Just say something people want | Hacker News Reader

Just say something people want

gkogan.co

56 pointsgk124 comments

I've been a digital marketer for 10+ years.

What this article is trying to say is selling benefits vs features

Which description below interests you more?

A: "The GeeWhiz personal helicopter: the most efficient, best helicopter ever. Its dual cast aluminum blades spin at an incredible 600 revolutions per minute. It's as silent as a mouse's fart. It weighs only 750 pounds thanks to its innovative carbon alloy frame."

B: "Cut your commute time in half with the GeeWhiz personal helicopter"

B probably got your attention more, unless you have a personal interest in helicopters. Most people don't, they just want to know what it can do for them. Your eyes may have glazed over A because it was a bunch of words you don't care about.

A lot of people lean into feature marketing because either THEY are excited about it or they want to dazzle you - feature bombing is a real thing. For example you are NOT going to go drive up some huge rocks like the trucks in the commercials do - it just gives you a warm fuzzy. But it belongs AFTER you convince the person of the why it matters. In this case, they're reaching people who want a truck, they're deciding which truck.

I tried to do this with my vibe coding platform "Reduce your token costs by x%" and "Lets you easily control exactly who can access what data", "Full detailed usage analytics so you can see how users are accessing data" and "Apps are easier to maintain" but the problem is that EVERY SINGLE vibe coding platform makes similar claims. None actually deliver. So the consumer has been immunized against 'benefits' and especially if they don't recognize the company brand.

So I have to list out technical features as a way to create trust that there are technically capable people behind the product.

But TBH it probably doesn't really work either. Now it's all about social connections as implied in the article. It was already like that before, now it's a different level. Now the importance of nepotism has reached full-blown communism level.

Marketing to engineers/developers has always been different, parent is talking about marketing towards the average person, not a developer or the new breed of faux-developers.

Maybe the top-level commenter was, but the article seems to be about products which are used by developers (even if the deals are brokered with managers or C-levels)

But that's the thing; vibe coders are not developers now. I don't see why the marketing equation suddenly changes whenever a human being is confronted with software tooling.

My platform is targeted at non-technical builders.

For years, I'd been trying to market to developers and I was repeatedly told that developers are different. But now, I'm targeting regular people but it's the same thing.

So it seems maybe the marketing difference is not about developers after all.

B marketing actually annoys the shit out of me if I'm in the market for a product and all of the competitors act like Im not trying to choose between them.

Seriously, who researches buying a dishwasher and wants to hear about all of the time you'd save not washing your plates by hand?

You being on HN itself makes you a minority in opinion. People absolutely want to hear about the time it saves, especially if they never had a dishwasher, and only then when they know of the benefits will they want to discriminate by feature set to decide which one to buy, exactly as the parent comment said with regards to the truck example.

Yet people vote time and again for regulation which makes the performance numbers more objective and transparent for cars, white goods, electronics, etc. They pay for reviewers who give them the information and comparisons the marketers won't.

This is like saying that employees don't care about salaries because job listings rarely include them, yet they still get applicants. Employers are advertising the subset of the information they know which is beneficial to their interest, not the subset that is objectively most relevant. The article is just an elaborate post-hoc justification.

Meanwhile in reality, Wiz succeed by (allegedly) bribing CTOs to install their software, and (allegedly) bribing competitor's engineers to divulge their IP. Much more effective than marketing.

Nothing you said contradicts my point. Numbers are useful only after you know what the thing actually does for you.

yet the numbers/features to compare is the bit that is always the most neglected.

time and time again I search for products on Amazon that do X and they all argue that X is great for all sorts of reasons and "here's stock photo imagery of a pretty woman using X" and then they miss out critical details like the range of X or how long X will last which allows me to compare it to Y.

Sure, but it sounds like a personal issue unrelated to my overall point.

I actually think this is delusional. When I ask other people about how they shop for a new washing machine they usually either do their research like I do or they ask for recommendations regarding actual experiences or to try and free ride off somebody else doing their research.

Nobody looks for product websites which tell them how much time theyre wasting washing up dishes. If there is one standout thing they want to see on your website it is a no bullshit guarantee to prove that you have faith in the quality of your product.

10 year guarantee on a personal helicopter > no guarantee. That's marketing that works.

As mentioned this is already covered by the parent's example. People only look at specs after they know what it fundamentally does. If they don't know what a washing machine is fundamentally, then no amount of specs and features will help them.

I want both: give me different tabs for "Description" and "Specs". The weight of a dishwasher might not matter for a home owner but it could be relevant if I'm installing it on a boat.

I mean, B is fine as it at least tells me that's about a personal helicopter. The examples in this article are so appalling to me because they don't tell me what the products are.

> Perfect customer experiences made possible with Fin

Seriously? It can be anything: a call center, a CRM system, a self-service portal, an AI chatbot...

There is nothing wrong with the post per se, but it's Marketing 101.

If it seems new, I suggest hunkering down with a marketing textbook on a weekend.

My analogy for marketing is this:

CS = human needs and wants. They are foundational building blocks of that don't change much.

Programming = marketing tactics. They change depending on ecosystem, talent, timelines, etc.

I don't know any marketer that would pitch "composable OS fabric." Actually, I do...it's when a marketer/agency has failed to convince stakeholders how to talk to their audience.

Sometimes that is because the marketer/agency sucks. Or some combination of the founder/company being somewhere on the spectrum of hating marketing and not understanding marketing.

Most example homepages shown in this article are so off-putting. They illustrate why people hate marketing in general (and why LLMs are so good at copywriting.)

I would probably suck at marketing, and my personal preferences and convictions have no bearing here, I guess.

With that out of the way, I hate this kind of vague messaging. Yeah, the product will... somehow enable me to achieve some vague goal. Okay. Why don't you slap some screen-filling pictures of happy people in an office on there while you're at it, Mr. Marketing. I'll probably just close the tab and move on. I need substance and details, and I don't have the patience to go digging in your stupid feel-good marketing material for 20 minutes!

For a technical target audience, I think this is exactly the opposite of what you should do. At least I myself don’t really like those kind of websites and the first thing I do is click around to find out what the company or project actually does.

Who am I talking to? Am I empathizing with them? Meeting them where they are?

This is the iterative process of saying what people want. Live. With stress tested feedback. The ultimate taskbot (you) and your harness (human body).

Customer? Discovery.

Public? Reputation & stability.

(Most people, most of the time? Nothing.)

99.9% of "startups" are completely unnecessary 8-/

It's basically just greed unleashed.

You're pushing this product for your own sake, not the user's.

Maybe consider getting a job at a deli, and learning how to make a good ham sandwich. At least then you're making something for the person who buys it.

Of course this won't get you on the invite list to elon's opening golf tournament on Mars 8-/

Maybe... Martian Golf Clubs!!! That's it! Martian Golf Clubs!

Sorry, I'm off to gen my pitch deck and call Paul...

I hate everything this guy argues for.

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