
Ask HN: Resources to learn marketing? - juandazapata
What resources (e-books, videos, on-line lessons, formus, etc) can you people recommend to learn on-line marketing?<p>I have a couple of projects that need a marketing boost to get more clients, but since I&#x27;m programmer, I&#x27;m struggling a little bit with the marketing side.<p>Thanks in advance.
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tixocloud
Traction by Gabriel Weinberg
([http://tractionbook.com/](http://tractionbook.com/)) is a must-read. You'll
learn that marketing is massive and not all tactics work for everyone. It's
usually through trial and error.

For example, inbound marketing is great but it takes a lot of time to build up
an audience and generate traffic. If you're looking for more short-term sales,
outbound marketing might be more effective. It is expensive though. This is
where the importance of your objective/goal comes in (i.e. sell more, generate
awareness, etc).

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anexprogrammer
For SEO + Inbound Marketing start with Moz's beginners guide to SEO
[https://moz.com/learn/seo](https://moz.com/learn/seo), and follow their blog.

and skim the Friday Whiteboards [https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-
friday](https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday)

[https://inbound.org/](https://inbound.org/) often has some good pointers to
blog posts, though you'll sift through some PR puff pieces too.

Shopify's blog [https://www.shopify.com/blog](https://www.shopify.com/blog) is
also pretty good at the basics, albeit with a focus on ecommerce.

That's enough to get going.

Then dig into the search and SEO blogs as you need to dig deeper.

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SerLava
Seconding all of this except for the end, where you have to be careful:

>Then dig into the search and SEO blogs as you need to dig deeper.

I'd recommend this for a marketer who works with other smart marketers.

If you're starting out all alone, it's very hard to tell what advice is
reasonable. Search blogs can be the biggest piles of festering crap.

You pretty much can't go wrong with Moz though. You can find all the basics
and plenty of the advanced info on the Moz blog.

Also, just don't do anything that seems spammy, ever. Tell people why your
products are good, and use words that are similar to what someone would type
in to find those products.

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revorad
There are many resources depending on what exactly your projects are. Justin
Jackson's book "Marketing for Developers" was quite helpful to me. Here's my
brief review - [https://learnetto.com/blog/learning-marketing-from-justin-
ja...](https://learnetto.com/blog/learning-marketing-from-justin-jackson-s-
book)

I run an online education site where we're going to launch some courses on
marketing. I could give you free access if you email me at
hrishi@learnetto.com and tell me more about what you're trying to do.

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brudgers
One resource is Sam Altman's _Startup Playbook_. It is free and Altman is a
purported to have some expertise in entrepreneurship.

[http://playbook.samaltman.com/](http://playbook.samaltman.com/)

It will not go into details about adwords and growth hacking. It will suggest
talking with people directly; customers and potential customers.

Good luck.

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homeslice
Make sure you aren't spreading yourself too thin "I have a couple of projects
that need a marketing boost" \- can you limit it to 1 project and focus on
marketing that?

Go try and market one single thing - that is by far the best way to learn.

Once we find one successful tactic - you can apply that to other projects and
see if it works on other projects too.

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vincentbarr
Marketing is a sprawling category.

Can you be more specific so that I can make a helpful recommendation?

E.g. Are you interested in learning about marketing at a high-level
(positioning, messaging, value prop) or about more tactical online marketing
(email, paid display & search, SEO, social)?

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HerpDerpLerp
Bill Hicks is all the resource you need ;)

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gesman
thevault.bz

:)

