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?"
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
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.
why find an "angle" investor? that is just one more thing to go wrong. Whether you hire an outside marketing consultant or hire a marketing employee, they answer, with an investor, you answer to them. Worse, you give away part of your company. It is just one more thing to go wrong. Better to devise a marketing plan with a limited budget.
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.
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
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.
he's got a product, fledgling, sort of meaning it's already developed and viable - THE FUCK DOES HE NEED AN ANGEL INVESTOR FOR? he needs perhaps a partner marketing investor - a sales guy. he'd be better off with a sales guy with tied pay from sales.
ok, angel investors are sort of the same thing as a partner - but practically, no.
they're "angels" because you don't see them often and they don't do things often and he apparently needs a decent fulltime sales manager.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
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 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.
He did have capital letters there, they were all just concentrated to the middle of the text. ;)
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.
Totally agree. What you want is a sales guy or company on contract. They get a specific percentage of sales (say 50%) for a specific period (say 2 years). Don't sign any agreement that gives them the right to anything from future products not named. Such products can be added one by one as you develop them if you still have a good and profitable working relationship. If your sales should grow beyond that they can support, you can hire another company or hire your own sales staff as long as they don't have you locked into a long-term arrangement.
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.
There's a huge difference between sales and marketing - engineers commonly don't recognize this.
Sales is all about the tactical - one deal at a time.
Marketing is about the wider market. There are also mutliple types of marketing. Product marketing (inbound or outbound) and then "corporate marketing". Its incredably rare to find a marketing person that can do all three. In engineering terms, its like finding someone who actively writes kernel code, SQL and GUI applications in the same week for the same employer (no hobbies).
If its a consumer product (mass market) then its probably not a direct sales channel, so you'll want a marketing person (outbound) not sales.
Where to find one ? You can't have mine...
As an engineer you're probably really bad at evaluating how good a marketing person is - no insult meant. I never knew how good mine was until after we'd worked together for a while. Most are not as analytical as engineers, if you find one that is, grab them, it will make your future life easier (possibly across multiple ideas/products/companies)
Do you know any other entrepreneurs ? If so try and talk to them of their suggestions - while they may not help you find one, then may help to interview one.
Its like hiring a PR firm - I have no idea what the criteria are. That's what make a good business partnership. Total trust in the competence and efficiency of the other person.
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?
There's a huge difference between sales and marketing - engineers commonly don't recognize this.
Sales is all about the tactical - one deal at a time.
For the super simple version, I like to tell people that "Marketing" is creating a need for your product, and "Sales" is filling that need.
Sometimes there's already a need out there (e.g. spreadsheets) and the marketing is more about creating awareness. Other times (e.g. colored sugar water in a fancy bottle) the marketing does a lot more to create the need.
I've watched and experienced many times that for tech people, making a cool, useful product that didn't exist before is much easier than getting people to see it, find it, and buy it.
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.
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.
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).
"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/...
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