4 articles tagged ‘Advertising’

Seth Godin: Inspired by “All Marketers Are Liars” April 12th 2010

Seth Godin’s book ‘All Marketers Tell Stories’ inspired me to share what I’ve learnt in 30 years of the software business.

Software companies often find themselves stranded on islands of excellence, serving a small group of customers but unable to grow. Opportunistic sales result in a few more islands from time to time.

It’s depressing to see companies with excellent technology shipwrecked. A love-hate relationship with marketing is often a contributory reason. We love having many qualified leads, but hate getting our hands dirty with marketing.

Why’s marketing hated like this? In my experience the cause is often the developer background of many managers. Developers equate lead generation with advertising. And developers hate advertising even more than marketing!

Credibility: Not enough to approach prospects directly March 18th 2010

Prospects pay attention if they hear about you from someone they already trust. The bad news: that person can never be you.

Prospects won’t hear your advertising message; they simply are not listening. However, if a miracle occurs and they stumble across your product, you have a credibility problem: you don’t have any!

Website cutting-edge? Brochures tip-top? 30-day free trial awesome? Great, but it doesn’t change the fact we simply don’t believe what vendors say. Don’t take this personally. It’s not you specifically; we’ve all learned the hard way not to trust what vendors say.

So, prospects ignore your advertising and assume what you say is untrue. How, then, can you reach out to prospects and win new customers? Simple: personal recommendation.

Advertising: Stop the economic nonsense!

Doesn’t matter how clever your advertising is nobody will see it. Spending more money just isn’t going to help.

How many adverts do you recall from web sessions? What about magazines, newspapers and blogs? For most people the answer is: none at all.

Ignoring advertising is not some superpower unique to developers. We’ve all picked this up to avoid sensory overload as we make our way through life.

We’re exposed to thousands of advertising messages each day. Consciously ignoring each one would be too expensive. Instead, we’ve learned that subconsciously ignoring them is the only sane way to get through the day.

Demolish walls: Software developers and marketers March 17th 2010

Traditional advertising was about interrupting people to steal their attention; marketing is now about creating stories that spread.

Ask developers about marketing and they’ll tell you they hate it. This negative attitude assumes marketing is just another word for advertising.

While there was some truth to this in the past, those days are long gone.

Advertising was about interrupting people to steal their attention; marketing is about creating stories that spread.

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