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As a senior marketer who has to combat this myth frequently, thank you. Modern day marketing is a complex orchestration of many parts that are often highly tec

As a senior marketer who has to combat this myth frequently, thank you. Modern day marketing is a complex orchestration of many parts that are often highly technical. Further, the discipline as a whole has some incredibly hard unsolved problems when it comes to measurement and analytics (attribution and viewability I'm looking at you). If anyone has a product with initial traction but is unsure of where to go next, feel free to ask, happy to answer questions.

igk 10y ago
Don't have a product right now, but are there any resources you can point to which have quality marketing wisdom? Or is this something you just have to learn as an apprentice to a good marketer? I am always torn because while I can appreciate good marketing, a lot of the marketing and advertising Industry (which too me seem like different things) seems to be bullshit. I really like it when there are marketing campaigns that try to understand me and help me. Well designed product descriptions for example. Or research to understand customer needs, actually useful newsletters not only about the company itself(there is a really good startup tracker whose newsletters i read for a while)that stuff I get. I also get advertising as a separate or subfield of marketing, when it is in the case of "hey, we exist, we do this, you might be interested". Helping me find stuff which is useful basically. And usually, the good products don't need to do more(at least it seems like this?). Like rsync.net had an advertisement on resist once, that they now supported ZFS and that of you did not know why that was cool, you should not click the link. That spoke to me, conveyed information clearly and made me aware of rsync.net What I don't like is stuff like YouTube ads trying to sell me beauty products. That will get them nowhere. Or the bullshit newsletters to build "engagement" by automatically subscribing you when yiu make an account, then listing "10 freaky ways people use $product. Number 5 will surprise you!". That stuff will turn me off products, even if it is good.
- Frondo 10y ago
  This is going to sound a little pat, but if that's what you like in marketing, you're probably not alone. You could probably do well to try that exact set of behaviors on other people, with the outcome in the back of your mind, "will this person pay me to solve the problem I am talking with them about?" If yes, then that's it, you're done. Take the money, give 'em the thing, and do it again. :) For books, for getting a start in marketing, I like "Guerrilla marketing in 30 days". Biggest shift, though, is just mindset; going out and talking to people again and again until you learn what matters to them. It takes a lot of time, and when you're not used to it, it feels like it takes way more time than you're actually putting into it. Eventually you do learn, this is what these people have in common (they're members of some industry, field, hobby, affinity group), this is where they go (online, offline, in-town, conferences), this is how they like to be marketed to (online ads, postcards, in-person events, etc). Just takes time and effort, more than anything. Pretend you're learning a language, and assume it'll take that long to get conversational. :)
- shostack 10y ago
  Marketingland is a good industry resource if you want to stay abreast of the latest and greatest. Usually has a fairly decent signal/noise ratio. Beyond that, find companies that are successful in their marketing and study them. Learn from them. Go to marketing industry tradeshows and see what people are focusing on. Read Mary Meeker's Internet Trends report and other research to understand macro trends. Pick up a recent college textbook on the matter to brush up on the basics. Talk to people in the space and learn what works and what doesn't. Find blogs and read enough where you can separate the truth from the bullshit. Oh yes, there's a lot of bullshit. Any marketer worth their salt will be the first to tell you there is a lot of snake oil out there and there is unfortunate overlap with the "get rich quick" community in many cases when researching this stuff online. Like any industry, there is a spectrum of good and bad actors, and quality/crap products and services. Sometimes that is difficult to determine because your own situation may be the barrier to success. More to your point, my personal motto is "the right message to the right person at the right time." This seems to align with your view. It all comes down to understanding your audience and earning trust--not tricking them into your message with a clickbait headline.
dmritard96 10y ago
Hi @shostack. We (https://flair.co https://flair.co) are a team of engineers and looking for feedback on the marketing side. We have some nice preorders and shipped our first few units a few days ago. We will have brick and morter presence in the next few months but our online strategy has largely been focused on reddit. Looking to do more FB ads etc but curious about tactics for identifying copy/images/audience most effectively. Also curious where to look for a marketing hire and how to best structure compensation (main advice I have seen is emphasis on commission). Any thoughts? Also happy to chat offline if you need more detail.
- shostack 10y ago
  I love companies that get their start on Reddit. While I'm not familiar with yours specifically, generally speaking you are having a dialogue with your target audience. This is critical for validating product-market fit and learning about who your target audience is and what they care about. I mean, people will literally tell you if you ask them. Beyond that, if you are able to harness the goodwill of the hive mind, you can reach that critical front page trajectory pretty quickly. If you are one of the few brands that lucks out in dominating in a given subreddit for a period of time (not through advertising), that's a huge validator. Further, pleasing that audience can result in lots of earned social activity which is great for a nascent brand. For FB specifically, Lookalike targeting is very powerful, and banner blindness is a very real thing that requires constantly refreshed creative depending on your reach (excluded audiences can be important here to avoid wasting impressions). Unless you are using a FB PMD (basically a tool to manage FB that offers loads more than the basic Power Editor), splitting stuff out for granular targeting can be a PITA. Break out your audiences in meaningful chunks where you can gain insight and better improve your creative. More importantly, make sure the rest of your analytics are in order so you can understand what people exposed to you through FB are doing on your site. For a brand that may not be well-known yet, you might avoid a lot of bigger attribution issues with conversion tracking, but make sure you think carefully about whether you want view-through attribution settings enabled for conversion tracking. They are by default, and that can skew things and they may not be worth as much as you think they are based on the stats. In terms of hiring for marketing, most strong marketers know there's a lot outside their control. There's definitely a difference between marketing a sales. As such, I would actually avoid focusing too heavily on commission as that can be a turnoff that says you aren't putting your money where your product is so to speak. That said, if the person has significant control over the full funnel and relevant touch-points (a requirement to be successful when it comes to online marketing), they might be willing. The other side of that is the affiliate world. These are essentially 100% commission marketers. You can get mixed results, but it manages your direct financial risk a bit better than hiring someone internally in some cases. There are real benefits to having an internal hire though that you simply won't get with affiliates as they are by definition mercenaries. Like many professions, comp can be relatively simple. A competitive base plus a well-detailed bonus structure, solid benefits, potentially equity if appropriate, and a great culture coupled with a product with lots growth potential are all things that can land a solid marketing hire.
middlechild 10y ago
I'm a solo founder and I've been working on an e-learning platform for the past few months: https://www.tutora.org https://www.tutora.org. It's a work in progress, and the most interesting part of the platform is still being developed; but it can definitely be used as is, while I continue to make progress. I'm currently going through the pain of trying to figure out all the marketing stuff... it's hard. Really hard. I don't have traction right now, but I want to start building a small user base so I can begin collecting some feedback. I've put together a survey (http://survey.tutora.org http://survey.tutora.org), I'm handing out flyers and talking to people, I've also set up a small Google AdWords campaign. Am I on the right track? What do you guys think is the best strategy to acquire the first 100-1,000 users? Thanks!

igk 10y ago

Don't have a product right now, but are there any resources you can point to which have quality marketing wisdom? Or is this something you just have to learn as an apprentice to a good marketer? I am always torn because while I can appreciate good marketing, a lot of the marketing and advertising Industry (which too me seem like different things) seems to be bullshit. I really like it when there are marketing campaigns that try to understand me and help me. Well designed product descriptions for example. Or research to understand customer needs, actually useful newsletters not only about the company itself(there is a really good startup tracker whose newsletters i read for a while)that stuff I get. I also get advertising as a separate or subfield of marketing, when it is in the case of "hey, we exist, we do this, you might be interested". Helping me find stuff which is useful basically. And usually, the good products don't need to do more(at least it seems like this?). Like rsync.net had an advertisement on resist once, that they now supported ZFS and that of you did not know why that was cool, you should not click the link. That spoke to me, conveyed information clearly and made me aware of rsync.net What I don't like is stuff like YouTube ads trying to sell me beauty products. That will get them nowhere. Or the bullshit newsletters to build "engagement" by automatically subscribing you when yiu make an account, then listing "10 freaky ways people use $product. Number 5 will surprise you!". That stuff will turn me off products, even if it is good.

Frondo 10y ago
This is going to sound a little pat, but if that's what you like in marketing, you're probably not alone. You could probably do well to try that exact set of behaviors on other people, with the outcome in the back of your mind, "will this person pay me to solve the problem I am talking with them about?" If yes, then that's it, you're done. Take the money, give 'em the thing, and do it again. :) For books, for getting a start in marketing, I like "Guerrilla marketing in 30 days". Biggest shift, though, is just mindset; going out and talking to people again and again until you learn what matters to them. It takes a lot of time, and when you're not used to it, it feels like it takes way more time than you're actually putting into it. Eventually you do learn, this is what these people have in common (they're members of some industry, field, hobby, affinity group), this is where they go (online, offline, in-town, conferences), this is how they like to be marketed to (online ads, postcards, in-person events, etc). Just takes time and effort, more than anything. Pretend you're learning a language, and assume it'll take that long to get conversational. :)
shostack 10y ago
Marketingland is a good industry resource if you want to stay abreast of the latest and greatest. Usually has a fairly decent signal/noise ratio. Beyond that, find companies that are successful in their marketing and study them. Learn from them. Go to marketing industry tradeshows and see what people are focusing on. Read Mary Meeker's Internet Trends report and other research to understand macro trends. Pick up a recent college textbook on the matter to brush up on the basics. Talk to people in the space and learn what works and what doesn't. Find blogs and read enough where you can separate the truth from the bullshit. Oh yes, there's a lot of bullshit. Any marketer worth their salt will be the first to tell you there is a lot of snake oil out there and there is unfortunate overlap with the "get rich quick" community in many cases when researching this stuff online. Like any industry, there is a spectrum of good and bad actors, and quality/crap products and services. Sometimes that is difficult to determine because your own situation may be the barrier to success. More to your point, my personal motto is "the right message to the right person at the right time." This seems to align with your view. It all comes down to understanding your audience and earning trust--not tricking them into your message with a clickbait headline.

dmritard96 10y ago

Hi @shostack. We (https://flair.co https://flair.co) are a team of engineers and looking for feedback on the marketing side. We have some nice preorders and shipped our first few units a few days ago. We will have brick and morter presence in the next few months but our online strategy has largely been focused on reddit. Looking to do more FB ads etc but curious about tactics for identifying copy/images/audience most effectively. Also curious where to look for a marketing hire and how to best structure compensation (main advice I have seen is emphasis on commission). Any thoughts? Also happy to chat offline if you need more detail.

shostack 10y ago
I love companies that get their start on Reddit. While I'm not familiar with yours specifically, generally speaking you are having a dialogue with your target audience. This is critical for validating product-market fit and learning about who your target audience is and what they care about. I mean, people will literally tell you if you ask them. Beyond that, if you are able to harness the goodwill of the hive mind, you can reach that critical front page trajectory pretty quickly. If you are one of the few brands that lucks out in dominating in a given subreddit for a period of time (not through advertising), that's a huge validator. Further, pleasing that audience can result in lots of earned social activity which is great for a nascent brand. For FB specifically, Lookalike targeting is very powerful, and banner blindness is a very real thing that requires constantly refreshed creative depending on your reach (excluded audiences can be important here to avoid wasting impressions). Unless you are using a FB PMD (basically a tool to manage FB that offers loads more than the basic Power Editor), splitting stuff out for granular targeting can be a PITA. Break out your audiences in meaningful chunks where you can gain insight and better improve your creative. More importantly, make sure the rest of your analytics are in order so you can understand what people exposed to you through FB are doing on your site. For a brand that may not be well-known yet, you might avoid a lot of bigger attribution issues with conversion tracking, but make sure you think carefully about whether you want view-through attribution settings enabled for conversion tracking. They are by default, and that can skew things and they may not be worth as much as you think they are based on the stats. In terms of hiring for marketing, most strong marketers know there's a lot outside their control. There's definitely a difference between marketing a sales. As such, I would actually avoid focusing too heavily on commission as that can be a turnoff that says you aren't putting your money where your product is so to speak. That said, if the person has significant control over the full funnel and relevant touch-points (a requirement to be successful when it comes to online marketing), they might be willing. The other side of that is the affiliate world. These are essentially 100% commission marketers. You can get mixed results, but it manages your direct financial risk a bit better than hiring someone internally in some cases. There are real benefits to having an internal hire though that you simply won't get with affiliates as they are by definition mercenaries. Like many professions, comp can be relatively simple. A competitive base plus a well-detailed bonus structure, solid benefits, potentially equity if appropriate, and a great culture coupled with a product with lots growth potential are all things that can land a solid marketing hire.

middlechild 10y ago

I'm a solo founder and I've been working on an e-learning platform for the past few months: https://www.tutora.org https://www.tutora.org. It's a work in progress, and the most interesting part of the platform is still being developed; but it can definitely be used as is, while I continue to make progress. I'm currently going through the pain of trying to figure out all the marketing stuff... it's hard. Really hard. I don't have traction right now, but I want to start building a small user base so I can begin collecting some feedback. I've put together a survey (http://survey.tutora.org http://survey.tutora.org), I'm handing out flyers and talking to people, I've also set up a small Google AdWords campaign. Am I on the right track? What do you guys think is the best strategy to acquire the first 100-1,000 users? Thanks!