Why is there such a divide between marketers and tech folks?
I've lived in San Francisco for 5 years and it seems that no one would entertain the idea of messing with the likes of Tai Lopez or Billy Gene.
I hardly see Tai Lopez or Billy Gene selling a sustainable healthy product that lasts for years while shooting for a large exit. It seems they're always creating a new product or course and trying to get as much money then moving on when the well dries up.
That said, they know how to gain attention, grow an audience, and SELL. It would seem like the duality would be powerful. Tai and Billy are only an example, there is a whole world of marketers that think a certain way, run a campaign get paid, then move on -- wham bam, thank you, mam.
While in Silicon Valley the mind frame is completely different, it seems a lot of products do struggle to gain traction and profit. The business model around SaaS and tech are generally sustainable, they also have the potential for a huge exit.
I was on ClubHouse in the room with the two and wanted to ask them this question but never got a chance. I am super interested in hearing the IH thoughts on this, then getting the other side to better understand.
This divide feels as real as Sky vs Urchants
Like two different species. Certainly two very different motivations and skill sets.
I'll be honest, I had to look up Tai Lopez and Billy Gene as I have never heard of them before.
From my quick research it looks like Tai Lopez specializes in helping retail companies market their products online to eCommerce success. It was harder to understand what Billy Gene does, as he seems to portray himself as a general "marketer", which feels very vague and thus makes me skeptical.
I am by no means an expert in marketing, but I have come to appreciate that marketing is a very specialized. Running a successful marketing campaign on Instagram for a physical product is a very different skillset than developing an effective content marketing strategy for a B2B SaaS product.
I think it is up to us as indie hackers to determine what type of marketing our product needs. Then if you want help, look for experts in those types of marketing.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago
I like your line of thinking here. I think it's similar to some extent with designers. I'm a dev and have worked with designers a lot. Most of the designers I've worked with think mostly in terms of aesthetics and not as much in actual usability + implementation.
The usability part is surprising since UX design is so much about this, but the thing is, you don't know how usable something is until you start implementing some mockups and trying it out, i.e. you need to get into the "absolute" world of reality where you can manipulate things outside of just a picture or a video. Often, designers just put together static images and assume the dev will implement from there, not realizing there are all these errors states, async operations, transitions, etc. that must be taken into account.
Likewise, designers don't/shouldn't care about implementation details, but often a slight change in the design can save hours, days, or even weeks in implementation. Again, that's something you don't know unless you're a dev.
My point is, as with your example, it's a little bit easier to get by with designs that are nice to look at, but not fully functional. At the end of the day, with tech, you need somebody to implement things, so there's always that requirement of that work.
Of course, this is not to say a dev could do design or marketing. They're totally different fields, so yeah, it's hard for most devs to think about how to make something beautiful or how to sell something.
This comment was deleted 4 years ago