4 ms·

> You will find plenty of marketing experts all around you, but none of them will work for a commission You won't find many developers who work on a commission

• zeptonix 6y ago
  The developers have a lot more risks (the product never gets built, the product at its end isn't compelling, the founder moves on to something else and/or there never is any follow-through). The marketers are being asked to help take something that already has been built and make it take off. I think his point is a valid one that this isn't something you often see, which does run a bit counterintuitive to what you'd expect especially since commission-based structures are so common generally in sales.
  • Veen 6y ago
    One of the issues is that sales generated by a salesperson are a lot easier to attribute than sales generated by marketing. Let's say that, as a content marketer, I write an article for a client's blog that is widely shared. The article increases mindshare for the product, helps to establish the brand, and makes a material difference to the number of sales over the next year. But how does the business attribute those sales to me so that I get my commission? Many of those sales will not be from people clicking a CTA on the blog article, but from people who remember the brand and make a purchase weeks or months later. It's not even as easy as it seems to attribute sales to PPC or other forms of advertising.
  • nickfromseattle 6y ago
    Developers building products that noone uses is the status quo. There are likely hundreds of thousands, or millions of developer built apps with no users. Just because a product was built does not meet the only thing left is marketing. In fact, I would rather have great marketing than a great product. A lousy product with revenue can be iterated on more quickly than a great product with no revenue.
• ht85 6y ago
  That's because it's fairly easy to link acquisitions with different marketing channels, whereas that is not possible for most technical work. If you want to give engineers a financial interest you do it through options / stock, which is very common.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
• nickfromseattle 6y ago
  > * You will find plenty of marketing experts all around you, but none of them will work for a commission, which speaks to how much trust they really place in their "skills". Your product is unproven. How do I know you can convert and retain a qualified audience?
  • jwr 6y ago
    In my case, it's very much proven. I can show organic growth over 4 years, retention stats (excellent), etc. — it's very clear what the traction is and compared to incoming traffic, all parameters are excellent. So this is not the problem.
• jwr 6y ago
  I don't think this is a good analogy, for many reasons. Also, the reason why I wanted to have a marketer on a commission is not because I don't want to pay or because I don't have money. It's because I want accountability. My strong suspicion is that most of the self-proclaimed marketing gurus do not deliver.
  • Veen 6y ago
    There certainly are marketing "gurus" who are nothing more than conmen. But skilled marketers also come across "founders" with nothing but a shitty MVP (or even just an idea), an inflated sense of their own ability, and grossly exaggerated expectations of the potential of their product to change the world, if only a marketer would "partner" with them to build a brand and traffic. It's a huge risk for a marketer to invest months of time in a product that could go nowhere because the founder is a flake or the engineering doesn't work out — all on commission with no stock options if everything comes together.