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I've worked in Marketing for the better part of a decade. It's a constant pain point that even in this thread people are conflating marketing with advertising.

I've worked in Marketing for the better part of a decade. It's a constant pain point that even in this thread people are conflating marketing with advertising. The reality is that advertising is probably one of the lowest ROIs of a marketing department. If you are a young/solo techie, here is some marketing advice to save you a ton of time: - The number one source of new customers will be existing, stable customers. You make customers stable by offering tons of resources and post-sale updates. - You would not believe how many deals I have seen lost because a founder didn't respond to a inquiry or forgot to schedule a follow up meeting. Have some sort of process in place to make your marketing-sales pipeline smooth and consistent. - Have a specific plan for the kind of people you want to look at your company, and how you are going to get them to look at your company. Search ads are obvious but getting crazy expensive. Billboards are surprisingly effective. So is direct mail - you will never beat the ROI of sending a CTO a bottle of something fancy with a nice handwritten note. - In person events are great. So are tradeshows. People are literally walking around looking for interesting products. If you don't get leads from these, it's probably because your product isn't interesting. - Social media is a huge time and resource suck with limited opportunity for creating customers. - If your product is going to make people happier/better off than the alternatives, they will be happy you found them. If you don't believe this about your own product, quit right now - this is how you end up exploiting people.

sizzle 4y ago
This is super insightful, especially the last point which makes a lot of sense yet feels counterintuitive in practice.
- legitster 4y ago
  My wife freaking loves getting catalogues in the mail. We enjoy looking at specials when we shop. There are brands I have signed up for product alerts from. It's one of those things where you ignore the kinds of marketing you like and get mad at the ones you don't.
  - nl 4y ago
    This is a good point, but this is advertising not marketing. From the OP: It's a constant pain point that even in this thread people are conflating marketing with advertising
    - Ma8ee 4y ago
      OP never said that advertising is not marketing. Read OP’s next sentence. The point is that marketing is not only advertising.
      - nl 4y ago
        The quote is: It's a constant pain point that even in this thread people are conflating marketing with advertising. The reality is that advertising is probably one of the lowest ROIs of a marketing department. To expand on the "advertising is probably one of the lowest ROIs of a marketing department" bit, marketing advertising is for brand building. That's those very expensive branded videos, banner ads etc. It's a very specific type of advertising which is generally pretty untargeted and doesn't aim at specific actions. This is NOT search engineering advertising, which is highly targeted and typically part of the sales, not marketing department.
fezfight 4y ago
- liquidise 4y ago
  What does "fault" have to do with it? As OP said clearly: a lot of the issues people have with "marketing" are actually issues with "advertising". I wholly agree (as someone who actively avoids ads). There are marketers who believe their only tool is advertising. There are also technologists who believe that ads are all marketing is. Both of these groups are leaving opportunities on the table. That isn't anyone's fault, it just means these people are missing their chances.
  - fezfight 4y ago
    The marketers, the people creating the advertisements, are extra responsible if they are perceived negatively since they're the people who should be most able to market themselves better. It's kinda funny, really.
    - maroonblazer 4y ago
      My company pays me to market its products and services. They don't pay me to do image repair for my discipline. I suspect this is the case for most companies and most disciplines. I come across a lot of crappy software. I come across a lot of crappy ads. I paint neither the software engineering nor marketing disciplines wholly negatively.
- legitster 4y ago
  Literally everyone has a PR problem - Government! Tech bros! Even that little old lady down the street can be spun negatively if a journalist wants to (she's probably conservative and racist). But if you have a problem, those things magically disappear when you are trying to solve it. No one remembers that sexual harassment lawsuit against the fire department when their house catches on fire - they just call 911. I honestly don't care what tech bros overall think about marketing. People are still picking up the phone and asking for help.
legitster 4y ago
To add to this: - Good marketers are troubleshooters. Is the problem you are not getting enough new prospects? Fix/invest in something there. Not enough trials? Tinker the problem there. Too much churn/dropoff? What are the fixes the product needs? If your marketing people can't separate out distinct problems and provide data points to troubleshoot them, get rid of them. - Marketing strongly favors the upstart. Big companies have to saturate the channels for increasingly diminishing returns. You are forced into lower ROI activities just to feed the business. Small hacky companies can get by with a lot less. But this is also why you have such large departments at big companies seemingly just spinning their wheels.
reactspa 4y ago
> you will never beat the ROI of sending a CTO a bottle of something fancy Did you mean: 1) A whiskey company sending a bottle of their whiskey? or 2) (e.g.) "Microsoft" sending a bottle of whiskey? The second sounds unethical and it would shock me to know this is common.
- legitster 4y ago
  It's incredibly common. If you are a CTO at a software company, you are getting multiple boxes of swag or gifts a week. If you check your employee handbook, it may even specify what kinds of gifts you can accept. Generally can't do it with government employees. But marketing to government is a whole other thing. It's much worse on the PR side of the house. Journalists and bloggers are absolute grifters.
  - nibbleshifter 4y ago
    There's nothing in the employee handbook where I work about bribes^Wgifts. I have significant indirect power over a lot of purchasing and impositions^Wrecommendations for clients. Send me good whiskey ;)
  - hammock 4y ago
    Makes me want to put “CTO” in my LinkedIn profile as my title for my freelance shop…
    - ta988 4y ago
      They first look at how much your are worth.
- ta988 4y ago
  2 is unfortunately still pretty common. Together with let's make friend with the CTO and invite him to a restaurant and pay the large wine and cocktail bill. Note that this is actually forbidden in many places like State universities and some companies (usually as they grow larger).
- 4y ago
matheusmoreira 4y ago
I hate advertising but I agree with almost all your points. When I actively look for products, I don't consider it advertising, I consider it information. When I go to a market or open the store app, it's because I want to look at products. I only object when companies start trying to shove that information in front of my face without my consent. Cultivating reputation, word of mouth, real world events... It takes time and money. It's much easier to just spam people with ads. I don't think that should be allowed.
- legitster 4y ago
  My word of warning though - unless you are well connected, you cannot jumpstart a company by word of mouth alone. Too many great ideas have sputtered out because the founder was too proud to look for customers. If you are bootstrapping, you need a plan from Day 1 on how to get your idea in front of new people. A Show HN post ain't going to cut it.

sizzle 4y ago

This is super insightful, especially the last point which makes a lot of sense yet feels counterintuitive in practice.

legitster 4y ago
My wife freaking loves getting catalogues in the mail. We enjoy looking at specials when we shop. There are brands I have signed up for product alerts from. It's one of those things where you ignore the kinds of marketing you like and get mad at the ones you don't.
- nl 4y ago
  This is a good point, but this is advertising not marketing. From the OP: It's a constant pain point that even in this thread people are conflating marketing with advertising
  - Ma8ee 4y ago
    OP never said that advertising is not marketing. Read OP’s next sentence. The point is that marketing is not only advertising.
    - nl 4y ago
      The quote is: It's a constant pain point that even in this thread people are conflating marketing with advertising. The reality is that advertising is probably one of the lowest ROIs of a marketing department. To expand on the "advertising is probably one of the lowest ROIs of a marketing department" bit, marketing advertising is for brand building. That's those very expensive branded videos, banner ads etc. It's a very specific type of advertising which is generally pretty untargeted and doesn't aim at specific actions. This is NOT search engineering advertising, which is highly targeted and typically part of the sales, not marketing department.

fezfight 4y ago

liquidise 4y ago
What does "fault" have to do with it? As OP said clearly: a lot of the issues people have with "marketing" are actually issues with "advertising". I wholly agree (as someone who actively avoids ads). There are marketers who believe their only tool is advertising. There are also technologists who believe that ads are all marketing is. Both of these groups are leaving opportunities on the table. That isn't anyone's fault, it just means these people are missing their chances.
- fezfight 4y ago
  The marketers, the people creating the advertisements, are extra responsible if they are perceived negatively since they're the people who should be most able to market themselves better. It's kinda funny, really.
  - maroonblazer 4y ago
    My company pays me to market its products and services. They don't pay me to do image repair for my discipline. I suspect this is the case for most companies and most disciplines. I come across a lot of crappy software. I come across a lot of crappy ads. I paint neither the software engineering nor marketing disciplines wholly negatively.
legitster 4y ago
Literally everyone has a PR problem - Government! Tech bros! Even that little old lady down the street can be spun negatively if a journalist wants to (she's probably conservative and racist). But if you have a problem, those things magically disappear when you are trying to solve it. No one remembers that sexual harassment lawsuit against the fire department when their house catches on fire - they just call 911. I honestly don't care what tech bros overall think about marketing. People are still picking up the phone and asking for help.

legitster 4y ago

To add to this: - Good marketers are troubleshooters. Is the problem you are not getting enough new prospects? Fix/invest in something there. Not enough trials? Tinker the problem there. Too much churn/dropoff? What are the fixes the product needs? If your marketing people can't separate out distinct problems and provide data points to troubleshoot them, get rid of them. - Marketing strongly favors the upstart. Big companies have to saturate the channels for increasingly diminishing returns. You are forced into lower ROI activities just to feed the business. Small hacky companies can get by with a lot less. But this is also why you have such large departments at big companies seemingly just spinning their wheels.

reactspa 4y ago

> you will never beat the ROI of sending a CTO a bottle of something fancy Did you mean: 1) A whiskey company sending a bottle of their whiskey? or 2) (e.g.) "Microsoft" sending a bottle of whiskey? The second sounds unethical and it would shock me to know this is common.

legitster 4y ago
It's incredibly common. If you are a CTO at a software company, you are getting multiple boxes of swag or gifts a week. If you check your employee handbook, it may even specify what kinds of gifts you can accept. Generally can't do it with government employees. But marketing to government is a whole other thing. It's much worse on the PR side of the house. Journalists and bloggers are absolute grifters.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago
  There's nothing in the employee handbook where I work about bribes^Wgifts. I have significant indirect power over a lot of purchasing and impositions^Wrecommendations for clients. Send me good whiskey ;)
- hammock 4y ago
  Makes me want to put “CTO” in my LinkedIn profile as my title for my freelance shop…
  - ta988 4y ago
    They first look at how much your are worth.
ta988 4y ago
2 is unfortunately still pretty common. Together with let's make friend with the CTO and invite him to a restaurant and pay the large wine and cocktail bill. Note that this is actually forbidden in many places like State universities and some companies (usually as they grow larger).
4y ago

matheusmoreira 4y ago

I hate advertising but I agree with almost all your points. When I actively look for products, I don't consider it advertising, I consider it information. When I go to a market or open the store app, it's because I want to look at products. I only object when companies start trying to shove that information in front of my face without my consent. Cultivating reputation, word of mouth, real world events... It takes time and money. It's much easier to just spam people with ads. I don't think that should be allowed.

legitster 4y ago
My word of warning though - unless you are well connected, you cannot jumpstart a company by word of mouth alone. Too many great ideas have sputtered out because the founder was too proud to look for customers. If you are bootstrapping, you need a plan from Day 1 on how to get your idea in front of new people. A Show HN post ain't going to cut it.