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I've spent gobs of money to buy products, very nerdy products. It was always to reduce headaches and friction. Better workflows for dev teams. Fewer production

I've spent gobs of money to buy products, very nerdy products. It was always to reduce headaches and friction. Better workflows for dev teams. Fewer production outages. Reduce/mitigate security incidents, etc. I think the only ads I get is either product placement or sponsored search results, I don't read any spam or unsolicited ads/emails/messages. However, I do not recall any purchasing decision that was not driven by some need/headache to solve and involved some peer-review/references by others to make sure I don't have blindspots. Is this unusual in commercial/B2B context? I don't think there was all that much emotion, unless you call pain-relief an emotion. Couldn't care less what it looked like, branding, or anything like that, all I wanted is to solve my immediate challenge and forget about it.

goto11 5y ago
Obviously geeks always think their product choices are driven by rational thinking. This is why marketing to geeks are like "you are more smart and rational if you buy this product". Marketing is used because it works. Of course your decisions might be purely rational, if such a thing is possible, but in general marketing have an effect. I fact the article seem to be itself a clever piece of marketing, and the minds of HN is eating it up because it confirms what they want to believe about themselves ("we are too smart to fall for marketing.").
- inter_netuser 5y ago
  Rational is a big word. I don't believe anything is ever 100% rational. Is making good decisions based on implicit learning (which is entirely subconscious) rational? to be precise, marketing is just a way to engage with the target audience and potentially start a conversation/relationship. It's not that hard to reach or even meet "geek" decision makers face to face. Just go to any tech conference. send something insighful to the mailing list with non-intrusive link in the signature. hit them up on linkedin/other interest groups. I'm totally OK with vendors get into bidding wars over SEO keywords so I can find what I need this minute much quicker. Ads, however, likely do not work on non-neurotypicals as well as on normies. Some of studies on that (probably worthless fwiw): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797617694867 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976176948... Why would anyone want to have someone shitting into their brains anyway? There is reason ad-blockers and such are so popular. Geeks just tend confuse marketing and ads, not sure why. maybe most of them never tried to market/sell anything? Of course, ads do work on everyone, to the extent they manage to capture your attention. When was the last time you bought anything because you saw an ad? All of them are pure cringe. Placed content/paid editorials? Just as cringe. True to form, I've also duly ignored the article and dived straight into comment, to avoid any marketing potentially influencing me directly.
- denton-scratch 5y ago
  > Marketing is used because it works. This is an oft-repeated meme. Advertisers will produce statistics to prove that their kind of marketing "works". But how could one prove such a thing? It would involve peering into people's minds. Also: advertising != marketing. Marketing includes product design, pricing, channel development, and a load of other activities that are basically useful. Like, there's no point in developing a product that has no market; a marketer will warn you if that's what you're trying to do (just before he resigns). An advertiser will tell you that everything's groovy, your campaign is going great, and by the way, here's your invoice for the last quarter.
  - antonfire 5y ago
    > Advertisers will produce statistics to prove that their kind of marketing "works". But how could one prove such a thing? It would involve peering into people's minds. Or, say, running an A-B test and measuring whether people in the control group buy more of the product or feel more positively about the brand than the exposed group.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      An A/B test won't tell you anything about how people feel about a brand. A/B testing is useful for telling you how badly your UI designers screwed up. It's a way of testing the effectiveness of websites. It won't tell you anything about the usefulness of plastering the world with billboards, nor of TV advertising.
      - antonfire 5y ago
        A-B testing will tell you whether internet advertising works. Pick an ad. Assign users at random into groups A and B. Show users in group A the ad. Don't show users in group B the ad. Watch and see at what rate users in group A and in group B buy the product. (Or survey the users in the group to ask how they feel about the brand.) If there's a statistically significant difference between the behaviors of people in group A and in group B, then you have statistically significant evidence that the ad works. Yes, this kind of thing is harder to do with billboards and with TV advertising than with internet ads. This is one of the selling points of internet ads over TV and billboards. If you buy ads from Google or Facebook or whatever, they can run this kind of experiment to measure how effective your advertising actually is. It doesn't involve peering into people's minds, just watching their internet behavior and/or surveying them. Relevant links: Google help page: https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/9570506 https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/9570506 Facebook help page: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1693381447650068 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1693381447650068
- foxfluff 5y ago
  > This is why marketing to geeks are like "you are more smart and rational if you buy this product". Can you show examples of that kind of marketing? I just don't remember ever seeing such a thing, and I certainly don't think I've bought a product based on such marketing.
- kortilla 5y ago
  I think you’re reaching too far or ignoring the post you’re responding to. When people have a burning issue they mainly just check if something solves the problem.

goto11 5y ago

Obviously geeks always think their product choices are driven by rational thinking. This is why marketing to geeks are like "you are more smart and rational if you buy this product". Marketing is used because it works. Of course your decisions might be purely rational, if such a thing is possible, but in general marketing have an effect. I fact the article seem to be itself a clever piece of marketing, and the minds of HN is eating it up because it confirms what they want to believe about themselves ("we are too smart to fall for marketing.").

inter_netuser 5y ago
Rational is a big word. I don't believe anything is ever 100% rational. Is making good decisions based on implicit learning (which is entirely subconscious) rational? to be precise, marketing is just a way to engage with the target audience and potentially start a conversation/relationship. It's not that hard to reach or even meet "geek" decision makers face to face. Just go to any tech conference. send something insighful to the mailing list with non-intrusive link in the signature. hit them up on linkedin/other interest groups. I'm totally OK with vendors get into bidding wars over SEO keywords so I can find what I need this minute much quicker. Ads, however, likely do not work on non-neurotypicals as well as on normies. Some of studies on that (probably worthless fwiw): https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797617694867 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/09567976176948... Why would anyone want to have someone shitting into their brains anyway? There is reason ad-blockers and such are so popular. Geeks just tend confuse marketing and ads, not sure why. maybe most of them never tried to market/sell anything? Of course, ads do work on everyone, to the extent they manage to capture your attention. When was the last time you bought anything because you saw an ad? All of them are pure cringe. Placed content/paid editorials? Just as cringe. True to form, I've also duly ignored the article and dived straight into comment, to avoid any marketing potentially influencing me directly.
denton-scratch 5y ago
> Marketing is used because it works. This is an oft-repeated meme. Advertisers will produce statistics to prove that their kind of marketing "works". But how could one prove such a thing? It would involve peering into people's minds. Also: advertising != marketing. Marketing includes product design, pricing, channel development, and a load of other activities that are basically useful. Like, there's no point in developing a product that has no market; a marketer will warn you if that's what you're trying to do (just before he resigns). An advertiser will tell you that everything's groovy, your campaign is going great, and by the way, here's your invoice for the last quarter.
- antonfire 5y ago
  > Advertisers will produce statistics to prove that their kind of marketing "works". But how could one prove such a thing? It would involve peering into people's minds. Or, say, running an A-B test and measuring whether people in the control group buy more of the product or feel more positively about the brand than the exposed group.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    An A/B test won't tell you anything about how people feel about a brand. A/B testing is useful for telling you how badly your UI designers screwed up. It's a way of testing the effectiveness of websites. It won't tell you anything about the usefulness of plastering the world with billboards, nor of TV advertising.
    - antonfire 5y ago
      A-B testing will tell you whether internet advertising works. Pick an ad. Assign users at random into groups A and B. Show users in group A the ad. Don't show users in group B the ad. Watch and see at what rate users in group A and in group B buy the product. (Or survey the users in the group to ask how they feel about the brand.) If there's a statistically significant difference between the behaviors of people in group A and in group B, then you have statistically significant evidence that the ad works. Yes, this kind of thing is harder to do with billboards and with TV advertising than with internet ads. This is one of the selling points of internet ads over TV and billboards. If you buy ads from Google or Facebook or whatever, they can run this kind of experiment to measure how effective your advertising actually is. It doesn't involve peering into people's minds, just watching their internet behavior and/or surveying them. Relevant links: Google help page: https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/9570506 https://support.google.com/displayvideo/answer/9570506 Facebook help page: https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1693381447650068 https://www.facebook.com/business/help/1693381447650068
foxfluff 5y ago
> This is why marketing to geeks are like "you are more smart and rational if you buy this product". Can you show examples of that kind of marketing? I just don't remember ever seeing such a thing, and I certainly don't think I've bought a product based on such marketing.
kortilla 5y ago
I think you’re reaching too far or ignoring the post you’re responding to. When people have a burning issue they mainly just check if something solves the problem.