Yep, this times a ten thousand. It took me years to unlearn all of the "marketing is all bullshit" attitudes I grew up with. Whole different set of skills to learn, and not like, say, imperative->FP. Much harder.
As a senior marketer who has to combat this myth frequently, thank you.
Modern day marketing is a complex orchestration of many parts that are often highly technical. Further, the discipline as a whole has some incredibly hard unsolved problems when it comes to measurement and analytics (attribution and viewability I'm looking at you).
If anyone has a product with initial traction but is unsure of where to go next, feel free to ask, happy to answer questions.
Don't have a product right now, but are there any resources you can point to which have quality marketing wisdom? Or is this something you just have to learn as an apprentice to a good marketer?
I am always torn because while I can appreciate good marketing, a lot of the marketing and advertising Industry (which too me seem like different things) seems to be bullshit.
I really like it when there are marketing campaigns that try to understand me and help me. Well designed product descriptions for example. Or research to understand customer needs, actually useful newsletters not only about the company itself(there is a really good startup tracker whose newsletters i read for a while)that stuff I get. I also get advertising as a separate or subfield of marketing, when it is in the case of "hey, we exist, we do this, you might be interested". Helping me find stuff which is useful basically. And usually, the good products don't need to do more(at least it seems like this?). Like rsync.net had an advertisement on resist once, that they now supported ZFS and that of you did not know why that was cool, you should not click the link. That spoke to me, conveyed information clearly and made me aware of rsync.net
What I don't like is stuff like YouTube ads trying to sell me beauty products. That will get them nowhere. Or the bullshit newsletters to build "engagement" by automatically subscribing you when yiu make an account, then listing "10 freaky ways people use $product. Number 5 will surprise you!". That stuff will turn me off products, even if it is good.
This is going to sound a little pat, but if that's what you like in marketing, you're probably not alone. You could probably do well to try that exact set of behaviors on other people, with the outcome in the back of your mind, "will this person pay me to solve the problem I am talking with them about?"
If yes, then that's it, you're done. Take the money, give 'em the thing, and do it again. :)
For books, for getting a start in marketing, I like "Guerrilla marketing in 30 days".
Biggest shift, though, is just mindset; going out and talking to people again and again until you learn what matters to them. It takes a lot of time, and when you're not used to it, it feels like it takes way more time than you're actually putting into it. Eventually you do learn, this is what these people have in common (they're members of some industry, field, hobby, affinity group), this is where they go (online, offline, in-town, conferences), this is how they like to be marketed to (online ads, postcards, in-person events, etc). Just takes time and effort, more than anything. Pretend you're learning a language, and assume it'll take that long to get conversational. :)
Marketingland is a good industry resource if you want to stay abreast of the latest and greatest. Usually has a fairly decent signal/noise ratio. Beyond that, find companies that are successful in their marketing and study them. Learn from them.
Go to marketing industry tradeshows and see what people are focusing on. Read Mary Meeker's Internet Trends report and other research to understand macro trends. Pick up a recent college textbook on the matter to brush up on the basics. Talk to people in the space and learn what works and what doesn't. Find blogs and read enough where you can separate the truth from the bullshit.
Oh yes, there's a lot of bullshit. Any marketer worth their salt will be the first to tell you there is a lot of snake oil out there and there is unfortunate overlap with the "get rich quick" community in many cases when researching this stuff online.
Like any industry, there is a spectrum of good and bad actors, and quality/crap products and services. Sometimes that is difficult to determine because your own situation may be the barrier to success.
More to your point, my personal motto is "the right message to the right person at the right time." This seems to align with your view. It all comes down to understanding your audience and earning trust--not tricking them into your message with a clickbait headline.
Hi @shostack. We (https://flair.co) are a team of engineers and looking for feedback on the marketing side. We have some nice preorders and shipped our first few units a few days ago. We will have brick and morter presence in the next few months but our online strategy has largely been focused on reddit. Looking to do more FB ads etc but curious about tactics for identifying copy/images/audience most effectively. Also curious where to look for a marketing hire and how to best structure compensation (main advice I have seen is emphasis on commission). Any thoughts? Also happy to chat offline if you need more detail.
I love companies that get their start on Reddit. While I'm not familiar with yours specifically, generally speaking you are having a dialogue with your target audience. This is critical for validating product-market fit and learning about who your target audience is and what they care about. I mean, people will literally tell you if you ask them.
Beyond that, if you are able to harness the goodwill of the hive mind, you can reach that critical front page trajectory pretty quickly. If you are one of the few brands that lucks out in dominating in a given subreddit for a period of time (not through advertising), that's a huge validator. Further, pleasing that audience can result in lots of earned social activity which is great for a nascent brand.
For FB specifically, Lookalike targeting is very powerful, and banner blindness is a very real thing that requires constantly refreshed creative depending on your reach (excluded audiences can be important here to avoid wasting impressions). Unless you are using a FB PMD (basically a tool to manage FB that offers loads more than the basic Power Editor), splitting stuff out for granular targeting can be a PITA. Break out your audiences in meaningful chunks where you can gain insight and better improve your creative. More importantly, make sure the rest of your analytics are in order so you can understand what people exposed to you through FB are doing on your site. For a brand that may not be well-known yet, you might avoid a lot of bigger attribution issues with conversion tracking, but make sure you think carefully about whether you want view-through attribution settings enabled for conversion tracking. They are by default, and that can skew things and they may not be worth as much as you think they are based on the stats.
In terms of hiring for marketing, most strong marketers know there's a lot outside their control. There's definitely a difference between marketing a sales. As such, I would actually avoid focusing too heavily on commission as that can be a turnoff that says you aren't putting your money where your product is so to speak. That said, if the person has significant control over the full funnel and relevant touch-points (a requirement to be successful when it comes to online marketing), they might be willing.
The other side of that is the affiliate world. These are essentially 100% commission marketers. You can get mixed results, but it manages your direct financial risk a bit better than hiring someone internally in some cases. There are real benefits to having an internal hire though that you simply won't get with affiliates as they are by definition mercenaries.
Like many professions, comp can be relatively simple. A competitive base plus a well-detailed bonus structure, solid benefits, potentially equity if appropriate, and a great culture coupled with a product with lots growth potential are all things that can land a solid marketing hire.
This is great and I really appreciate your thoughtful feedback.
Another question - looking to pick your marketing brain. We built a bit of a swiss army knife into our products. I'll try to break it down as simply as possible:
- a user can use one Puck as a remote sensor for their Nest
- a user can use one Puck + Multiple Vents for an Ecobee (like Nest but with remote sensors)
- a user can use Multiple Pucks and Multiple Vents with a Nest
- a user can use a Puck with a Window AC or Minisplit (standard AC outside of North America where they don't have central heating/cooling)
Without having you get too deep into our specific products my main question is more around how to market in a scenario like this. I am toying with the idea of effectively building different landing pages for different people (one person controlling a minisplit likely doesn't care about smart vents for instance and might even be confused). Was thinking specific adds that target different use cases that then direct to those landing pages. A bit of a PITA in terms of lots of different flows/content etc but need to make sure we effectively communicate without confusing.
Multiple landing pages may be the way to go, and can have value from an SEO standpoint as long as they are not too repetitive.
Beyond that though, consider entry into those pages. Odds are you want to give a different message to different people, so think about how you might incorporate some sort of self-selection mechanism when people arrive at your site. Maybe asking them in a little configurator widget what setup they have or what they are trying to do. You can use those signals to direct them to the appropriate page, but also to segment them into various audience buckets for purposes of advertising, remarketing, etc. It is amazing how valuable a couple clicks can be in terms of clarifying what audience someone falls under. For example, if you get a lot of searches on your brand term in AdWords, giving different site links to different sections lets you better understand the intent of your audience. Better intent signals give you better data for targeting and messaging which in turn should lead to better conversion rates from the more relevant experience.
Thanks shostack - very much appreciated. Will be making these changes over the next couple weeks, should be fascinating once its all wired up (I'm an engineer dabbling in all this for the first time).
I'm a solo founder and I've been working on an e-learning platform for the past few months: https://www.tutora.org. It's a work in progress, and the most interesting part of the platform is still being developed; but it can definitely be used as is, while I continue to make progress.
I'm currently going through the pain of trying to figure out all the marketing stuff... it's hard. Really hard. I don't have traction right now, but I want to start building a small user base so I can begin collecting some feedback. I've put together a survey (http://survey.tutora.org), I'm handing out flyers and talking to people, I've also set up a small Google AdWords campaign. Am I on the right track? What do you guys think is the best strategy to acquire the first 100-1,000 users?
lol - yes, me too. Used to really dislike the marketing guys. Once you're running a company though, you discover marketing is what counts, more than code quality in most cases. Though I'll say keeping technical debt low has allowed this product to grow for many years.
Keeping technical debt low... does that mean you are regularly refactoring or changing your technology stack? Just less debt due to a simple desktop design? Good unit tests from the beginning for easy refactoring? Any pointers on how you kept tech debt low and what that means to you?
Your question deserves a whole thread for itself, but I hope I can clear some fog around it.
Low technical debt mostly revolves around:
(1) Keeping your code maintainable. Example: the framework you're using (like one for making a website, or JSON API, or accepting emails and triggering actions, etc.) gets a new version. You stop what you're doing and you go and upgrade. Why? Because the older version of a framework/library you use, the less chances you have to get a bugfix from the maintainers when you inevitably stubmle upon a blocker bug one day. Being able to [almost] always switch to the newest version means:
(1.1) Keep a good collection of unit / integration tests. They don't have to cover 100% of the project. If you have a good integration test suite covering most of the customer scenarios, you're already in a much better shape than most projects on the planet.
(1.2) Keep an eye out of the changelogs and version releases of all frameworks and important libraries your project depends on. You must have a good idea what's changing in there. It might help you remove WTF code pieces that were working around a defect in the framework/library which suddenly is fixed in the newer version as well.
(2) Keeping your code evolvable -- if at certain point of development you conclude Ruby on Rails isn't cutting it, you must be brave and decisively and quickly replace it with something else. There's a huge price to pay when you're hesitant. Don't be hesitant!
If your code has separation of concerns, the various pieces have single responsibilities, if it minimizes state sharing and is regularly tested -- that's a project you won't be scared to migrate to a much newer version of your framework, or switch the framework (or even the language) entirely.
(3) Keep a huge internal documentation of what you want improved. When you're in a hurry to deliver a working product customers can use easily, you inevitably make compromises. Document them. Be ruthless and never make exceptions. No "I am too tired to write this down right now". NO! Scribble it on a napkin if you have to. Dictate it to your smartphone. Do whatever it takes. Eventually you'll return to your computer and write it down. I use a private Trello board for that, works very well for me. It has ~60 points in there but you know what? 3 months ago it had 150. ;)
So keep your code tested and documented. Be real with yourself and document (internally, for your eyes only) all of its warts. Realize its limitations. Find the value it brings to the paying customers. Maintain that. Get ideas on how it can attract more paying customers. Implement them.
Bottom line: BE ON TOP OF YOUR CODE, always. Realize that the code itself doesn't change if you don't change it (not like GitHub will maliciously modify your source files) but if you don't change it, then the business value of your code rots over time. It's really not any different compared to any other revenue-bringing asset. It needs maintenance and support (and evolution/expansion when you want to grow).
Thank you for this detailed and informative reply. I have bookmarked it and next time I see a discussion about technical debt on HN I will link to it. If my question needed its own thread, your answer needs its own stackoverflow page. Cheers.
Let me just point out that what I commented is a generalization and simply an excerpt of all the good practices I found during my [almost] 15 years of commercial experience.
Understanding your place in the world (namely what business value does your code bring) and worshipping communication -- even between your current self and your future self -- are what I found to be the gods I worship during my work, and it made me much more productive and valuable for my customers/employers.
Oh yes, I sold the prototype version of my platform for a year before I had a chance to replace it.
The prototype was custom pages on a Wordpress site (pretty slow to load, especially on phones, not easily scalable, etc), the new one's a .NET-based site, loads instantly on any device, and when I watch the server load, I can see that this thing will live happily on even a low-end VPS for a long, long time to come (lot of traffic growth so far, no increase in load!).
Keeping technical debt low is good, money's a higher priority. It's a business. That never really hit me before. :)
