Ask Slashdot: I Just Need... Marketing? 212
An anonymous reader writes "Over the years, Slashdot has had many stories of non-technical entrepreneurs in need of programmers. Now I found myself in an almost opposite situation: I am a programmer with a fledgling mass-market product that needs marketing. I know Slashdot's general sentiment towards marketing. Without being judgmental one way or the other, I must say that for a product to reach the widest possible audience in a given time period, marketing is a necessity. Short of doing everything myself, I see a couple of options: 1. Hire marketing people, or an outside marketing firm; 2. Take in willing partners who are good at marketing (currently there are no shortage of people who want in). With these options, my major concerns are how to quantify performance, as well as how to avoid getting trapped in a partnership with non-performing partners — I already have a tangible product with a huge amount of time, money, and effort invested. Budget is also limited. (Budget is always limited unless you are a Fortune 500 business, but for now that's more of a secondary concern.) So here is my question to Slashdot: how do you address these concerns, and in a more general sense, how would you handle the situation: technical people with a product in need of marketing?"
Re:Give a pro partner a interest in the profit (Score:2, Interesting)
Give an experienced marketing partner and interest in the net profit. That way you aren't losing any more cash than you generate. If your product is viable, there should be no shortages of these types of people.
Look at your friends first, do you have anyone in marketing? Do you know anyone who has succesfully self-promoted a mobile app or web service? You might know the right person already, or at least know someone who can point you to that person.
Shop your idea around, and make sure you get an NDA to prevent someone stealing your concept.
Only look to your friends if you don't want to have friends. You will have to fire them because they will expect a friend to look the other way when they screw up.
Only bring in partners if you want to give someone the ability to destroy your business with the inability to fire them.
Perhaps DIY? (Score:5, Interesting)
Without knowing anything about the product or market, it is difficult for anyone to give meaningful advice. So here's a few books to consider that might bring you up to speed. Your job will be to find these on Amazon, etc. You might not DIY, but it will give you insights into marketing and help you identify someone who will help. Think of it like a businessman who takes a programming course to better understand programmers and work effectively with them. There are lots of bad marketing people, and you need to know enough to be able to identify the good ones from the bad one.
The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al Ries & Jack Trout - Start here.
Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson, Houghton Mifflin. - a how-to book on marking with a tiny budget. More local than national.
Advertising is a Waste of Money by Robert Ranson, HRD Press. Before you spend a dime advertising, read this.
Marketing Without Advertising, by Michael Phillips & Salli Rasberry, Nolo Press.
Ogilvy on Advertising by David Ogilvy, Vintage Books. In short - all marketing needs a feedback system so you can measure results. Yeah - web sites are great for this. Based on this book, I had a bunch of 1-800 toll-free phone numbers and every mailer had a different number. I could look at the phone bill and know which mailer was generating results. It is more important to know that something worked than to know why.
Re:You aren't an entrepreneur, you are a programme (Score:2, Interesting)
Thanks for your well-reasoned post. Unfortunately, it is not 100% backed up by facts. The Google founders were NOT sidelined. Instead they consciously chose an experienced CEO to "run business" while they (I guess) focused more on technology. Now one of the founders wants to "do CEO". But the "adult CEO" type is still somehow on board. I assume to "help out" in case the original founder CEO messes up.
Also, I find it quite despicable to start a business with the objective of "flipping it to a VC" and "do serial entrepreneurship". It displays a very flimsy attitude and is entirely based on some cynical "get rich quick" philosophy. Basically you encourage screwing customers instead of building long-term relationships. Or alternatively, abandoning products/technologies after having sold them for top dollar to an established corporation.
Maybe you could make some money out of my latest invention:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/didipus/files/DiDiPuS.pdf/download
Or maybe not, because I donate it to everybody.