Not gonna lie, but I hate marketing
It's late, and i'm tired/cranky/sleep-deprived. A newborn can do that to you.
I launched my product three weeks ago. My goal should be to get eyes on it, but I very simply hate marketing.
It becomes very easy to fall into a trap of doing other things to get me away from doing what I NEED to be doing.
Better check e-mail. Better check LinkedIn. Oh I need to spend time updating our team pages.
There are days where I can spend 12 hours doing analysis/programming/model building/research and not break a sweat. But when I spend two hours trying manual outreach, it feels as though all of the energy has been drained from my soul.
How do you guys get past it?
To be honest, I think the best way to get past it is recognizing you are getting in the way of your own success. No one/ nothing else is getting in your way.
If it’s something you don’t want to do, but know you need to do it... then anything else you are doing is just spinning your tires in mud.
I hear a lot of people shy away from/avoid marketing because of the following:
• it feels slimy/salesy
• they don’t know where to start
• it will be expensive
When I think of marketing, I think of it as a way for me to get in front of people who NEED my product. That those people are struggling with a problem that my product will solve for them and make their lives 10x better. I think of marketing FOR them not TO them.
It can feel daunting when it’s a new idea or skill set. Starting from zero is tough, but get excited about learning something new. Think of how gaining this experience and knowledge will multiply your personal growth. Over time it will feel less foreign.
You can control how much you spend, but your most valuable asset you won’t be able to recover is your time. The longer you put off doing it means the longer you put off growing your business. If you are afraid you won’t be able to afford marketing, then think about areas you can operate in where the cost is low. Chances are you won’t be able to yield noticeable growth in a short period of time, but you can use this opportunity to test ideas against smaller subsets of people. When you have small numbers you can be more nimble and experiment with messaging. When you are larger and more established, experimenting can confuse an existing customer base.
You got this. Just figure out your hang up and change your mindset.
Agreed with @tobins here!
To give you a fresh perspective, when I'm reading your post, I have the same feelings but just the direct opposite. I love marketing but hate building products.
It's clear that often we're the bottleneck of our own business. The best solution is to remove ourselves from the process.
I understand that as the founder or a one-person team, it's hard to remove yourself from anything.
You will still need to learn the basics of marketing — the principles and the concepts — then put yourself in the position where you set the direction, and get someone else to replace you on the execution.
Keep up the good work. You got this!
Hello @DeanYeong!
Where would you recommend someone start when evaluating a market? What are some basics someone should learn as a beginner when they have technical expertise, but not marketing expertise?
I believe there are two most critical components here:
To narrow these down, I would say one could start at:
Copywriting — not to write copy but to learn how to position and communicate the product effectively.
Talking to customers in person — to find out their pains and how the product has helped, and ways to adjust and improve.
Build and track process — test small marketing strategies and track the results. In addition to marketing the product, one can also learn how to run better campaigns from the process.
I have written an article here on IH, that has been mildly successful.
Taken from there: “(…) Are you willing to get out of your comfort zone and start doing the necessary evil, called marketing? How to get started? What worked for me was (and is, still!) to see it as a challenge, see marketing as something I could conquer—the same I did with coding (and design before that).”
Read the full article here that has some more tips on how to “easier marketing”, e.g. content creation.
I have said this before, but if you don't want to do marketing, you might consider getting a job where you can do “analysis/programming/model building/research”. I understand it though—we are “makers”, building and creating is what we enjoy and are good, but to a have (commercial) successful business, you need to do the other 80% of the business-part too.
Great article!
I try to tell people something similar to this a lot. Marketing is part of the product and you're trying to go out of your way to find the people who need it. Marketing is for someone, not to someone.
Finding a community for your product is really important.
Launching a business IS mostly sales /marketing, not coding or analysis. If you really hate it / bad at it, then you should let someone else do it.
By having no other choice. If I don't do it, I will be homeless or worse, back to a 9-5.
Just hire someone to do it
ditto.
How has the manual outreach gone? Are you finding success or are you finding one-on-one sales to be difficult?