psychological feature of all nerds afterall."

The trick is to remember that those responses are still better than the alternative of no one using your project or caring enough to provide any feedback. Users providing feedback is a good thing, even if it is negative.

I post a lot about my side project here and on other forums. It would be great if everyone just knew about it and already decided if it was something that they were interested in or not, but I know only a small fraction of relevant users are even aware it exists.

For me, it would be way worse to spend time building something that people might find beneficial but never got a chance to hear about, than sharing it and being criticized on the internet.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#38

Post by sweetdreamerit »

jagtesh wrote: post #35
harryf wrote: post #11

I’ve often found engineers really struggle to jump over their own shadows when it comes to marketing. Things like... - “Marketing is evil!” ... perhaps but it’s also a necessary evil if you want anyone using your product - “Build it and they will come” ... except they won’t unless you tell people - “I hate spam/push messages/ads therefor everyone else must do to” ... but engineers tend to be the grumpiest about this…

> You could _almost_ argue that some jobs, like PM, UX researcher, designer, digital marketeer largely exist because of the narrow mindedness of engineers I'd argue it's a simple division of labor. Engineers need to stay focused on solving technical challenges. Also, when it comes to PM - it's more than just writing product stories or prioritizing them. Doing stakeholder interviews is as art. Asking the right questio…

well, no. They are different jobs, that require skills that an engineer is not required to have. It's not just mindest, it's about methods and skills and theoretical backgrounds. UX is about eliciting the needs, the knowledge, the mental models of the users and to contribute to create (digital) representations that help them (the users) to accomplish their goals. This is not what an engineer is asked to do, and not what (s)he has been trained to.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#39

Post by Gravityloss »

allendoerfer wrote: post #27
Gravityloss wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends. If you're on the market for a time period, customer A who bought your shady competitor's product will see all its warts quite soon. Meanwhile, your own customer B will be happy with your honest product. The fence sitters on the marketplace might ask both A and B of their experiences and opinions. They will then calibrate that against A and B marketing. Maybe one or two customers might be random, but if it re…

Which I would counter with another short phrase: The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. Your competitors earned some money and will gain interest on it, if they are smart.

Staying solvent is fine if one is profitable.

The "market" the quote relates to is the stock market. Very different than selling products to be used.

If you invested in the product itself (instead of marketing), that can gain you something as well in the long term.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#40

Post by k__ »

I saw a sales funnel for an app I built for a customer once.

99% people dropped before they even saw the app.

I could have built the best app in the world, and no one would have ever known.

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