Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

neat.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 152 posts

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#71

Post by jimbokun »

MichaelGG wrote: post #33
dxbydt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another Sun story. I was at the annual Sun employee conference way back in 2002. As engineers, we were raving about Java/Swing & the JDK. After a while, one of the audience members couldn't take it anymore & spoke up loudly - "WTF is Java ? It has never made a dime. We sell boxes. That's what makes money. We should be talking about that!" He was a marketing guy for the Sparc workstations that was Sun's bread & butter…

Perhaps you can clue me in: What was Sun's plan with Java? For a company that sold hardware, making a runtime that works everywhere, and has cross-platformness as a core feature seems sort of counterproductive. Did Sparc offer some sort of competitive advantage, hardware wise (like hardware assisted GC) or something? Edit: In Microsoft's case with the CLR, I can see the cross-platform goals being mainly technical, bu…

"For a company that sold hardware, making a runtime that works everywhere, and has cross-platformness as a core feature seems sort of counterproductive."

This might possibly be connected to the fact Sun no longer exists as an independent corporation.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#72

Post by programminggeek »

Start collecting emails using autoresponder courses. Think of collecting emails as asking a girl for their number. If you want a date, you're going to call them, talk to them, get to know them, and ask them out. If you want a sale, you need to develop a relationship with a customer.

Collect email from potential users on a landing page. Then, send them email to let them get to know you and you know them. After a few emails, say 5-7, you could say "hey I have this great product that makes doing X way easier!". A number of potential users who get to say the 5th or 7th email will then trial or purchase your product if you ask them to. That's like getting the first date. Your product ultimately still has to be good for it to be a long term relationship.

Pretty much any email newsletter software worth anything supports some kind of autoresponder series functionality.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#73

Post by jimbokun »

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…

No offense, but as an engineer with no particular knowledge or experience with marketing, I don't see very much actionable advice in your items. I see a lot of ways to screw up (emailing bloggers wrong, picking wrong marketing person, waiting to long to market), but a dearth of advice for not screwing up.

Maybe the positive advice will be in your Guide (haven't clicked the link yet)?

EDIT: OK, I should have clicked the link first. :)

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#74

Post by ehsanu1 »

gregrata wrote: post #52
trustfundbaby wrote: post #3

"So now after years of neglecting anything to do with marketing. I get it. Marketing is hard. So crushingly hard.Also I was incredibly naive in thinking that the product was so good that the marketing would just snowball itself into action" This right here ... a 1000 times. I've been a developer for years now and I always held onto the same fantasy of launching something so good that marketing would take care of itse…

I,oddly enough, had the opposite. Gave my software out to a few friends (wrote it for myself, as the others in its class sucked), Next thing I know I'm getting 100k d/l a month (paying for overages, fun) - and soon after have a few million users. Never have spent any money on advertising (even though the software DID make it on to a TV show in Denmark a few years later - and magazines, newspapers, etc.) Still getting…

Just curious, what software was this?

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#75

Post by jimbokun »

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.

Was talking to an extended family member a few months ago, who had built up a large marketing channel for a potential new game, and was frustrated because he couldn't find a developer to build the game at a price he was willing to pay.

So I would say, it's only true because Hacker News consists mostly of people who already know how to build software, but far fewer of us know how to market.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#76

Post by vertis »

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.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#77

Post by Bsharp »

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.

Upvote for making me literally lol

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#78

Post by jimbokun »

markbao wrote: post #9

Nice work. I've also recently released my first Mac app [0] and I'm working on getting the word out about it by making it free, the idea being that if it's known by people, it can be spread through word-of-mouth, especially if it becomes indispensable. GitHub's API currently reports 600 users, and I'm working on increasing that to 1000 before making it a paid app and marketing it. Nice to see both approaches here; I…

I love your landing page. I know exactly what it does, how it provides value, and will look it up again if I ever find myself creating lots of Github issues.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#79

Post by seunosewa »

gregrata wrote: post #52
trustfundbaby wrote: post #3

"So now after years of neglecting anything to do with marketing. I get it. Marketing is hard. So crushingly hard.Also I was incredibly naive in thinking that the product was so good that the marketing would just snowball itself into action" This right here ... a 1000 times. I've been a developer for years now and I always held onto the same fantasy of launching something so good that marketing would take care of itse…

I,oddly enough, had the opposite. Gave my software out to a few friends (wrote it for myself, as the others in its class sucked), Next thing I know I'm getting 100k d/l a month (paying for overages, fun) - and soon after have a few million users. Never have spent any money on advertising (even though the software DID make it on to a TV show in Denmark a few years later - and magazines, newspapers, etc.) Still getting…

"Wrote it for myself, the others in its class sucked" sounds like the key to your success. Poor competition, which is always helpful. A solid understanding of the customers' needs, because you were one of them. And a very large market.

Re: Diary of a programmer with no clue about marketing

#80

Post by shredfvz »

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…

Sales is the process of overcoming objections.

If your marketing isn't helping you overcome objections, you need better marketing, because your marketing isn't selling.

Post reply on HN