Marketing: Dirty Word?
Among programmers, marketing is a dirty word. Often, you will find us apologizing for even uttering it. I used to feel this way, too. I have changed my mind, having figured out that reality is subtler than I imagined.
In the programmer’s world view, marketing is synonymous with lying. Those of us in the software trade are accustomed to “those marketing people” making absurd promises to our customers that we then are expected to keep. Or they dramatically overestimate the capabilities of the software in their communication materials. In general, the kind of people who like to write code are also the kind who like facts and precise language, and who disapprove of hand-waving and the use of words that don’t mean anything.
Thanks to reasonable people like Seth Godin and Eric Sink, I have come to characterize marketing according to a different synonym: marketing is persuasion. It is not just the act of persuading; it’s also deciding whom to persuade and what you want to persuade them of and why you want to be persuasive in the first place. Unfortunately, you can persuade a lot of people with lies. The good news is that there are plenty of other ways to be persuasive. Some of them are even worse than lying, like intimidation and coercion (this helps to explain how the mafia can run such a successful business without ever taking out any ads).
In my view, it is right and proper that we should insist upon honesty, both as consumers and as marketers. Those businesses whose competitive advantage is that they have a knack for screwing their customers and partners don’t have much of a competitive advantage after all. The morally-defensible way to go about marketing is to build relationships, to genuinely care about people and show them your respect. Of course, there’s much more to it than this. You need to be able to measure your progress and use the data to constantly improve your methods, but trust and respect are at the heart.
The lesson for programmers is that if you re-cast your ideas about marketing, you begin to see that you have many more opportunities to influence the process than you ever thought. If you’re sick of lies, then start working on persuasion. You can (and should) talk to customers yourself. You can even strengthen relationships by being more scrupulous in your code. If you believe in what you’re doing, you won’t have any moral dilemma doing what you can to pass it on.
Comments
Totally agree with this post! Within the Sakai community we should do more on marketing in the way you describe. To begin with: our website. Don’t you agree? Great to see such a post on a blog of a former programmer-turned-entrepeneur! Hope to see more of these. See you on the planetsakai.org and wherever we meet.
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