
Marketing Post - The Bug Report - dave1619
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/02/marketing-version-20.html
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Loginid
Ok, I kinda piled on Fred Yesterday:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2262682>

He is softening his position it seems, but he is still seeing marketing as
something other than it is.

Marketing is the act of identifying a market's demand, and optimizing your
offering to capitalize on that demand. It is what drives revenues in business
more than anything else.

The problem is that advertising agencies and other firms that offer other
promotional or consulting services have co-opted the term 'marketing' for
themselves.

Promotion is a tactic that can strengthen your marketing efforts. Fred's point
seems to be that paying for promotion is unwise for a startup. I generally
agree.

He might also be saying that paying a costly consultancy firm to advise on
your offering's market fit as a startup is unwise. I would agree with this
also.

It looks like Fred has seen the term 'Marketing' on the wrong side of the
balance sheet one too many times.

He is downplaying the importance of marketing for startups. I think that this
is very damaging to the young entrepreneurs that are listening without
understanding the context.

