
If you build it, they will ignore it (unless you promote it) - jgrahamc
http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/06/if-you-build-it-they-will-ignore-it.html
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DanielBMarkham
This can't be said enough, especially on this board.

Being successful is not about cool languages, or neat P2P source control, or
cool machine learning, or any of that.

That's just the stuff we like talking about. Why? Because most of us have no
idea how to actually make something cool that makes us money, and it's easier
to talk nerdy stuff than business stuff. It's the "geek dance"

Being successful is about doing something that people want and then _telling a
lot of people_.

I've heard (here) that the develop-to-promote ratio should be about 1:10. In
other words, for every hour you spend developing, you should spend about ten
promoting. I believe it.

We don't like to hear that, and it's not fun and cool to chat about. Somehow
it's not even mentioned that much anymore around here. The ratio of develop to
promote articles is the inverse of the work involved! In fact, people who
self-promote (like me, or jgrahamc) are sometimes looked down on.

Sounds like a cool book, and thanks for the reminder. I look forward to
ordering it with my next Amazon purchase!

~~~
Alex3917
"This can't be said enough, especially on this board."

This seems to be one of the major blind spots of HN readers. Making something
people want should be trivial compared to selling it. Think about it. You get
to choose any business you want, so why would you choose one where making
something people want is difficult? If you realize this, you wouldn't. Which
means that if you choose a smart business then you're right that 90% or more
of your effort will go toward promoting, marketing, and selling. It's true
that making something really difficult to copy is a barrier to entry, but it
doesn't make sense to make something difficult to copy just for that benefit,
because in most cases the barrier of selling is an order of magnitude bigger
anyway.

~~~
rjurney
I don't follow. If you spend 10% of your time making something you then have
to spend 90% of your time promoting... are you sure people really wanted that
thing?

Better to spend half your time doing customer development concurrent with
product development, and go through lots of iterations with real, actual
breathing customers, to arrive at something people want. Then it will sell
itself.

Marketing after-the-fact can't fix a turd.

~~~
Alex3917
The idea that good products sell themselves and "marketing after-the-fact
can't fix a turd" is largely a myth. Look at Hendrick's gin. It tastes like
Pinesol, but because they came out with this clever marketing campaign saying
"only 1 in 1000 gin drinkers prefers the taste of Hendrick's" it's now one of
the hottest selling new liquors on the market. And I have friends who've never
even been to a gin tasting who swear backwards and forwards that it's better
than Hayman's or Bulldog or whatever. Hendrick's sells itself on quality only
in the sense that the marketing is the product.

Now if you're making something like a car then clearly taking a strategy like
Hendrick's is going to catch up with you, like it did for GM. But the fact is
that you can make just as money selling gin as you can selling cars, so why go
through the pain of designing the car?

~~~
rjurney
My suggestion is to do your marketing up front, concurrent with development,
to get incremental buy-in and iterate concepts until you find a good one,
instead of on the back-end. I find you have much better results that way. You
can arrive at something that 'sells its self' by aggressive customer contact
and pre-selling. But in fact, it didn't 'sell itself,' you just did your
marketing up front to make sure you built something people wanted to pay you
for.

As to marketing being able to sell bad products, I reply: New Coke. ;)

------
ddbb
That's a very good eye opening article, seriously. Most developers think that
if the code is good and well designed, people will use it, but marketing is so
important, that sometimes a worse product is picked up instead of the better,
just because of the exposure..

~~~
robryan
Sometimes if an application is well designed and built that can be enough. It
depends on other things though, such as if the marketplace is crowded or not.

Google is an example of something that won out because it was the better
application, search wasn't a largely cluttered field though and they were
taking a largely new angle on in. If your putting out another social
networking app at the moment though it's unlikely to catch on just because it
is the better designed app, just look at the troubles something as large and
as well backed as friend feed is having.

~~~
Keyframe
google had a strong product and even stronger word of mouth marketing that got
it rolling - of course, word of mouth would not be there without a good
product. Same snowball effect could have been seen with gmail.

------
dimarco
This is a clever way to promote his book.

~~~
jgrahamc
I hope that the content of the blog post is actually useful though. The key to
promoting anything is to make the promotion itself useful. If you want to get
a journalist to write about your X then you need to make sure that your X
somehow fits into what they want to write about.

Same goes for this blog post. Yes, it talks about my book, but it should be
educational. A lot of people pooh-pooh PR and marketing but they are vital to
success.

~~~
tdavis
Maybe it was just me, but the 5th time I read "my book" was the time I had to
stop reading entirely. It was incredibly annoying. You, of course, have every
right (and need) to promote your book and doing so with the intention of also
being educational is commendable, but I just couldn't take reading that phrase
every other sentence.

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pedalpete
I've learned two important things about marketing in the last year 1) Virality
doesn't come from what you build, you have to get it into the hands/minds of
people who will make it viral or viral isn't code/product/design it is people
powered. The deadliest bug in the world could have all the potential to wreak
havoc, but if it doesn't get spread by the right people at the beginning, it
isn't going to go anywhere

2) you have to keep marketing. You can launch a product and it can do fairly
well, but marketing is an ongoing task.

~~~
swombat
I disagree with 1). I mean, I agree with the idea that reaching the right
people matters, but I don't think it's _all_ that matters. You might want to
check out my recent article: [http://danieltenner.com/posts/0009-how-to-make-
your-applicat...](http://danieltenner.com/posts/0009-how-to-make-your-
application-viral.html)

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raffi
I like this post only because I can relate. When I launched my most recent
project I had a pretty poor response rate even though I emailed a lot of folks
individually. Fortunately I made a list of who I contacted and now I'm going
to email them again and let them know about some changes I've made to clear up
initial points of confusion. Inspired +1.

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zandorg
Google just gave me 30 pounds ($45) of free advertising! Can't complain...

