Marketing is not something you 'do', it's something you build
Working with first-time founders, I often see them keeping "product" and "growth/marketing" strictly apart. Especially when a founder is technical, it's easy to think that "after finishing X, I'll start with the marketing".
I believe that this strict separation comes from the idea that "marketing" is an activity like "coding" is, but that's not the case. Marketing is not only posting your product on ProductHunt, subreddits and writing blog posts, your product can do marketing for you. As such, it's something you should always keep in mind, not just 'do'
Surely, you've heard about "growth loops" before. The idea is that every new customer of yours has the chance to restart a loop that acquires more customers. I highly recommend my mentees to think of at least one possible growth loop before they even think about their MVP.
Every successful business that's not geared to Enterprise customers has at least one growth loop. Whether that's unintended (product so good they tell their friends) or intended (well executed referral program), the loop is there. That means that every investment into 'marketing' as a whole, such as SEO or even posting on ProductHunt is going to be 10x more powerful.
For most products I worked with, one of these intended growth loops ended up working out:
– A referral program that gives you and the referred party one month off (or a discount)
– Generating a custom dynamic graphic that incentivises your customer to share
– Adding a watermark on something your product produces (emails, graphics, embeds)
– Give people something to share (achievements, leaderboards)
– Building features that promote collaboration (and in turn, invites)
As you can see, none of these loops are 'tacked on' after the fact. It's something that you need to plan as you build features, something that may go into your MVP even and something that might even put some priority on certain features you didn't consider.
In the end, a feature that will make you grow is a win-win!
I agree
Far to many times do I see founders who are incredible at building/engineering a product while totally disregarding marketing.
Just last week an acquaintance of mine ,who's a technical genius, designed a product with his own hardware and software. He put zero effort and thought into logo/website design and couldn't be bothered with posting on social media. "Build and incredible product and they will come" is his thought process. However, most of us know by now that this is false. He hasn't sold anything as a result.
Marketing is underestimated a lot of times. It's all about building a relationship and connecting with your audience. Not only your product should bring value to your customer, your marketing should as well.