4 ms·

It really is amazing. He's helping people improve landing pages. It's not how to generate spam, robocalls, improve your targeted facebook ads or some other fo

by EricE 5y ago

It really is amazing. He's helping people improve landing pages. It's not how to generate spam, robocalls, improve your targeted facebook ads or some other form of active marketing - it's about making your passive marketing message more effective. I dunno why everyone assumes all marketing is bad. Without marketing how the heck would you ever learn about or even find potentially useful products? As with all things moderation is key and this guy is focusing on the most neutral kind of marketing out there!

matheusmoreira 5y ago
> I dunno why everyone assumes all marketing is bad. All marketing is inherently untrustworthy by virtue of conflict of interest. The people trying to sell products have every incentive to lie and mislead potential consumers. At best you get language that emphasizes upsides while downplaying downsides. There's a reason people search forums like reddit when they need real product reviews: marketing simply cannot be trusted. > Without marketing how the heck would you ever learn about or even find potentially useful products? Word of mouth.
- Xamayon 5y ago
  Word of mouth works, but can be very slow and still faces the problem of getting those first users. Where did the first person in the chain hear about it if not for marketing or self promotion? At some point the word has to reach someone who can actually spread it before anything will happen. So many awesome products and services die because they aren't flashy or cool enough to drive viral word of mouth spread. I'm quite familiar with this, as my reverse image search service SauceNAO has never done any kind of paid marketing. It took years for users to spread the word to any significant degree. Even now, nearly 13 years later, there are many people who would benefit from it greatly who have never even heard of us...
  - kradeelav 5y ago
    This is off topic to the main post, but wanted to thank you personally as somebody who's used saucenao pretty consistently for the last ten years, being adjacent to a lot of anime/game fandoms and even personally posting art on pixiv regularly. Such a fantastic and easy little tool. Can't even remember where I heard about it, which in some ways speaks to how good the site is.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > Word of mouth works, but can be very slow Is slow growth not fine? I think organic growth is healthier for society. All this explosive never ending economic growth we see today seems pathological to me. > Where did the first person in the chain hear about it if not for marketing or self promotion? Those first users are presumed to be close to the person who made the product. People trust their friends. They'll tell other people about it if they liked it. > my reverse image search service SauceNAO Thank you for making SauceNAO. I first saw it on image boards, it's a well-integrated feature of those sites. I'm not sure if you have a business model so I can't tell if advertising would present conflicts of interest.
- notriddle 5y ago
  Word of mouth is something you can optimize for. Multi-level marketing schemes and social networks both do this. I would prefer companies to focus on landing page quality than to start altering the product to turn customers into salesfolks.
- eropple 5y ago
  > The people trying to sell products have every incentive to lie and mislead potential consumers. Absolutely not, unless your business model relies on single sales. In functioning organizations with actual products, marketing and sales are advocacy functions for the customer as much as they are revenue functions for the business. They're how you know what to make and who to target.
  - antris 5y ago
    The point was that relying on marketing messages causes the user having to research themselves what the product is actually good at and what it isn't good at and wasting time because the company isn't upfront the products strengths and weaknesses. The product might be sufficient in the end, but marketing will very rarely tell you what the product is actually sufficient at and what it is not. The statement wasn't about whether the product is actually good or not, though in extreme cases, yes, the product is worthless while the marketing is all rainbows and sunshine. But relying on marketing is bad for the user in nearly every case, even if the product is good. And even if you are "one of the good guys", your users won't know that. That's why you should verify from independent sources, or do your own research. If marketing was really a reliable source of information, reviews, samples, product trials etc. wouldn't be a thing.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    You say this but ISPs deliver only a fraction of the bandwidth they advertise, SSD marketing doesn't mention the fact you're not supposed write to it too much... Drug marketing never mentions any side effects, food marketing blatantly takes advantage of the public's ignorance... People should assume all marketing is incomplete or untrustworthy information at best.
    - Talanes 5y ago
      Every piece of drug marketing I've ever seen has been accompanied by a comically long list of side-effects. What market are you seeing unregulated drug marketing in?
      - 5y ago
- shanecleveland 5y ago
  I'd say that honest, thorough and helpful articles like this as a function of marketing lead to word-of-mouth, organic growth.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Marketing is no more inherently trustworthy than any other form of communication. Of course it's important to have some personal ability to detect deceit, and it's also important to have systems in place to disincentivize deceit. But the fact is that, when such systems are not in place or are not sufficiently strong, of course there are many cases where people are incentivized to lie with any form of communication.
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    > Marketing is no more inherently trustworthy than any other form of communication. It's less trustworthy. A simple example of trustworthy form of communication is instant messaging with people I know. I have friends who are knowledgeable about all kinds of subjects and I absolutely trust them several orders of magnitude more than any random marketing material out there. If a friend tells me they had a great experience with some product or service, I believe them.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> I dunno why everyone assumes all marketing is bad. Because 99% of marketing is bad.
- atatatat 5y ago
  99% of marketERS are bad. Only like...80% of marketing is bad.
- tshaddox 5y ago
  Are you sure you're not just weighing that heavily based on how frustrated you are by a given piece of marketing and thus heavily over-counting the "bad" marketing and under-counting the huge amount of marketing that doesn't stand out and frustrate you?

by EricE 5y ago

matheusmoreira 5y ago

> I dunno why everyone assumes all marketing is bad. All marketing is inherently untrustworthy by virtue of conflict of interest. The people trying to sell products have every incentive to lie and mislead potential consumers. At best you get language that emphasizes upsides while downplaying downsides. There's a reason people search forums like reddit when they need real product reviews: marketing simply cannot be trusted. > Without marketing how the heck would you ever learn about or even find potentially useful products? Word of mouth.

Xamayon 5y ago
Word of mouth works, but can be very slow and still faces the problem of getting those first users. Where did the first person in the chain hear about it if not for marketing or self promotion? At some point the word has to reach someone who can actually spread it before anything will happen. So many awesome products and services die because they aren't flashy or cool enough to drive viral word of mouth spread. I'm quite familiar with this, as my reverse image search service SauceNAO has never done any kind of paid marketing. It took years for users to spread the word to any significant degree. Even now, nearly 13 years later, there are many people who would benefit from it greatly who have never even heard of us...
- kradeelav 5y ago
  This is off topic to the main post, but wanted to thank you personally as somebody who's used saucenao pretty consistently for the last ten years, being adjacent to a lot of anime/game fandoms and even personally posting art on pixiv regularly. Such a fantastic and easy little tool. Can't even remember where I heard about it, which in some ways speaks to how good the site is.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > Word of mouth works, but can be very slow Is slow growth not fine? I think organic growth is healthier for society. All this explosive never ending economic growth we see today seems pathological to me. > Where did the first person in the chain hear about it if not for marketing or self promotion? Those first users are presumed to be close to the person who made the product. People trust their friends. They'll tell other people about it if they liked it. > my reverse image search service SauceNAO Thank you for making SauceNAO. I first saw it on image boards, it's a well-integrated feature of those sites. I'm not sure if you have a business model so I can't tell if advertising would present conflicts of interest.
notriddle 5y ago
Word of mouth is something you can optimize for. Multi-level marketing schemes and social networks both do this. I would prefer companies to focus on landing page quality than to start altering the product to turn customers into salesfolks.
eropple 5y ago
> The people trying to sell products have every incentive to lie and mislead potential consumers. Absolutely not, unless your business model relies on single sales. In functioning organizations with actual products, marketing and sales are advocacy functions for the customer as much as they are revenue functions for the business. They're how you know what to make and who to target.
- antris 5y ago
  The point was that relying on marketing messages causes the user having to research themselves what the product is actually good at and what it isn't good at and wasting time because the company isn't upfront the products strengths and weaknesses. The product might be sufficient in the end, but marketing will very rarely tell you what the product is actually sufficient at and what it is not. The statement wasn't about whether the product is actually good or not, though in extreme cases, yes, the product is worthless while the marketing is all rainbows and sunshine. But relying on marketing is bad for the user in nearly every case, even if the product is good. And even if you are "one of the good guys", your users won't know that. That's why you should verify from independent sources, or do your own research. If marketing was really a reliable source of information, reviews, samples, product trials etc. wouldn't be a thing.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  You say this but ISPs deliver only a fraction of the bandwidth they advertise, SSD marketing doesn't mention the fact you're not supposed write to it too much... Drug marketing never mentions any side effects, food marketing blatantly takes advantage of the public's ignorance... People should assume all marketing is incomplete or untrustworthy information at best.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    Every piece of drug marketing I've ever seen has been accompanied by a comically long list of side-effects. What market are you seeing unregulated drug marketing in?
    - 5y ago
shanecleveland 5y ago
I'd say that honest, thorough and helpful articles like this as a function of marketing lead to word-of-mouth, organic growth.
tshaddox 5y ago
Marketing is no more inherently trustworthy than any other form of communication. Of course it's important to have some personal ability to detect deceit, and it's also important to have systems in place to disincentivize deceit. But the fact is that, when such systems are not in place or are not sufficiently strong, of course there are many cases where people are incentivized to lie with any form of communication.
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  > Marketing is no more inherently trustworthy than any other form of communication. It's less trustworthy. A simple example of trustworthy form of communication is instant messaging with people I know. I have friends who are knowledgeable about all kinds of subjects and I absolutely trust them several orders of magnitude more than any random marketing material out there. If a friend tells me they had a great experience with some product or service, I believe them.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

> I dunno why everyone assumes all marketing is bad. Because 99% of marketing is bad.

atatatat 5y ago
99% of marketERS are bad. Only like...80% of marketing is bad.
tshaddox 5y ago
Are you sure you're not just weighing that heavily based on how frustrated you are by a given piece of marketing and thus heavily over-counting the "bad" marketing and under-counting the huge amount of marketing that doesn't stand out and frustrate you?