Ask HN: How do I find a marketing person for my startup? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do I find a marketing person for my startup?

16 pointsMrMatt26 comments

I'm on the verge of releasing the second version of an iPhone app as well as deploying several new features to Bouldr, however, I realize that the features themselves are not going to turn my site into a success.

My question is: Should I get a dedicated marketing persion on board, and if so, how should I go about finding and selecting them?

EDIT (in reponse to revorad)

A little more detail:

Bouldr (http://bouldr.net) is a worldwide guidebook for rock climbers and boulderers.

I'm in the process of building an iPhone application, and have released the first version already this year. From that, I drew on feedback, and have made numberous improvements and changes. The next version is just about ready, and once the last bug is smashed into the ground, I'll be submitting it for review.

I'll be building a free version of the app too - I'm building the paid version first so that I can get feedback from people that are genuinly interested in having Bouldr on their iPhone.

Ideally, I need to get lots more people adding and updating the site, and in order to do so, I think I need help from someone with the experience necessary to carry through.

I have a facebook fan page (http://facebook.com/bouldr), with ~14k fans, so I think I'm doing something right, but I also suspect that the message I'm sending is confused or at least not consise enough to stick.

In theory, picking a marketing person is easy, since the person who's best at marketing is the one who convinces you.

But as a marketing guy, I have to point out that the big mistake many people make in marketing their products is to go too big, too early -- if you have something great, being one genuine person instead of a bigger, less genuine company is going to get you a higher return on investment.

A few ideas, though:

* Pick someone who cares about your startup and offers suggestions;

* Make sure this person can relate to your users (but not too well to sell to them -- you want an honest lawyer, not an impartial juror);

* Figure out where you could be getting customers, but aren't (if bouldr.net is the product, you'll want endorsements from bloggers who love climbing -- few people will know to search Google for what your app does);

* Start small, start freelance. Since marketing and hiring are both so error-prone, your top priority should be to make your mistakes cheaply.

"In theory, picking a marketing person is easy, since the person who's best at marketing is the one who convinces you."

I dunno, I couldn't sell my way out of a paper bag and I still hosted that conference, which is well on it's way to being a valuable asset. Most of the people who showed up thought it would suck, but then they came anyway and liked it and now they'd come again. This was my strategy though and it worked, but clearly I'd never get hired for anything given your theory, which makes me suspect it may be more complicated than that.

I think he was referring to this: http://xkcd.com/125/

Congratulations - you win! I was thinking about this cartoon as I wrote the question.

Swagapalooza is one of those edge cases. You're more a catalyst than a sales guy, since the whole thing had to come together -- it couldn't be built.

And you clearly can sell. Selling your way into Godin's program is not trivial.

Awesome - thanks for this! I'll definitly be looking to go through the freelance route rather than hiring someone full time straight away.

Good marketing is about passion and the ability to communicate it. Someone on your own team is always going to have more passion for your product than an outsourced service.

If I were in your position, my first tactic would be to search within my existing user community for people with the skills I need. Put a message out through your forums, Facebook page, and twitter account (which I note is small - consider tweeting less about your tech, and more about the interests of your market, then follow people w/ appropriate interests on http://wefollow.com)...

Broadcast something like: "Want to be more involved in helping Bouldr grow?" and link people to short survey you'll create that can identify two types of people: potential customer evangelists, that simply need more support from your company, and potential marketers, who would be most effective as part of your team.

The criteria you're looking for for both are:

  * active users of your app
  * passion for rock climbing
  * good communication skills

The most important things for each are:

Customer Evangelists: large network, and either mobility across multiple geographic concentrations of your target market, or high amount of activity within a single large geographic concentration of your target market

Marketer: knowledge of incentives / motivating people to contribute effort / content, SEO skills, ability to create interesting content for inbound marketing.

Failing to find these people within your existing userbase, I'd identify the marketing people at services targeting a similar demographic, and ask them if they could recommend people.

Shoot me an e-mail if you'd like further explanation / detail on any of the above.

Good luck!

That's a really thorough answer - wish I could upvote more than once!

I'll put this into practice, and I'm going to start by building the survey you describe. Do you have any pointers as to what questions I should be asking, or know of an example I can learn from?

My current startup has 2 developers and 2 marketing people... and honestly, I made a mistake. It should be 3 developers and 1 sales/marketing person.

Marketing people will purport to find out what kind of product the market wants, but will overlook actually getting people to want to buy said product... sales people will get letters of intent, or will sell the product before you make it (which is the way it should be apparently).

hope that helps

Are your two marketing people also responsible for sales, or do they both just do marketing?

How did you go about finding your marketers?

Since you are asking for marketing help, you should include a little bit in this post itself. Why lose a chance to brag about your great app on HN? Plus, you might get a bit more directed help from people who might know about your sector, but can't be bothered to google "Bouldr" (http://bouldr.net/), figure out what you do and then come back here to give you advice.

Good luck!

I've updated the post now - cheers!

Great! I showed your website to a climbing geek in my office and he got very excited about it. He's the kind of person who just can't shut up about climbing. I've stopped asking him what he did on the weekend or on holiday because the answer's the same every time. It would be great if you could connect with such people and leverage their passion.

Awesome!

This seems to be a common scenario - people hear about or see the site, go to it, get excited, then forget about it. I think I'm losing out because my message is confused or not consistent enough to stick. Maybe I don't have a clear message at all?

Alternatively, you could get a friend or intern to help with the technical work and do the marketing yourself. This approach may make sense for several reasons. You have more passion for your product that any outsider. Also, it may be easier for you to learn what to do than for someone new to learn about the product. Just a thought.

I think I would do this if I felt I was confident in marketing - my skills are definitly centered on development work rather than networking and presenting though (not that that is what I think marketing is about).

My point is; I dont think I have the skills or experience to market Bouldr alone. I think I need to find someone that has experience, otherwise I'll faff it up.

I agree; you are by far the most qualified to be marketing your product right now because of your passion. You also have a Facebook group that you can use as a testbed for your marketing efforts - they're already primed to listen to you, and if you're REALLY concerned about faffing it up, split test!

I don't imagine your marketing would require your physical presence just yet. Start off small and market to an audience you already know.

You are probably much better off for now with an outsourced shop instead of a full-time person on-board.

You could also look at some of the companies like HubSpot that basically train you to do marketing and provide tools to measure effectiveness.

Cheers - will look into that.

no, no, hire me! what do you guys do? :)

You may try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost_per_action

Hi! Emil Hajric here, I'm a pretty good marketing person.

mail me at hajrice@gmail.com if you're interested...

"I'm a pretty good marketing person."

"Bouldr - it's a pretty good app."

[Sorry, Emil...couldn't resist ;) ]

Ouch! :)

I wasn't commenting on Bouldr, MrMatt, in case you misunderstood. I just thought it was funny the way Emil was marketing himself - in a vague and half-hearted way, without any supporting statements or evidence whatsoever. So I was just joking about the type of tagline I could see Emil coming up with for you. (It always strikes me as a bit ironic when marketing guys market themselves poorly, yet they expect you to believe they can market your product/service professionally.) Emil could be a great marketer, but he left himself open to a bit of ribbing with his post. I guess he thought it would be better to present his skills privately (?), which is fair. It just struck me as funny.

Sorry to belabor the point, but I didn't want you to think I was dissing your app. I'm sure Bouldr is cool. [I didn't look at it, to be honest, because I'm not really in your target market. I'm going to try to master walking on level ground again before I move on to climbing stuff ;) ]

Haha! I got it - don't worry.

I saw your post a few days ago - moving stuff. Hope you're getting better as each day passes.

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