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Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

Marketing is about getting the word out. Think about ads and blog posts.

That just sounds like advertising & PR. There is a lot more to marketing. To crib the definition from Wikipedia (which sounds pretty close to the one I learned):

  Marketing is "the activity, set of institutions, and 
  processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and 
  exchanging offerings that have value for customers, 
  clients, partners, and society at large."[1]

From the same page, another way of looking at it is:

  Marketing is used to identify the customer, satisfy the 
  customer, and keep the customer.

"Getting the word out" is important, yes, but that's not all there is to marketing.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing

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Getting the word out is only a fraction of what marketing actually is. Marketing involves:

- defining who your customer is (demographics, income, etc.)

- gathering feedback from the customer through surveys

- using that information to iterate on products/launch new products that solve your customers pain points (if half your customers are left handed this will tell you that you need to design your product for left handed people as well)

- packaging and designing how your product will look on the shelves

- defining price points based on the data you gathered from your surveys

Not to be a jerk but it sounds like the author of this post hasn't even taken a Marketing 101 course if he's defining marketing as writing blog posts...

So traditional marketing 101 is geared towards larger companies with lesser operating uncertainity and more resources.

As a startup, the key question that helps prioritize between everything you mentioned is "what activities are hygiene activities, versus what are growth enhancers?". Defining your customer, gathering feedback, iterating on product and packaging all fall under hygiene activities. Meaning-if you dont get them right they will hurt your ability to grow. Pricing the product right and the rest of biz dev, marketing and sales activities are focused on enhancing growth. In a startup, the center of gravity for the hygiene activity is the product team (of course this depends on the type of startups). Thus, the job of the non product folks is getting the product found and getting folks to use the product.

This isn't just geared towards larger companies with more predictable business models. It's good business no matter what size company you are. Even startups use these marketing techniques. And I'd argue that in a startup, everyone on the team is a product guy.

define your customer: use analytics to find out where your visitors are coming from. Is your audience just English speaking or should you internationalize your site? What income brackets is your web app designed to cater to? Lower end 99 cent app? Higher end quality software?

Gathering feedback: Startups can easily email their customers surveys and ask for feedback

Iterate: When you talk to your customers, ask them what they like and don't like about your app. Iterate based on their suggestions

Packaging: Landing page. Having good copy and a strong selling page. Simple sign up flow and an on-boarding plan to help them get started and using your app

Price points: Use surveys and the customer "persona" you defined above to break up your customers into different price brackets and sell them features based off what they want and what they can afford.

As a hacker, I've never taken a marketing class (or even a business class) and this all just seems like common sense to me. Pardon my arrogance, but it does seem to me like we hackers/coders are inherently better equipped for branching out into other areas of business than MBAs are at branching out into technical areas. That's not to say there aren't a high number of MBAs who can hack; it's just that a hacker's ability to quickly recognize patterns and manipulate systems to their will makes it a bit easier, whether it's code or the flow of information/relationships between people required for business/marketing.

I've found that there are generally two definitions of what "marketing" really entails:

1. Generate brand awareness, get people interested in your product and bring in leads/customers (depending whether you're B2B of B2C)

2. One that includes all that, plus the market research necessary to figure out how to do all that stuff

For lots of startups, the second part is really part of the entire product/customer development cycle, where product managers figure out what the customers need and how to talk about it in their language. This leaves the "marketing" people to really just focus on the more narrow definition. But in more traditional businesses, lots of that market research falls under the label of "marketing."

As a guide for hackers, the most important two marketing activites are "getting the word out" and optimizing your funnel from visitor to lead to customer.

I can't resist referencing here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outline_of_marketing#General_ma...

There is so much more what falls under the label marketing. From Pricing, Distribution all the way to Data Analysis. I really like the definition posted by mindcrime/AMA's.

Agree that marketing is not just about getting the word out. But the hard thing about the definition you quoted is that it doesn't lend itself to focus. Its too all emcompassing and things like "satisfy the customer" could include awesome product development and customer support.

Well, that is probably core to marketing. It is not just an isolated instance but only if all parts are up to par it can make its optimum effect. A shitty product and a shitty customer support will (almost) always sabotage a brand to such a degree that even the most wonderful ads won't help. Even if it succeeds in the short term, somebody else who is taking a more holistic approach should be able to gain significantly on marketshare.

Totally agree! NO amount of marketing, sales, business development can overcome a bad product or sub par customer support. A wholistic approach will always win over a piecemeal approach but in a resource constrained environment, we are better off picking the one or two things that give us the best bang for the buck. The "programmatic" way of running marketing isn't optimal for small startups

School of Henry Ford Advertising: Model T for less than a $1000 Marketing: If I can figure out how to make a car for less than $1000 I'll sell millions

PR is different from Marketing; PR, as I understand it, is meant for when people already know who you are and Marketing is meant for when people don't. In early stages, this is basically indistinguishable, so Marketing handles it.

Under a section labelled "Not understanding the differences", too.

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