Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: I Just Need... Marketing?
An anonymous reader writes "Over the years, Slashdot has had many stories of non-technical entrepreneurs in need of programmers. Now I found myself in an almost opposite situation: I am a programmer with a fledgling mass-market product that needs marketing. I know Slashdot's general sentiment towards marketing. Without being judgmental one way or the other, I must say that for a product to reach the widest possible audience in a given time period, marketing is a necessity. Short of doing everything myself, I see a couple of options: 1. Hire marketing people, or an outside marketing firm; 2. Take in willing partners who are good at marketing (currently there are no shortage of people who want in). With these options, my major concerns are how to quantify performance, as well as how to avoid getting trapped in a partnership with non-performing partners — I already have a tangible product with a huge amount of time, money, and effort invested. Budget is also limited. (Budget is always limited unless you are a Fortune 500 business, but for now that's more of a secondary concern.) So here is my question to Slashdot: how do you address these concerns, and in a more general sense, how would you handle the situation: technical people with a product in need of marketing?"
Find a so-called "angel investor". They'll want an equity share, which is good at this point: their pay is tied to their performance. They should come with business background, a big network, and hopefully a couple of battle scars.
Don't underestimate the importance of marketing. A crappy product can succeed with good marketing, but a great product will fail without it.
(I'm including positive word-of-mouth as marketing - even this you should work at)
Give an experienced marketing partner and interest in the net profit. That way you aren't losing any more cash than you generate. If your product is viable, there should be no shortages of these types of people.
Look at your friends first, do you have anyone in marketing? Do you know anyone who has succesfully self-promoted a mobile app or web service? You might know the right person already, or at least know someone who can point you to that person.
Shop your idea around, and make sure you get an NDA to prevent someone stealing your concept.
Trackball users will be first against the wall.
I went through this same thing with my first start up. Plan on spending 2/3 of your money on marketing. Only 1/3rd should be used to actually build/test/etc your product. You should be worried about how the app or product actually works. Don't do the marketing yourself. If you know how you want to market it, that's fine. If that's the case, hire someone to just take orders from you. If you don't know how you want to market it, hire someone that can utilize personal connections in the field you are in. It is simply not possible to program, secure funding, bug test, bug fix, and market all yourself.
Do you know your demographic?
Who are you selling this mystery widget to?
ADVERTISE/HYPE/BLOG
Rinse and repeat
Not controversial enough? Add a nearly naked model with an assault rifle.
If you're not selling anything now, whatever it is, doesn't work.
Back to the drawing board.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
As you have clearly discovered, a properly operating business needs a balanced team of managers and employees who can handle ALL aspects of the company's functions, not just engineering the product. Making the product is arguably no more or less important than selling it and collecting the money. You're the tech guy and visionary founder, and that's great. But you need a marketing and sales genius to handle the other functions. That person (and his or her subordinates) are critical to your success, so you want someone who is as invested as you are. That means a top-level executive with equity-based compensation. You need to pick someone with experience operating in a small startup environment (or if not, at least a business degree with a good understanding of small business operations), who has the personal assets to weather unprofitability, and who is comfortable staking his entire return (or close to it) on the success of the company. Guaranteed payments and large salaries for founding executives are inadvisable. Compensation should be tied 100% to profitability, or at least to rational business milestones if you don't anticipate profitability for awhile and you have the capital to support it.
I am a geek attorney, but not your geek attorney unless you've already retained me. This is not legal advice.
You designed and created a product without input from marketing? You realize that one of the key purposes of marketing is to determine if a product is even marketable right? Are you sure you will even have customers? What features in your product are they most concerned with? Why would they choose your product over a competitors? Are there even any competitors yet, or are you establishing a new market? Which companys could potentially become competitors?
A sales executive would probably be more useful at this point. Establish some channel partners, and get the product out there. Then hire a PR firm to get your name into the right industry rags. They will also work on some graphics you can do for print ads and websites. At this point, since you decided to go on your own vision rather than do marketing you're pretty much just need some PR consultants to send out whatever message you decided on already.
look at the drug companies. most drugs these days are made by small biotech and start up drug companies. Pfizer and others do marketing, manufacture and anything else that takes a lot of money.
same with tech. Flash IO licenses their products to HP and others who rebrand it, sell and support it.
or better yet, find a buyer and sell your company. google is always buying startups and integrating their products. some years google buys dozens of small companies
Whichever way you go, (hiring a marketing team vs. a marketing firm), you need to mix salary with commission. Perhaps start at 70% salary, 30% commission, and slowly transition to the opposite of that over a pre-specified amount of time. The marketing people need some skin in the game to really be motivated to go the extra mile for your product.
Fill out a tax form. I believe somewhere near the last line you will find how well you performed.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Read about Customer Development at Steve Blank blog.
An Angel investor can also help you with business connections and hiring the right person to do it.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
I've spent the last 7 years in marketing. The idea that the field is non-technical is just silly. Analytics drives the business. It's not enough to create interesting and compelling creative. You have to be able to be able to show a real lift from that test and use that data to drive future campaigns.
There are a lot of smart people in marketing. Both technical and non-technical. The argument that the field is largely non-technical and therefore some how foreign to you is both wrong and unimportant.
What you should focus on is hiring people who understand the field and can use, shape, and sell your mass marketing product. In other words this challenge is the same as any other business, learning how to successfully grow your business.
The lollacup episode on Shark Tank had some interesting tidbits about contracts with marketing firms. To summarize, do not give your marketers exclusivity to profits for a market (asia for instance) and make sure they profit from their contributions to the market success of your product. The Lollacup creators had good business sense but still managed to make a contract with a marketing firm which took advantage of them.
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
If marketing isn't one of your firm's core competencies, outsource. Either hire an outside agency or get a hired gun in as a contractor.
If someone is really motivated to become a partner, let him/her go through a trial period where they're essentially in that contractor role and you can evaluate results. But you're right--if you're worried about possibly underperforming partners (and don't have enough mojo to figure it out without hard numbers), then get some hard numbers first.
As you correctly surmised, you can't completely ignore marketing if you're a business owner. Get some training on the subject (even if just an online class or something, though no need to go completely nuts). This is, unfortunately, one blind spot you can't have forever--marketing can be expensive and you must know and maintain what works.
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." --Groucho Marx
Why would you, if you can buy them for a dime a dozen at the butcher's?
... a shotgun clause in the agreement. That is the only guaranteed way to avoid being stuck with any partner while avoiding lengthy court battles that could cripple the company.
Consider the thousands (and sometimes millions) of spending on movies, software development and drugs.
Then consider how much MORE gets spent on marketing. If big companies are willing to more money at marketing a product (good or not) because they know it'll increase sales, why would you think about doing it on the cheap?
I'm not suggesting that it can't be done inexpensively, but I am suggesting that you will get exactly what you pay for... if you're lucky. And the chances of getting lucky go up quite a bit when you start paying someone - and the more experience they have, the better it will be.
Oh, and contracts. They're nice to have, and easier to enforce when you go 3rd party.
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
If a product or service needs marketing, it's usually because there's little to no demand for that product or service. The most successful businesses grow with no marketing at all. If people want the product or service, they will find it.
I don't respond to AC's.
1. You don't have a marketing team.
2. You need to market your (world changing) product.
3. You will be taken to the cleaners by Mavens regardless of your savvy.
4. YOU are your best sales tool.
5. If you've attracted a following already make THEM pay you to get in and watch them very closely.
6. As always ( successful entrepeneur ) be prepared to fail once if not several times before things get really exciting.
Marketing isn't the problem, the problem is you need someone to run the business while you work on product development. I suggest you put together a business plan and find an investor. That plan, if done properly, will include how to market this product, its sweet spot, how customers will learn about it, the size of the target market, etc. The investor will review the plan and if he/she thinks it's viable you'll give them part of your company in exchange for capital. Now they have skin in the game and will help you find the right people to go to market. And now you have the resources to work on marketing and other things.
I suggest you look for someone who is experienced not only in marketing, but branding and if necessary, business decisions as well. They don't have to be the same people, but you do need them to be on the same page.
Remember, you're this far because you're doing something right. That's where your success base already is. You want to refine it, not necessarily throw it away, and you need a smooth transition if you do throw it away.
Keep up the great work!
1) Make up a quick website to sell your product - three pages or so: a front page, an "about" page, a "FAQ" page, and so on.
2) Make a page that purports to purchase the product, but doesn't actually make the sale. Have them enter their CC number, but don't actually "capture" the number; ie - don't store the number and don't make the purchase. (*)
3) When they hit "submit" present a page that says "we're having difficulties and can't do the purchase right now, we haven't charged (or stored) your CC number. We'll send an E-mail when we're back on line. (You'll only get 1 E-mail from us, and we don't put people on spam lists.)
4) Purchase some Google ad-words which relate to your product and link to the site.
5) Let this steep for a period of time (4 weeks, say) and count the potential purchases.
After the 4-week period, evaluate the response and see if it's worthwhile to go into business with this product.
(*) I'm told that this is legal, so long as you don't record the CC number.
I hear they're popular in Europe at the moment.
Find someone who understands and loves your industry. Marketers work best under an incentive system. If you hire an outside marketing company expect to pay an initial retainer, and obviously, get references. Be clear as to what you expect them to do for you and get a detailed proposal from them. If you hire someone to work for you, offer a sufficient salary that demonstrates some confidence in your product. As a marketing/sales pro, if someone offers me a commission only position, that tells me they have zero confidence in their product and will offer zero marketing support. If someone offers me a decent salary, plus indicates a willingness to fund at least a modest advertising effort, that tells me that they have confidence in the product's appeal. I would expect to be mostly dependent upon commission, but I need to see some confidence in the product and some willingness to support marketing's efforts.
Without knowing anything about the product or market, it is difficult for anyone to give meaningful advice. So here's a few books to consider that might bring you up to speed. Your job will be to find these on Amazon, etc. You might not DIY, but it will give you insights into marketing and help you identify someone who will help. Think of it like a businessman who takes a programming course to better understand programmers and work effectively with them. There are lots of bad marketing people, and you need to know enough to be able to identify the good ones from the bad one.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries & Jack Trout - Start here.
Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson, Houghton Mifflin. - a how-to book on marking with a tiny budget. More local than national.
Advertising is a Waste of Money by Robert Ranson, HRD Press. Before you spend a dime advertising, read this.
Marketing Without Advertising, by Michael Phillips & Salli Rasberry, Nolo Press.
Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy, Vintage Books. In short - all marketing needs a feedback system so you can measure results. Yeah - web sites are great for this. Based on this book, I had a bunch of 1-800 toll-free phone numbers and every mailer had a different number. I could look at the phone bill and know which mailer was generating results. It is more important to know that something worked than to know why.
Place nail here >+
I have experience in another industry with the same scenario; I provide the operational expertise and oversight, and have marketing side opposite me. This was a very tough issue for me, as I know marketing is crucial for me from an operational standpoint, but I don't have the time or the drive to smile all day and shake hands.
I initially partnered with some marketing folks, where we were going to go halves on the costs, they were the marketing side, and I was the operational side. Their funding backed out after I had a lot of sunk costs (naturally), so I used whatever support they could still give me based on the good-will of our intended relationship, while I worked with people familiar to the market.
The most important advice I can give you is to work with people that already know the customers in your strongest base. As you appear to have experience in the area you're working in, the people who market for you should optimally know many of the same customers you do, know more about them, and know many more people you don't.
The second most important advice I can give you, is incentives for your salespeople. My initial partners had a strong incentive (if we did poorly, they lost money too). My new folks are rewarded for the increased business, and I feel that marketing folks you employ should make very low salaries in set income, with the ability to make more than you make in bonuses if they are wildly successful. Structures on this vary, but always do a reality check when you negotiate them; a smart salesperson is one that makes a small fortune making you a bigger one. A smart con artist makes themselves a small fortunes while you make about the same you would have without them.
Since this is your first time dealing with marketing, hire out. 1. if you don't like them, fire them, and recalculate. 2. if you do like what they do, now you know what to look for in a partner. 3. if you develop another product, you'll know that marketing should be involved before prototypes.
You built a product, yet have no customers?
You post to a very tech/dweeb centic site and don't even mention what you are selling or what your application does? Come on, be honest, you've done nothing other than knock up some trivial iOS/Android shovel-ware. Any business orientated application would already have a set of target clients based on previous experience lined up.
The first thing you should have done is point to your website, durrr.
I've developed a solution for the problem of insecure C and C++ programs. Guess what ? Software engineers are the most ignorant people on earth. They will continue to use the tool they have invested massive learning efforts, even though it is clearly defective. Even though contemporary software is insecure as hell.
The only guy who looked at and send minor, substantial feedback it was an unemployed developer from Israel. I also communicated with the Apple CTO, but he told me they were interested in Objective C and nothing related to C++ (which my solution generates). Samsung wrote that they are a "Korean business" and "have their own R&D". All the other CTOs did not respond at all.
This is it: http://sourceforge.net/projects/sappeurcompiler/
Earlier I built a text-messaging system for J2ME phones. At that time (pre-iphone), people sometimes had very shitty data cost plans. Everybody was scared to hell to run up big telecom bills just to transmit something like 100k per month. Nobody used my app (to reiterate, much before the iphone !)
Developing something innovative is actually the easy part. The hard part is selling.
A tech guy and a sales guy need to collaborate - I think that's the secret to success. Look at Quark and how they did it.
Maybe I am wrong, as I did not have success. I can only write about my failure in bringing something innovative to the market. I don't know how success works. What I know is that you can have a great idea which somehow works and nobody will use it. I guess sometimes people are 10 or more years ahead of time.
Am I bitter ? Yeah, a tiny dose. But that's life - don't be a pussy and move on.
Like so many "I can't do this, how do I do this?" questions, the best answer is "don't". If you bring in a partner/investor, you just sold half your company and got nothing for it. If you just sell the product and all, you get cash up front.
Marketing isn't hard or expensive, but it takes some skill. If I were in that situation, I'd try to be creative. I'd try to find marketing classes at a local college and turn marketing my product into a class project. Or other things like that which are low-touch and low-cost.
Learn to love Alaska
Before you tackle marketing, have you established a brand identity for your product? Name, tag line, logo, and color palette are the core elements of a brand identity. Without one, the marketing... um, people... won't have a foundation to build on.
Many may think branding and marketing are the same, or that branding is part of marketing, but they're really separate processes.
You could start by TELLING PEOPLE YOU HAVE A PRODUCT... Doesn't even have to be an over the top slashvertisement....
Submitted this without even a hint of what you're tryin to sell... Wasted opportunity.
Instead you're gonna goto the marketing assholes who will piss everyone off and make them not want your product or to do business with you. Brilliant...
Marketing people are scum. Be careful how far you wade into that shit.... You'll get screwed over... that's what they do. screw everyone involved.
For companies that have prospered on the merits of their product alone are few and far between. Might as well say, "hey, drop out of school and you'll be like Bill Gates or Google guys."
No need for marketing? Are you naive?
I'll just keep my response short, simplistic, and vague, just like yours.
why not work alongside each other? Instead of having branding in place before marketing? His business sounds small enough to accomodate this type of parallel sales/marketing/branding strategy.
Marketing (and marketers) should not just be involved in finding customers for an existing product. They will want to be involved in defining the product. This may be a challenge to your team who will (rightly) be proud of your achievements to date. But to get the most out of this person, you will need to allow them to take it in new directions...
*ducks*
We hate the guys who seem like they have no idea whatsoever how the product works and just want to sell something..anything..then come back to engineering and tell us to make it work
A great marketer or salesman understands the product and the limitations of the underlying technology
They also understand who the customers might be, and how to find them
As for advice, finding good people is a skill that few technical people have
The really great managers have a near-magical ability to find good people
Good luck on your quest. It will be hard. Many of the people you interview will be well-practiced professional liars
I have mod points, but this is already going high enough, so I'm going to add my $0.02 to this. The company I work for has a great marketing department and they do a great job. That being said, they tell us every opportunity that they get that word of mouth is the best marketing that we have available.
We actually have people who check certain forums and do their best to make us aware of issues that crop up on these forums, and then we bend over backwards to make sure that the customer's issue gets resolved. Unless they're just bent out of shape because we couldn't do something that was basically impossible (although we're pretty good at that too...).
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Unless of course it's trivial to implement with no innovation and you just want to fleece non-tech people.
Don't complain about syntax, grammar, or spelling. There is no.hell like input on android.
Or he would have mentioned the product's name front and center.
I don't know much about marketing but I know that there are many pitfalls, some of which could be potentially fatal to your business, which means you have to take the major decisions yourself.
Since you're a tech person you have to approach marketing the way you approach technology and perhaps economy, which means you're probably going to have to rely on your techie common sense. Be tentative at at first and investigate the solution space and don't go all in on anything until you feel sure know it's the right way forward for you. (Don't just talk to one marketing expert or two, talk to many and get many second opinions.) Always be iterative, always base your decisions on data and feedback.
...your marketing needs will differ.
Sounds like you are still in product development and in need of really defining who your customers really are. (Actually, in an ideal world, you should know who your customers are before you build, but anyway). Some people call it Customer Development. Basically, you're in the area of defining the real product-market fit.
I know it sounds obvious, but I have many clients that aren't aware that their product doesn't fit the market and just think they need to hire PR people to "get more buzz."
Tech marketing is also different in many ways from traditional brand-focused marketing that consumer products have. Run screaming away from people who will focus on your brand and PR at this stage. What you need to focus on is your positioning, which includes understanding your differentiation, category and competitive situation.
Marketing is great at amplifying success. Hoping that outbound marketing will cover up flaws in strategy and product will always result in failure.
Most people who aren't techies are intimidated or hates things with thick manuals. Just look at a run-of-the-mill remote control - it's over-engineered with functions most people don't use or won't care to spend the time to learn to use. Next up: computers. Why are Macs successful while other PCs faltered in the home market? Because Macs are simple and they just work. Apple designs and markets products that will work with the *average* person, instead of having the owner give up an afternoon learning how to use the machine. In short, a machine that will work for the people, instead of the other way around.
Anyways, my point is that your assumption goes both ways. Techies don't want a salesperson lying about a product. Fine. But a salesperson/ marketer knows what their audience wants (unless of course, the audience are other techies).
I would go as far as to say a great marketer/ salesperson understands *both* the technology *and* the end-user. Sorry, but the engineers creating the gadgets will have to find a solution. Jobs was an asshole but ruled over his engineers to make sure the screen on the iphone was made out of glass; that the battery would last longer; that there would only have one button on its face.
The best engineers solved the problem of getting the Apollo 13 folks back to earth instead of saying, "Oh, it doesn't work? Tough luck for those guys. JFK should've never sold the stupid idea of a space program in the first place."
I wonder what RMS would do?
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2013/021413-14-tips-for-selling-software-266749.html
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
...is as good and innovative as you think it is marketing will not be needed until you've got about 30% of the available market.
Everybody loves string.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qNj-QFZbew
I thought we were supposed to hate drug companies for doing that?
According to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_V._Gerstner,_Jr.
and his carlyle bio, he was a big guy at AmEx before. If you think about the creditcard business - it is finance plus computers. So it was more like "customer taking over IBM CEO position". Very good fit.
Gerstner is now with Carlyle, so he has apparently reached the utmost elite level of American elite. Finance, biscuits, technology and once again finance/defense. Taking over a major part of Booze-Allen's business. This guy is actually a major player in the (informal) Government Of America. IBM was just a pitstop for him.
How many attempts at a legal opinion before the lawyer told you to stop ****ing a dead horse?
I have seen amazing products crash and burn due to bad marketing. So equally key to getting good marketing is to avoid bad marketing. I'm half tempted to argue you should find "average marketing" by which I mean someone who isn't heavily invested in your company but can get the word out.
I would contact a PR company like RAZ or LiasonPR. (Or a PR company which specializes in your industry depending on what user group your software is targeting). They should know all of the media contacts to send demos to, they can walk your users through writing useful endorsements and they can push your product to the forefront in relevant magazines/websites. They'll also be able to write up press releases and push those out to the various press release distributors.
I believe they usually operate on a straight up contract rate so you aren't losing any equity to a third party. This will cover the most important aspect of your product launch which is to get the word out.
I would also contact an ad agency, it wouldn't need to be very large and again they operate on contract and they can handle your graphic design, copy writing and general promotional material as well as negotiate any ad buys for web banner ads or google keywords etc.
Lastly and by far most importantly you need a good business plan. I've seen development derailed and wasted because of bad pricing, complete ignorance of the market and terrible planning. This is something you can't contract out and will have to hire if you don't feel comfortable doing it yourself. This largely comes down to knowing your customers and delivering a good product that's actually valuable to them. If you actually have developed a cost-effective product that does offer value to customers your PR company and Agency shouldn't have any trouble getting the word out.
You are confusing sales with marketing. They are two completely independent activities. Marketing = finding people with $$$ and a problem, then defining a product to solve their problem.
"throw money at a wall and hope it sticks,"
Yeah. Use the methods of the billion-dollar corpo in the startup world. Like "get my hot teacher into bed by showing her your playmobil collection".
The hardest part is to go from 0 dollar revenue to 100 dollar revenue. From "not known to the outside" to "being talked about in some circles". Getting the first few customers, pleasing them, fixing their issues is the hard part. As soon as something moderate is going, you have A) some cash, B) customer feedback and C) motivation to continue growing the business.
Still, be conservative. I have worked for a company who had a modest business then went Public only to do massively stupid things which were clearly immoral (paying out stock option bonuses while the company was deep in the red). Then they took over some unrelated competitors. They did NOT hone their products to the quality levels of a M$ or Oracle. Everything was in alpha or beta state. Needless to say they folded. But maybe that was the plan from day one - shaft unsuspecting stock buyers.
I'll use this message to drum up something unrelated (nothing commercial, no conspiracies !):
"Distributed Discussion And Publishing System"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/didipus/files/DiDiPuS.pdf/download
Where is the link to your product?
If you really think that "marketing drives product design", I think then you will fail miserably.
By analysing the founding stories of many companies it appears to me that success is tied to some sort of Generalist Capability. The founders need to understand both technology and selling. If you seriously think that there is a kind of "mechanical" method of determining product features (called "marketing" or "market analysis", then look at Nokia. And how they worked themselves into the crapper.
Strong companies have people with strong opinions and deep knowledge at the top, not people who have a hard-science-envy and apply it to social-science. Of course the MBA types (and similar ones) will dispute this and claim that there are more or less systematic and guaranteed ways to achieve "product excellence". They basically claim that cynical people can achieve everything by "scientific" application of cynicism. You can have "product excellence" when you are only interested in the money made by the product. Which is thankfully proven wrong again and again. Not just by Apple. Great products are achieved by people who devote their life to some kind of product. That does not answer how these products are sold, though.
You aren't an entrepreneur, you are a programmer. This isn't a right or wrong thing, it's just an observation.
A programmer takes an idea, and builds a product.
An entrepreneur takes an idea, and builds a business.
The difference is that product ideas are a dime a dozen, and programmers to implement product ideas can be hired. It's really hard to go out and hire someone to be an entrepreneur for your product idea.
The major thing an angel investor looks at is the entrepreneur: can they build the initial business? Do they have the drive to mortgage their cat, sell their car and lease one instead, work 80 hour weeks, and, in short do everything in their power to create a business?
The main thing a VC looks at is your team -- or more importantly, the machine: has the original entrepreneur built a machine that can operate to successfully generate a product, market the product, meet accounts payable, collect accounts receivable, and so forth.
Typically, a business goes through four phases:
(1) Get the idea (for the business, NOT the product); generally, this is one or two people This stage is self-funded by the founders (including family contributions), or unfunded (Google started in a dorm room using Stanford networking resources and crappy hardware).
(2) Entrepreneur; generally, this means growing to 1-15 employees, who can handle being micromanaged. Some entrepreneurs are capable of micromanaging up to 20 employees, but a lot of them, especially first, second, and third timers, can reach their limit at about 8 employees. This stage is usually self-funded (in the case of a serial entrepreneur), or angel-funded. The entrepreneur may or may not be the founder(s) at this point.
(3) Company; generally, this means going from 8+ employees to 100+ employees. This stage is usually VC funded. The VCs will typically want to replace certain cogs in the machine that is your business in order to build a better machine capable of reaching the fourth and final stage. A founder should expect to be kicked out at some point in this stage, unless they have an executive track record, or are in a bolt-on position that can't actually negatively impact day-to-day operations. The typical bolt-on for a technical type is CTO, and the CTO may be asked to stay away from the office; nice VCs will give them "new product development make-work to keep them away from the office.
(4) Exit; if VCs are involved, this almost exclusively means either IPO or acquisition: this is where they get their money + profit back. It's almost unheard of for a VC to remain involved, except perhaps on the board of directors following an IPO, or as part of the acquisition/merger deal that permitted them to exit.
It is an incredibly rare person that can take a company through all four stages, and even among them, it's even more incredibly rare for the people along the way to permit them to do so. If you look at Steve Jobs, he wasn't really capable of step 4 for a very long time, since he was stuck at step 3. He would have been stuck at step 2, but he was willing to micromanage his direct reports and a couple of people on pet projects, rather than everyone in the company. He only became able to go to stage 4 when he matured, and that only happened after two more startups: NeXT, and Pixar, and it took him being thrown out of Apple to get to that point.
The point is, you need to find an actual entrepreneur; I'd suggest finding a mentor, but if you are focussing on a tiny piece of the machine that a true entrepreneur would need to build (a business is a machine; an organization requires design and systems engineering to build said machine), and doing it via an "Ask Slashdot", then you are probably not cut out to be your own entrepreneur.
this is just a fake posting to have "something new" on SD.
So let's discuss my latest invention, which has the potential to replace SD and all the expensive science journals:
"Distributed Discussion And Publishing System"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/didipus/files/DiDiPuS.pdf/download
Hire three MBAs to devise performance metrics that incentivise the optimization profile for the marketing guys, and two lawyers and an accountant to keep an eye on the MBAs.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Thanks for your well-reasoned post. Unfortunately, it is not 100% backed up by facts. The Google founders were NOT sidelined. Instead they consciously chose an experienced CEO to "run business" while they (I guess) focused more on technology. Now one of the founders wants to "do CEO". But the "adult CEO" type is still somehow on board. I assume to "help out" in case the original founder CEO messes up.
Also, I find it quite despicable to start a business with the objective of "flipping it to a VC" and "do serial entrepreneurship". It displays a very flimsy attitude and is entirely based on some cynical "get rich quick" philosophy. Basically you encourage screwing customers instead of building long-term relationships. Or alternatively, abandoning products/technologies after having sold them for top dollar to an established corporation.
Maybe you could make some money out of my latest invention:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/didipus/files/DiDiPuS.pdf/download
Or maybe not, because I donate it to everybody.
Marketing requires an understanding of both the product or service being marketed and the marketplace being targeted. Be careful to engage those with insight into your target marketplace.
so? what did you code? hahahaha
I'm in a trial-by-fire for this right now. I have zero budget... and promoting a product that stands head and shoulders over its relatively few competitors.
A little history here.... I developed "Virtual Cat Toys HD" - yes, an app for your cat. Back when the HP Touchpad was still a hot item, I released a version on the webOS platform, and considering the relative size of the market, I did OK. Like "lunch money" OK... for about 8 months (falling off because many people converted their touchpads to Android, and the fact that it's the ONLY webOS tablet, and a very small market). My marketing effort was basically to give the product away through a promo code, and because a lot of people had just gotten their Touchpads and wanted apps for it, the giveaway did the magic I needed to boost awareness of my product and create follow-up sales.
A little over a year later, I finally got an enhanced version of the app out on the Android platform... Of course, to celebrate this accomplishment, and promote the product, I had hoped to do the same thing. I ran into a major stumbling block - Google Play doesn't have a mechanism in place for self-promotion through free copies. No redemption codes, and you can't temporarily make your app "free" (that's a one-way change for your app). Having seen Amazon do "app of the day" giveaways, I brought my product to their market... only to find their tools were just as lacking, and there seems to be no easy way to get your app to be seriously considered for "app of the day".
So, after getting out on the Android market, I brought my app to the Apple iPad, and again, was struck by the limitations of "Promotional Codes" on their app store. You are limited to 50 single-use codes, both a severe limitation in quantities, as well as a nightmare to manage. Fortunately, there was an option - iTunes allows you to change back and forth between "Free" and "Paid" - so yesterday, I gave my app away for the day. I still don't know what sort of success it will be... but I managed to give away over 700 copies of my app yesterday, and comments on several deal forums were very favorable.
Of course, I still have to wait to find out if my strategy of marketing my product will pan out; will a promotion giving away iOS versions of the app have any effect on sales of the same app on the Android platform? Will it have any effect on sales of the app for the iOS platform that I gave away? Will it gain any attention for consideration of reviews at top sites (which are more than happy to "upgrade your priority for review" for a tidy sum of money)?
On top of that, getting my app into iTunes and Google Play has brought a number of schemes to my attention through my e-mail, as offers for "5 star reviews" and "Search Engine Optimization on market searches" come in... some for more manageable amounts, perhaps, but I hate the idea of cheating. My product stands on its own, and I am confident that once people SEE my app, they'll buy it.
Since "Virtual Cat Toys" can result in some rather entertaining behavior in cats, I also launched an effort to get people to record their cats playing with it, with a cash prize.... but so far, no takers. Again, this is promotion on a budget, but you'd think somebody would like an easy $100 cash prize, just for filming their cats enjoying my product.
I realize it's a long game. Marketing sometimes takes months to result in significant sales increases... and that makes some of the schemes and questionable review site practices even more tricky to navigate. You could spend a lot of money to no effect whatsoever, and not realize it until the money is long gone.
Now that you apparently need inspiration, here's an idea for you:
"Distributed Discussion And Publishing System"
http://sourceforge.net/projects/didipus/files/DiDiPuS.pdf/download
It seems to work pretty well for other companies.
"To prevent this day from getting any worse, I'll just read ERROR as GOOD THING" 1GJU8xLuDKDxEs4KLf8fAGyptoDsqvEsBT
Well the worst possible thing that could happen to your idea and software is to let it be captured by the proprietary marketplace and then hidden away from the rest of the world. The example is AutoCad, where an entire world of computer aided design software has been sequestered behind proprietary walls.
An approach would be to divide your product into a standardized reference object and then license a specific instance of the code to your first group of marketers and yourself. The product would be "whiz-bang-service-1.0-or-2014-compatilble." Look at the long term problem as establishing an evolving and interoperable standard with one or more instances being marketed for specific user communities. Iphone, Gphone, Linux, Windows, Apple, and mainframe instances would each address a marketing team specific audience.
An interesting area of software marketing (kind of creepy example of proprietary software stealing the best of open source) is in the selling of software for the RTL universal VHF-UHF radio receiver dongles (it is a European DV-B receiver built into a USB dongle. The inner circuits can tune from 50 Mhz to UHF). What software marketers are doing is offering a Windows software instance with no mention of Gnu radio, Osmocon , Python or Linux. The Windows websites do not clearly or directly connect from the Windows side to the Linux side of the application. An interesting sidelight is when this radio software was described in the ARRL magazine QST, there was no mention of Linux and the Gnu radio project. I have found it very puzzling that the ARRL was so careful to omit any positive mention of Linux and GNU radio in the December QST article about the RTL-2382 USB radio device.
For this particular software area, a very sophisticated marketing information limitation strategy appears to be in place with no visible source. Just like magic, the amateur radio community is being offered a Windows specific software package. I have no knowledge of the actual shared code base between the Windows and Gnu radio application code.
Is it possible to create a company for your product, but you personally retain ownership of the product/patent/idea/whatever it is you have and license it to the company so that if the company should fail you are protected from loosing it? Could you give your marketing partner some sort of stock options based on performance, so if they do nothing, they get nothing? I really have no idea how this sort of thing works, so I thought I'd just throw ideas.
Buy Superbowl Ad.
Put beautiful girl that nobody really knows what she does for her day job in it. Make her sexy looking. It would be good if she did something slightly interesting, but she doesn't need to be "the best." Being sexy is more important than being the best.
It worked for goDaddy. Honestly, how many people knew anything about GoDaddy before their superbowl ads?
Oh, then screw your customers with less than great products, terrible support, and nearly braindead support people. You do want to model them completely, right?
Isn't "convincing more people that they need your product" called marketing? I'm not understanding the difference you're trying to point out.
1000 times no, that is not what marketing is.
ONLY your product itself can convince people they need it. No amount of marketing can make people use your product repeatedly if they do not find it useful in some way.
What marketing does is let people know it exists, and in what ways it MIGHT solve a problem they have. The idea is to make it seem like the most compelling solution possible to try so they move your product to the head of the list, but in the end it's laying out the case that your product does a good job of doing X, so that people that do X decide to try what you have. But it cannot convince people they need your product, only a good product can do that... so you need to show why people should try it to begin with.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
First- you need a market strategy. Who are you selling to (retailers, clubs, direct to the public). Pick you staff appropriately. Second - don't offer partnership at the outset, offer shares and partnership on a conditional basis. Make the offer fair to the people you want to bring on and CLEARLY structured in terms of performance metrics. Third- you will need to offer a draw against a commission. Make a percentage of sales deal with sweeteners (such as aforesaid partnership) for milestones. Put it in writing. Stick to it. Fourth- If you can find a marketer with experience with the retail segment and the specific retailers they will probably give you the best results quickly, but they may not be the best partners. Only you can gauge what the sales volumes need to be, and therefore only you can set the targets. The marketer can tell you if they feel the targets are way off. Also remember, in any game all the players rate the percentage due to them too highly.
I have nothing to hide. So, why are you spying on me?
Almost every successful company starts with a partnership of at least two people - the engineer and the entrepreneur. It seems you regard yourself to be of the engineer type, so all you need is a guy who has the know-how when it comes to selling, pitching, marketing, and gathering public interest in your products or services - the entrepreneur. I know this sounds ridiculous, but there are people out there who are genuinely passionate about this stuff. They are the "nerds" of businessmanship. A reasonable first step would be to ask your family and friends, but as soon as you hear the words "I guess I could", back off. They are not what you're looking for. Try and snoop around the business forums, ask your friends if they know someone like that (someone who managed to set up their own, successful business). Keep looking until you find someone you can trust. Until then, improve your product and stay positive.
Good luck!
and you're on your way. What are you waiting for?
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
We'll market the hell out of it then. Think of it: an army of nerds all telling their friends and coworkers to use your program.
I don't know, but it seems she has mod points.
This. The same way that we get pissed off when an idea person wants someone to "just" program for them, techies need to learn that marketing -- good marketing -- is actually hard and requires some skill. Sales and marketing are not just bullshit and pretty pictures and booze and blow and hookers and sheeple.
If marketing were easy, and if Apple's success were due only to marketing (as is so often claimed), then their success would be easy to replicate, right? The fact is, neither of those statements is true.
Good marketing is not something you can just add to a product after the fact. Like good design, it has to be thought of throughout. I highly recommend you spend an hour watching this. In that talk, he was specifically addressing programmers.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Marketing is not the same thing as sales. Marketing creates the context for sale to happen. You are, probably, already late for any marketing consultation, as marketing begins with 'what can we sell?' and you already have a product. Which means, that you have already thought of who the customers are, what they want, how the product will be distributed. Inherent in those decisions are also things like what the user will perceive the product as, how a usage of the product will spread the buzz to other users, etc.
So, if you think hard about it, it is impossible that you didn't have a plan for marketing the product. You need to sit down with someone and just talk about the product until you can verbalize the plan that is already in your head. For that, I would suggest asking your brightest friend to give you an hour over coffee (avoid beer) and then repeat this with two other friends. At the end of the exercise, write down all that you jotted on a piece of paper. Use a whiteboard while talking. Think in terms of users, costs, revenues and margins. At the end of the day, the product must financially survive.
The purpose of all philosophers was to impress women
This is not an uncommon problem. I do not recommend outsourcing at this stage. A marketing exec should be the point person on your price point, sales distribution, CRM, sales staff and product updates, as well as direct public advertising/marketing/PR. It's an important position, and a qualified individual is frankly a necessary component to a successful launch. This is not someone who should report to anyone but you. That person will need good compensation, but there are always people who are open to a low(ish) salary with the possibility of a high payoff. Make sure you find someone with the right experience in companies that offered somewhat similar products, or at least companies that had good marketing in the same field. This person should be able to locate and manage sales and marketing staff as your company expands. You can look to outside companies later on, when you need fresh ideas for ad campaigns for new products and new venues. As for determining the success of your marketing staff, a good analytical sales evaluation system will identify your most profitable customers, give you early warning data on your product's shortcomings, and of course identify and develop the markets most open to your products, current and future. This is the best you can hope for. There is no accurate way that I know of to determine in advance the performance of a marketing campaign for a brand new product. Once you have some experience you can make projections on new products and new markets (other countries, for example), but that will, hopefully, come later. Good luck!
We actually have people who check certain forums and do their best to make us aware of issues that crop up on these forums, and then we bend over backwards to make sure that the customer's issue gets resolved.
Oh, hey Adobe! Can you please fix Photoshop for case-sensitive systems? Thanks!
"I have seen amazing products crash and burn due to bad marketing"
I think you are confusing marketing and sales.
Bad marketing? Trying to sell ice to skimos.
Bad sales? Failing at selling, well, anything, to a compulsive buyer.
"I've seen development derailed and wasted because of bad pricing, complete ignorance of the market and terrible planning."
See? That *is* marketing.
A lot of the talk has been about the value of marketing vs selling etc, but you asked about how to quantify performance and not get screwed over, so I'm going to try a coherent answer. Short version is: it's hard to quantify, for a variety of reasons. I've consulted on a few projects lately where marketing was brought in to push the product to the masses, with varying results. This is what I've learned:
First, you want someone with experience in the same market niche your product is aimed at. I was in a meeting with a marketer who said he was a perfect fit because he did mobile, though it was games for preschoolers, and we were doing enterprise software. Bad fit. That much is obvious, maybe, but then you'll find the marketer who hits very close to your niche, and with tangible success, and you'll hear about the tens of thousands of sales he got in his first month at his last gig, and you'll start seeing dollar signs floating everywhere... and that is a bad thing.
Before you talk to a marketer, do some work and figure out what your "happy" outlook is like. Never mind units, focus on profit, because when the money starts coming in, the units become irrelevant and all you'll care about is how close you are to breaking even. If you've got an expiry date on your endeavour (the point at which you have to get another job to pay the rent), figure out how long it'll take you to get there, and then merge it with your "happy" outlook and make that your benchmark. "In six months, we need to earn $10,000." Simple, bloody-minded, realistic. Do this before you talk to any marketers, because it will be hard to be honest with yourself after.
A marketer will ask you what your sales goals are, and no matter what you answer, you'll end up with a number based on their market analysis and track record. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but you have to keep it separate from your own analysis of reality. Once you've heard from all your candidates, pick the one who actually listened to you when you spoke. A lot of them don't, and no matter how brilliant they may be, if they're not listening to you, you will end up hating them very quickly. You can't hate your team. At least not right away.
At this point, you've got a best-guess marketer, with a half-decent chance of success. Set parameters: they have X months to deliver Y results. If you're cautious, set it at some fraction of your expiry date. Another good approach is to just say: "Look, you have six months to earn us $10,000, or we're toast." Some people react well to knowing where the cliff lies, some people freak out and leave. But setting a concrete goal gives them focus, and something to beat. In their contract, make that key: you fail at this, you're out.
That said, you are going to spend 90% of that time period thinking you made a terrible mistake. The more time you spend talking to marketers, the more you can see the smoke and mirrors and fishing wire they use to do their thing, and the more it scares the crap out of you. Wait, we're trying to sell this thing based on anticipation and close-up photos of flowers? Seriously? Do I really have to post that to Facebook? I won't have any friends left by the time the product comes out...
Unless the marketer is actively drinking scotch in meetings, you've got to let them do their thing. Because — and this is the sucky part — you're going over that cliff one way or another. If you chose wisely, your marketer will have built a set of wings to glide over the canyon, and you'll be fine. And if not... well, at least you get to go splat with pizzaz.
The world's only surviving livewriter.
i) Who are your target market? Who may wish to buy it?
ii) Cf. Consumerist' "Executive Email Carpet Bomb" ... Hit them!
iii) The Press (includes Wired, /., traditional news distribs., bloggers & etc).
iv) Your personal network (Facebook, twitter, friends, acquaintences, headhunters/recruiters/past employers ...).
Don't discount Asia. South Korea or Philippines or Malaysia or Russia might help. I'd go with Germans and other Euros (but that's just me).
Worst case, Jason Bourne ... He can make anything work.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Thanks for your well-reasoned post. Unfortunately, it is not 100% backed up by facts. The Google founders were NOT sidelined. Instead they consciously chose an experienced CEO to "run business" while they (I guess) focused more on technology. Now one of the founders wants to "do CEO". But the "adult CEO" type is still somehow on board. I assume to "help out" in case the original founder CEO messes up.
I class Larry and Sergey as closer to a Steve Jobs and a Steve Woznik; their anecdote puts them in the "rare individual" category more than contradicting anything I've said; if anything, it supports that particular point.
You'll notice that Larry wasn't CEO for a long time, and that "adult supervision" was brought in for the later stages; Eric Schmidt remains as a mentor. Larry was able to learn the ropes, and so far has done an OK job with the advice of the board, which means he appears to be growing into the role.
Also, I find it quite despicable to start a business with the objective of "flipping it to a VC" and "do serial entrepreneurship". It displays a very flimsy attitude and is entirely based on some cynical "get rich quick" philosophy. Basically you encourage screwing customers instead of building long-term relationships. Or alternatively, abandoning products/technologies after having sold them for top dollar to an established corporation.
I think you somewhat missed the point on the transition between steps: some people are very capable of starting new businesses: they can build machines that can make products. Other people are very capable of managing those machines into things that can be operated hierarchically, without needing the person who started it micromanaging all the employees. Other people are capable of templating the engine (read: reworking the machine components so that it operates more efficiently/effectively).
A really good entrepreneur can build a new business, and loves to do that; it's their passion. But if they are crappy at letting go of personal control of every little thing that happens in that business, they've either created a single small business which is never going to grow past 20 employees (if they are lucky), and then hang on for dear life, making their employees lives miserable, or they're going to go onto something new, leaving the business in the hands of someone capable of growing it.
The VC "flipping" that you mention happens only if you don't take it to IPO, and only if the business has taken VC funding. It could very well sit at the medium sized business for forever, if there aren't investors expecting a relatively short term payback.
But every business has a so-called "exit strategy", even if it's "I've built a 10 person family restaurant, and I will exit by leaving the business to my child". Don't get all rankled by the name "exit strategy".
Maybe you could make some money out of my latest invention:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/didipus/files/DiDiPuS.pdf/download
Or maybe not, because I donate it to everybody.
I looked at this the first time you posted it; frankly, I'm afraid that it's a solution in search of a problem, and the problems you express in the paper about the scientific journals current publication methods are not problems perceived by the scientists currently publishing in them, the publishers of the journals, the reviewers, or the subscribers. Here are the high point:
o Peer reviewers are generally paid a stipend for their reviews, and the reviews are generally done double-blind to eliminate personal bias.
o Publication costs for this sort of thing are generally high, since the more esoteric a journal is, the fewer subscribers, which causes subscription costs to be correspondingly high. Generally there are aggregate publishers which are subscribed to by large organizations, such as universities, and any alumni can go to the library at their local university and look at them without charg
I am startled by the completely outrageous advice that this question has raised. When selecting a marketing partner, I would concentrate on those who can show an enthusiasm for identifying what customers want and need, and matching the product against it. The product needs to be doing what customers want, and it needs to be priced at a level that represents a good value to those customers. Determining these things is the real hard work of marketing. Most of the rest can be phoned in.
I was talking about the same product. :P Sometimes you have an amazing product but it gets knee capped by marketing deciding that it needs to be something else.
So, so true.
In my career in video editing and 3D animation (back in the day those were done in post production facilities, not the modern dismal amateur garbage you see on Youtube), most was done for marketing/PR purposes.
In house, you get people more intimately familiar with the product, but too tied to company politics and their vision is always marred by the principals of the company (IE, you, yes, you are your own worst enemy, especially if you are perfect).
If you hire a firm, you get a broader range of talent and experience as they have a team of people, rather than your few, it's also easier to change if need be. You get a comprehensive marketing plan/package. You do need to let them have their creative freedom and room to work FOR you, not under you, or according to your whims, or for YOU.
They'll have designers and contacts and resources beyond what you can do in house readily. If you grow enough to warrant it, you can bring that stuff in house in the future. For now, focus your business on what you know best, and hire a business that knows marketing best.
I can't think of any situation where an in house marketing team was able to accomplish more frankly. But there were several circumstances where out of house marketers were more efficient and effective (the former not being overly important in business, the latter being critical).
Before you even begin to pursue marketing, you need to ask yourself, and have answers to the following questions.
Do you have the ability to consistently, support and deliver the product or service?
If you have already tested your distribution and support capabilities, and know you can deliver on time every time, you are ready to answer the next question.
Which do you have more of time or money?
No matter how you answered the questions, you should seek out marketing ninjas that can provide you with answers to all of your questions. ;)
Cheers,
Landy DeField
http://synergyninjas.com/
Lawyer here. Will try to answer the original question. If you hire someone to do advertising/sales for you, have them sign an NDA and a Non-compete. Their fee should be a percentage of the additional income/revenue/turnover they manage to bring (so you need to know your current financial status to have a starting point). Not sure about the size of your company, but you may want to consider having a minimum and/or maximum on the fee in terms of actual $ (as opposed to percentage). If you're giving out shares in the company, don't give too much.
"I just need marketing" is the same type of (flawed) sentiment that is displayed by someone who claims he has a great idea for the next facebook/myspace/... and "just" needs a programmer.
Marketing is not only advertising and sales work that you can tack on after the development process has been finished - the first goal of marketing is to ensure that you develop a marketable product and as such it is a process that starts with the way you set up your organization and which accompanies product development for its whole duration (how do you make sure your potential customers needs and wishes get communicated to the engineers? which (clearly defined) market(s) do you want to focus on? who are your competitors and how can you offer a better/cheaper/... product than them? ...).
"We developed this product because we think it is cool but we have no idea who else be interested in it - now please do your "marketing" magic and make sure it's a commercial success" is a pitch that will only attract snakeoil salesmen and make competent marketing experts run screaming. Marketing is 80% about making sure that your engineers design a product to the market (rather than for themselves) and 20% about raising awareness/creating shiny ads/...
Start by reading the book Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross. He tells the succes story of Salesforce.com sales and shows how predictable revenue is key to doing it right. Your (possible) marketing partner must show to you how they will support the sales organization by generating qualified valuable leads. Do some A/B testing per channel and monitor the responses. Good marketing is not about bringing in big numbers of potential customers but to continuously bring a number of valuable leads your organisation can handle over a period of time.
Good luck!
Next, it will be important to select the right type of marketing person. Who are your customers? Will it be engineers at other companies, or end consumers? Depending on that you need almost completely different types. For the B2B business your partner needs to have some basic technical competence and must be good at schmoozing, especially with the purchasing department of your customers.
Most of the advice I have read here would better fit with a B2C situation.
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
I'm surprised that this is even a question by the OP. The first thing the OP or any company needs is marketing. The very definition of what is the mission statement of the company, its business plan, its tactical and strategic plans are all marketing roles. In any company, it's marketing that interfaces with Operations, Finance, Sales and other parts of the company. If the OP has a business plan, he has a marketing plan, and he needs marketing people - if he's not himself one - to execute it. If he doesn't have one, the question would be what is he doing in business in the first place. Read: if he's doing programming as a hobby, none of this applies. But if he's doing it as a livelihood, he does need to get his act together
I'll use a computer analogy here, rather than the usual car analogy. In a computer, marketing would be the firmware and OS of the computer. The CPU would be engineering, the north bridge would be Operations, the south bridge would be demand planning, while the user programs would be sales and the user would be the customer. If sales didn't exist, the product would simply not make money. If Operations didn't exist, the product that the engineers designed simply couldn't be manufactured. If Engineering didn't exist, neither would the product. But if Marketing didn't exist, each of these groups would be doing their own thing without taking the overall picture into account. That's why the business has to start w/ Marketing, and then draw in Sales, Operations, Engineering and so on.
"I must say that for a product to reach the widest possible audience in a given time period, marketing is a necessity"
Two things:
1. You are confusing marketing with advertising.
2. You're jumping to a conclusion without asking the most obvious question: what sort of audience do you need to reach? Hint: where technical products are concerned "widest possible" is almost always the worst sort of audience to pursue.
The bible of technology marketing is still G.A. Moore's Crossing the Chasm. You should read it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossing_the_Chasm
Marketing isn't bad, without it no one knows your product exists.
The problems usually happens when the sales and advertising groups get their hand and often over exadurate or lie about your product.
Sometimes the clash is due to IT nature to want to under state our product. To us it is just a program that queries a database and gives a result. To sales it is a business process workflow improvement.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Marketing people are beautiful; they are handsome. This seems to be a general truth about the industry.
Beauty sells; Handsome plays. I don't get it, and other people like me don't get it, and we resent it. But there it is.
I suppose this class of people has evolved by cultural selection (or natural selection?), and for good reasons. Marketers must get things done that people like me cannot get done.
I won't say "Hire beautiful." The idea is so repellent, that if I were an eccentric billionaire, I would do is post a job for Director of Marketing with the requirement: "Must be dowdy." (All the lawsuits and hate, interesting way to burn up my fantasy fortune.)
But think about it. Maybe arrange several informational interviews with professional marketing people, or go to a conference of marketers. Step away from your own marketing needs, and make an objective survey of what marketers do as an industry.
-kgj
I'm sure I'm missing something, but this question made me grumpy so I'll keep it quick.
Let me take this slowly to be sure I'm not missing the obvious:
"An anonymous reader writes ... I am a programmer with a fledgling mass-market product that needs marketing... I must say that for a product to reach the widest possible audience in a given time period, marketing is a necessity."
Nope. Not having it. Let's presume his IP-Law junk is in order. An *Anonymous* submitter has an *Anonymous program-product* that he wants to reach the widest possible audience with? Give us the link to a Demo as crippled as you think it makes you feel good at night, then let us all download it and play with it. I'm open basically to evaluating any program that I remotely understand.
But then AC won't read this, so that's my blanket response to these kinds of posts. Same rough answer for the "An Anonymous reader writes I am a musician and want to reach as many people as possible". Same thing. Tangibles or it is the tree falling in the forest that didn't happen.
Hear that submitters? If you think we're worth talking to then get intense and start dialogs. Continue in email after you think the thread is too old. But I'm done with these "fire and forget" stories.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Good marketing is not something you can just add to a product after the fact. Like good design, it has to be thought of throughout.
Wait, what? A good product is easy to market, you don't have to think of how to market it. But you should think "how will I market this" before design even begins, and if you can't figure out an answer, stop. Either you're not up to the task of even creating the thing (if you don't even know how you're going to market it, how are you going to make something the market wants) or the thing you want to make is simply not marketable. Either way, this is a question which answers itself. If you can't figure out on what basis you will market the product, you don't have a product. You have a project.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I was just discussing this the other day, how so many companies overlook the importance of marketing, because it isn't easily quantifiable. A business owner can be far too tempted to think that their sales are organic, word of mouth generated and cease writing further checks to whoever does their marketing. That, at least, is what has occurred at a restaurant I like a lot - and since the marketing dollars have disappeared, so has crowd. All other things being equal, marketing is was separates a successful business or product launch from a poor one or a failure. Taken to an extreme, marketing is what separates a successful bad product over an unsuccessful good product. I'm glad that you realized this too.
As for how to go about doing it. I'd say you're correct in wanting to not bring Ina non performing marketing partner. So keep them separate, outside of thie business. Take in money from one of the many investors that wants in and start working with a person or firm. If you don't like them, you're not married to them.
If by 'marketing', the submitter meant 'advertising and/or promotion', you are right. But marketing, as it is defined in business, is much more than merely that. If all he is asking about is promoting his product, he doesn't need much more than setting up a web site w/ a link to the product/service, which people can then peruse online. He can then post about it in all the relevant websites that he visits, and he could be fine.
I tried to move my first sentence to the end, and wound up copying it. Apologies to all.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Betamax was a great product with superior quality. What happened???
Creative Labs came out with the (arguably) first portable mp3 player. Should've sold like hot cakes! What happened?
etc.
Betamax was a great product with superior quality. What happened???
They failed because of marketing. They should have positioned the product to compete with VHS instead of disqualifying it by disallowing porn, especially since they had no qualms about Betacam SP being the de facto choice for shooting porn. That was a marketing decision. That's not a case where a product failed for lack of marketing, it failed because of marketing. Arguably they'd have done better with word-of-mouth alone, and no goofy restrictions.
Creative Labs came out with the (arguably) first portable mp3 player. Should've sold like hot cakes! What happened?
Why should it have sold like hotcakes? It wasn't that good. They didn't have a good product to begin with, like I said. Their proposal was to make a portable device which could play music files, which already existed (albeit not special-purpose.) It should have been to make a portable device that made it easy to play music files. The first player that did that sold like hot cakes. Not really a marketing issue, either. The problem was the product sucked.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Who let sheena eastern in here
From my own experience as an engineer/entrepreneur, I find it difficult to determine the effectiveness of marketing. Take magazine ads. You can spend a great deal of money on just the ad space never mind producing the artwork. So how do you know the ad is working? Reader service has gone the way of the Dodo. Sure you can put a special web link in the ad but how many people are going to sidestep it? And how long do you have to run the ad before you can decide if it's working? I've heard three months but what if your customers have budget calendars and you just ran the ad at the wrong time of the year? And then at what point do you decide that you're simply throwing the money away?
Trade shows? For certain products, hands on with the customers is essential. It's also an expensive and complicated form of marketing.
Okay, how about hiring a marketing firm? BIG bucks. And how do you know they aren't taking you for a ride and charging you a ton of money for something you could easily do yourself? After all, they are in business to make money too so they are going to attempt to do the least amount of work for the dollar as possible. You're charging me $10,000 to send press releases to all the industry magazines? Excuse me? $50,000 to build a website? *Cough* Oh, and they often expect you to provide the artwork. Ba-huh?!?!?
In product marketing, the way you measure performance is by how the product sells. If It doesn't sell enough, you retool the campaign and relaunch. This is why when sales fall for a product, the company usually puts their ad agency "under review". So essentially, you set a reasonable sales goal and then ask whether you're exceeding it or not.
If you have the money to go with an agency, do it, it's generally more cost-effective than trying to hire a marketing department yourself. You'll still have to hire someone to manage the agency, but finding one person and having them find an agency is easier than finding and persuading a bunch of all-star marketers to work for you.
On the other hand, if you don't have the money for an agency, you're going to need to find a person with marketing expertise across several areas. They're rare. Don't just hire someone who's "good at it" and wants in, hire a headhunter to find you that person. A good marketing headhunter is going to be much better at assessing people's relative skills in marketing than you will be without marketing experience.
You should do what I did: buy a popular web forum and repurpose it to shamelessly plug your own products.
Sincerely,
Dice.com
Finally I can post without getting arrows in my chest!
As a marketer, and given the tiny little bit of info you've given, you can probably afford one person on staff, or an agency part time in your local city.
Just be aware, and this is the part that sucks, you need to make sure you have:
a) A clear idea of the consumer's problem you're trying to solve.
b) A great solution for that solves it.
Failure to have either one of those will lead to you chasing a bad product into irrelevance. And it's really expensive.
How do you make sure they're accountable, well, that'll be defined by what you and the marketing person agree is your metric for success. Is it sales? Target market penetration? Site Traffic? Word of Mouth/google trends? All of these goals will be treated differently through the eyes of the marketing person, and you need to make sure which one you want. There are strengths and weaknesses to all of them.
If you're concerned about bringing in non-performers, then do NOT enter in a "partnership" with them. Hire them outright. That way you can fire them if they don't meet the agreed upon metrics. Trust me, there are many, many charlatans out there who will gladly take your money and give you next to nothing in return. Conversely, one failed campaign is not an indicator of non-performance. It may take a few stabs to figure out what it takes to make people want to buy your product, but consistent underperformance is the sign of bad marketing. Or a bad product.
You cannot discount the idea that you may have a bad product. And nothing, and I mean nothing, will kill a bad product faster than great marketing. Once you get people's interest, you had better have a product that lives up to the marketing promise or word of mouth will sink you faster than the Titanic. Seriously, take a page out of Apple's marketing book: Underpromise, overdeliver. You don't have to overdeliver by much, but over deliver.
There's a lot more, but that should be enough to get you started.
Reeses
Communication is important, not just marketing. Many problems occur when not everyone in a company understands the issues.
You can get some free help from our web site: Futurepower.
Major points:
No one else can know your products as well as people inside your company. An outsider with experience can help, but you must guide the work. Yes, that is difficult and time-consuming, but it is necessary.
Don't be overly influenced by marketing for consumer products. Almost all consumer product marketing contains some dishonesty. Some marketing people are financially successful abusing the customer, but there are always drawbacks. For example, after 8 years of suffering from cancer, Steve Jobs died; I'm sure you will consider that a drawback.
There are many, many people who think they get away with their own methods of being abusive. It is a reasonable theory that they don't.
Every writer needs an editor. Truly professional writers want as many people as possible to search for mistakes and insufficiencies in what they have written.
Deal creatively with the tough conflicts. Resolve conflicts, don't avoid them. Often advertising that has helped readers understand conflicts has been extremely successful.
Everything is marketing. As it says on our web site, "Every public activity of a company helps form the public view of the company and is therefore advertising."
See other issues on our web site: For example, "Give one thing one name." Don't be like Intel and give one thing, a storage driver, 5 names.
Don't relinquish equity. Determine an agreeable method to realistically and economically quantify the effectiveness of the marketing efforts and incorporate that method into a profit sharing agreement for the marketer with the most believable plan.
> A good product is easy to market, you don't
> have to think of how to market it.
Bull. PLENTY of people have ideas that they know deep down inside are good, but they don't know how to communicate that quality to others. If they don't, the idea goes nowhere, like a car with a great engine but no wheels.
Watch the video. Sliced bread was around for a LONG time before it took off. What changed? Marketing. It was the same product, before success and after. Marketing was the only difference.
> If you can't figure out on what basis you will
> market the product, you don't have a product.
> You have a project.
No, you have a product in need of marketing. I don't mean that anything *can* be made successful with *just* good marketing, but just because you don't have the gift to communicate things well, doesn't mean you don't have a brain capable of creating a desirable, potentially successful product.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.