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I write a lot about crafting a marketing career, since I love this profession and in the last 2 decades it has seen extraordinary change. This year I turned the lens on my own career and listened to [insert a really large number] of engineers and tech product managers suggest my life's work was obsolete or only for "sucky products." Imagine a very smart, successful Silicon Valley engineer saying something like, "With the Internet and social media, the best products don't need marketing. Look at Facebook and Instagram."
I listened. I really, really listened. The growth of products like Twitter without marketing is undeniable. And in the past, I've worked for amazing entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and have seen their technology magic-making first hand. So I wanted to figure this out as humbling as it was to be the Hulk-smashed rag doll myself. As an "open source marketing hacker" (Coined by my real hacker friend. Nice), I am sharing it with you.
wo Themes of Marketing Change
In the changing role of marketing and confusion about our craft, I have boiled it down to two themes that keep coming up. First, marketers' tools--media, data, product, content and channels--are dramatically changing and integrating. Second, the word marketing is mistakenly being used too narrowly as a synonym for paid media and this largely embraced notion that the best products don't need marketing. (Yet ironically they rely on it to make money (eg Google, Facebook).
I believe these are two of the most critical forces of change in marketing And in the spirit of always striving for even more simplification, these aha's can go one step further into a single thought:
Marketers make meaningful value and scalable connections for products that don't naturally do it themselves--and they largely do this through products that do.
Products that market themselves 1) have value that increases for users when more peers use them and 2) create connections that automatically get the word out and acquire users in more effective ways than paid marketing. If a product doesn't literally market itself, then you need marketers.
Network Value Determines the Role of Marketing
Both the best marketers and best engineers agree that the product is king. It is our common ground. So I started there. I became obsessed with the differences between marketing Instagram vs. a BMW or Facebook vs. a Tonka Truck. It became clear that the differences in these products are network effects vs. inherent value (aka non-network effect). And that this determines the role of marketing.
I write a lot about crafting a marketing career, since I love this profession and in the last 2 decades it has seen extraordinary change. This year I turned the lens on my own career and listened to [insert a really large number] of engineers and tech product managers suggest my life's work was obsolete or only for "sucky products." Imagine a very smart, successful Silicon Valley engineer saying something like, "With the Internet and social media, the best products don't need marketing. Look at Facebook and Instagram."
I listened. I really, really listened. The growth of products like Twitter without marketing is undeniable. And in the past, I've worked for amazing entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley and have seen their technology magic-making first hand. So I wanted to figure this out as humbling as it was to be the Hulk-smashed rag doll myself. As an "open source marketing hacker" (Coined by my real hacker friend. Nice), I am sharing it with you.
wo Themes of Marketing Change
In the changing role of marketing and confusion about our craft, I have boiled it down to two themes that keep coming up. First, marketers' tools--media, data, product, content and channels--are dramatically changing and integrating. Second, the word marketing is mistakenly being used too narrowly as a synonym for paid media and this largely embraced notion that the best products don't need marketing. (Yet ironically they rely on it to make money (eg Google, Facebook).
I believe these are two of the most critical forces of change in marketing And in the spirit of always striving for even more simplification, these aha's can go one step further into a single thought:
Marketers make meaningful value and scalable connections for products that don't naturally do it themselves--and they largely do this through products that do.
Products that market themselves 1) have value that increases for users when more peers use them and 2) create connections that automatically get the word out and acquire users in more effective ways than paid marketing. If a product doesn't literally market itself, then you need marketers.
Network Value Determines the Role of Marketing
Both the best marketers and best engineers agree that the product is king. It is our common ground. So I started there. I became obsessed with the differences between marketing Instagram vs. a BMW or Facebook vs. a Tonka Truck. It became clear that the differences in these products are network effects vs. inherent value (aka non-network effect). And that this determines the role of marketing.
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