Marketing 101 for developers

Number one rule of marketing a website - make sure it doesn't say this when someone visits: Error establishing a database connection

Critically important for any independent developer. Making a great site, service, or app isn't enough these days.

I like this post - I think it's really logical and fairly complete. A couple of comments - Firstly I think a completely hands-off approach to market/customer research is dangerous. I think you need to actually talk to prospects to really understand how they think about problems and pains. Surveys can give you clues where to look but they are not enough. Secondly, I wouldn't think of "competitors" as just other products in the space. Other alternatives could just as easily be "do nothing" or "do it manually" and if it is then you will need to differentiate between your offering and those alternatives too. Lastly, when thinking about marketing tactics, it's important to think about tactics that will work for your target markets specifically and not just all tactics that might work for any market.

View Your Mind (VYM for short) is a great brainstorming tool that is free software that anyone can download. It would be one available tool that a marketer could use for their brainstorm sessions. I thought maybe someone else out there may not have heard about it and could use it as well. It's one of my favorites.

I thought the article gave out some good basics that are prudent to implement as foundations for anyone's marketing activities. It's a beginning point (as the article suggests). However, it would not be real wise to stop and go no further.

There is no substitute for learning all you can from somebody like Philip Kotler as well as from other business leaders who are successful in the field. Then when you get big enough you hire a marketing department- :).

Interesting article and perspective -- when I get ideas about building things, I definitely don't remember marketing! It's like "hmm, well, I'll just make it and dumb it on the appstore. People will find it!"

But that probably doesn't work so well :)

Nice write up. I love the inclusions of the comics/funny images. What is a serious article without a little humor added, right?

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