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Product Marketing for Engineers

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Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#41

Post by guptaneil »

petargyurov wrote: post #10

Looks useful as I'm just getting into that sort of stuff for my business [0] I experimented with two ad campaigns, on Facebook and on Reddit, both the cheapest options. Had some weird results from the FB one: most of the "reached" users were concentrated in Eastern Europe, even though my locations were set to the US, Canada and Europe. All in all, it didn't yield many clicks but for ~£10 I wasn't expecting much. Redd…

Makely looks nice! Thanks for sharing. I sent the link along to someone who was considering starting a 3D design business :)

I haven't signed up myself, but how are you planning on solving the chicken/egg marketplace problem?

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#42

Post by wyck »

Marketing can be a real struggle for engineers, they are often so focused on "proving" what works, they feel marketing or promotion somehow pollutes the purity of their invention. They are also REALLY bad at the aesthetics of design.

They are often dead wrong about this moral high-ground, good brand/marketing can be the difference between success and failure.

I've lived in this difficult world for decades, started out as a programmer, but the majority of my work is marketing and brand management. Iv'e worked with start-ups that 100% refuse all brand/marketing, and others that are completely misguided. But ive also worked with very successful companies that devote the time and money to marketing. After all what's the point of making something if no one uses it.

Car's sell because they have personality, it's not just about what's under the hood.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#43

Post by dynamite-ready »

chris_f wrote: post #37
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 p…

Great promotional work! What's your side project?

Jokes aside, a large component of marketing is in aggregating opinion. The other half is the dark art we famously complain about.

Aggregating opinion at any level is hard work. And it's almost been elevated to a science now, so it has to be respected.

So to perform all that work to derive a conclusion which will most likely (given all that's known about the probability of start ups and success) prove you wrong, seems a perverse thing to do.

Masochistic, in fact.

I think it's easier to perform this work in the third person... It turns the dynamic on its head (like the schadenfreuder one might feel when working on a software project in the capicity of a QA tester). You're performing a clinical service.

But it takes some special effort to willingly put yourself through it...

I dunno.

I suppose I'll learn more if I just do it...

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#45

Post by stagger87 »

wyck wrote: post #42

Marketing can be a real struggle for engineers, they are often so focused on "proving" what works, they feel marketing or promotion somehow pollutes the purity of their invention. They are also REALLY bad at the aesthetics of design. They are often dead wrong about this moral high-ground, good brand/marketing can be the difference between success and failure. I've lived in this difficult world for decades, started ou…

From personal experience, making someones income commission or royalty based can quickly change their opinion on marketing.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#46

Post by rexreed »

This is a great compendium. What might be helpful is a bit of a flow chart or an actual step-wise guide that shows you what to consider when and why and how. I'm reading Seth Godin's "This is Marketing" book right now.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#47

Post by amelius »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #23
allendoerfer wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One, market competition means you won't survive unless you're optimizing for profits very strongly; with strong enough competition, if your competitor does something shady, you have to follow suit or risk being outcompeted. I have recently learned here on HN, that this is called a Red Queen's race. Since like me everyone on HN loves expressive language I am spreading the word. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Quee…

If you haven't seen this, you'll be in for a treat: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ It's a very thorough discussion of the topic. A rather long read, but absolutely worth it.

Interesting read. What I don't get is that they compare Moloch (total competition) to Nature.

> (I’m not really sure how widely people appreciate the value of analogizing capitalism to evolution. Fit companies – defined as those that make the customer want to buy from them – survive, expand, and inspire future efforts, and unfit companies – defined as those no one wants to buy from – go bankrupt and die out along with their company DNA. The reasons Nature is red and tooth and claw are the same reasons the market is ruthless and exploitative)

But then nature has found ways to organize: the cells in our bodies don't compete in any obvious way, but they work together. Our right hand doesn't fight our left hand. Etc.

Perhaps Moloch is what you get when Nature reaches a level where evolution stops to work (or at the "edge" of evolution). We can't evolve as a planet because there is only one planet, and evolution would need many iterations sacrificing many individual planets on the way.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#48

Post by egfx »

sweetdreamerit wrote: post #38
jagtesh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

I think a frontend engineer needs to have both a very strong aesthetic design ability as well as engineering abilities. Marketing on the other hand is a different animal. A good marketer can sell bad code, U/X.

I worked in QA and I think this is similar. The best QA testers aren’t engineers because they don’t make assumptions. Marketers make assumptions but not about code but about human behavior like you said but I think this relates more to the U/X and marketing relationship vs the engineer to U/X relationship.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#49

Post by phab »

wyck wrote: post #42

Marketing can be a real struggle for engineers, they are often so focused on "proving" what works, they feel marketing or promotion somehow pollutes the purity of their invention. They are also REALLY bad at the aesthetics of design. They are often dead wrong about this moral high-ground, good brand/marketing can be the difference between success and failure. I've lived in this difficult world for decades, started ou…

> Marketing can be a real struggle for engineers ... They are also REALLY bad at the aesthetics of design.

This is a pretty sweeping generalisation.

Re: Product Marketing for Engineers

#50

Post by phab »

sweetdreamerit wrote: post #38
jagtesh wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

I completely disagree. Engineering at its core is about building useful solutions to real-world problems. If you're not considering the user (including the theory behind the user's interaction with your product), you're not embracing your role as an engineer holistically. If I was hiring engineers, that is exactly what I would be asking them to do.
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