Hacker News Reader

Comment by dglassan | Hacker News Reader

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...

View on HN

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com