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Comment by austenallred | Hacker News Reader

I'm a marketer, and have yet to find a way to judge a marketer's competence better than:

"Here's this app, here's what it does. How would you increase downloads?"

A quick brainstorm session shows you how they approach the situation, what tricks they have in their bag, and what methods they feel confident using (or if they're just BSing).

Interestingly enough, 50% of the time people answer "SEO," which is among the worst answers you could possibly give. The best answers often involve the person playing with the app and figuring out something you could actually build into the app itself.

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There's a difference between marketing and product design. A marketer should know how to get qualified leads for lowest cost to your app, and then it's your product manager who should worry about making the best impression with new users.

This is really a false dichotomy. Many apps can market themselves by 'baking in' sharing, and I don't mean just a 'tweet/like/pin' button on every other page.

These two functions are not separate.

> There's a difference between marketing and product design. A marketer should know how to get qualified leads for lowest cost to your app, and then it's your product manager who should worry about making the best impression with new users.

In my own experience the marketer's primary job is to identify how and why your end-users might use your product, i.e. understand who these qualified leads are to begin with.

> The best answers often involve the person playing with the app and figuring out something you could actually build into the app itself.

I'm clueless when it comes to marketing. Could you elaborate here with some examples? I think the majority of apps are in a place where nobody knows they even exist, so how could improving something in them improve downloads?

And then you ask them what they mean by SEO, and it gets worse. SEO is one of my favorite buzzphrases, because it causes ignorant marketers to rapidly self-select. (Unless their explanation shows otherwise.)

Would the answer of the inverse question be interesting? Taking our successful landing page, how would you reduce downloads?

That's an interesting thought, but I can't see how it would be, simply because of the sheer number of ways that would be possible. That's kind of like saying, "Here's this working program, how could you break it?"

- Sledgehammer to CPU. Torch the data-centre. Kidnap the users.

- Roll your own crypto. Claim unbreakable. Hold contest. Post on HN.

- Army of four-year olds.

- Invite NSA to design committee.

Remove the download link.

Marketing takes all sorts - there are plenty of people who do a great job by just doing SEO, or by just buying adwords, etc.

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