
How to find a marketing person? - grk
http://blog.shellycloud.com/2012/09/how-to-find-marketing-person.html
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subpixel
Irony: I'm a new Ruby developer spending a lot of time in the Rubysphere and
have never heard of your company before.

But I can tell you how I've heard of most products, services and companies
that have turned me into a user or potential user.

1\. Blog posts celebrating the way your product makes 'x' way easier and/or
faster and/or better than the way I'm used to. See [http://trigger.io/cross-
platform-application-development-blo...](http://trigger.io/cross-platform-
application-development-blog/)

2\. Blog posts/guest blog posts/screencasts by your users showing how your
product makes them awesome at doing 'x'. You could aim high (Railscasts) or
target a growing niche (Spree users, etc.) - though you want to be careful not
to push this too hard. The best recommendations will be totally organic, but
you can nudge things by mentioning developers/apps on your own blog, etc.

3\. Blog posts by partners (e.g. Sendgrid talking about their Heroku
integration).

I didn't mean for all my points to be calls for blog posts, but I guess
there's a lesson in there. Use your blog to SHOW what you and your users are
doing and you're on the right track. I'm not even sure this is marketing -
more like developer outreach. But I'm assuming the goal of your marketing is
more developers using your platform.

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msredmond
There's been a lot of layoffs in technical company's marketing departments
over past few years, so there's PLENTY of candidates out there that understand
tech and can market well (and should be affordable). Some tips:

\- What KIND of marketing do you need? Sales? Leads? Branding? PR? Know what
you want and what kind of marketing skills in general would provide that
(e-mail campaigns, buying ads, working with press, A/B web testing, etc.) so
you can ask for specific experience in those marketing approaches.

\- Make sure the person can WRITE well. There's a lot of good marketing people
out there (great at developing campaigns, analytics, etc.) who can't write --
and you don't need that at a small shop; you won't be able to afford
outsourcing every project to a freelance writer. Ask for samples and give a
writing test.

\- Marketing is all about results -- if they can't go into detail about how
this project they did compared to that project they did compared to industry
average, walk away.

Just like any other job, references are big. Talk to people you trust; they
probably know someone who knows someone who is perfect and is just out of work
right now because of the downsizing.

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mdgrech23
I'm sorry but they're relatively useless. Focus on delivering a great product.
Interact w/ your customers through gaining feedback and providing support.
Deliver messages to your customers through a single channel. Spread the word
about your product by participating in communities that could take advantage
of your product.

So for example if you're an auto parts maker. Heavily participate in local
racing leagues and drag clubs. Setup shop on the weekends at local auto parts
retailers offering free install lessons. Create a an opt-in mailing list, only
email customers when you truly have something new and valuable to offer them.
Actively seek out customer feedback through the events mentioned above.
Likewise support channels should serve to notify customers of additional
products in your lineup that could benefit them.

None of these methods require a separate marketing person. The only
requirement is someone who is knowledgeable about your product lineup and
community and is a good people person w/ decent writing skills.

My 2 cents, thanks :)

~~~
Start
The point of marketing is that you don't necessarily know what a great product
is. You might think you do, but that's not based on evidence (except if you
have loads of experience in a market and industry, as in 5 years +). And even
if you do manage through experience or sheer luck to put out a great product,
selling / monetizing it through luck as well is unlikely.

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DougN7
If anyone has feedback on this topic, there are probably many of us hackers
that would sure appreciate some insight.

~~~
jriley
My feedback: 1) You could narrow down needs. Imagine how hiring a "tech
person" to build a cloud service is too broad.

2) Read about marketing people with technical skills to understand what they
do. Decent but dated example: <http://okdork.com/2010/10/14/how-mint-beat-
wesabe/> Many other examples blur lines too (patio11, SEOMoz, etc)

3) Couldn't tell if they had investors but that might be a source too. As
hackers can find hackers, I bet investors can find marketers.

4) Find a successful competitor who filled the position. Write a job
description based on that person's bio.

5) Consider trying out a contractor or consultant first. If having that person
in the office would destroy culture, maybe you don't need them.

------
Tichy
<http://xkcd.com/125/> (Marketing Interview)

~~~
mladenkovacevic
Haha yes but marketing themselves is, unfortunately, the only thing some
marketers are good at.

~~~
Tichy
Good point - didn't think of that :-)

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jonbishop
This post is pretty light on information. Definitely need more to make a good
recommendation. Just like there are different types of developers (different
languages, different areas of the stack, etc.), there are different types of
marketers. It really depends on your specific needs. I'm happy to answer any
questions about finding a good marketer (I have 9 years of marketing
experience). My email is in my profile.

------
VSerge
It seems to me you're confusing technical sales and marketing, as your post
describes more of a tech sales role. If this is tech sales / business dev guy
you're looking for, it's pretty straightforward: trial and error. Hire a few
people, see how they perform, keep the one(s) that bring in the best sales
(doesn't always means most btw, quality of relationship affects lifetime
customer value a lot).

Now, if you're talking marketing, and if this is your first marketing person
to join, I'd recommend you look at people who can do good market analysis,
sales strategy and support, and also product strategy. These people don't
necessarily need to give a damn about Ruby btw, because the more they can look
at the product from the customer and market point of view, the better they'll
help you. As in, they'll educate you on the market, and you'll educate them on
what the technical constraints are, and this process will allow creating a
great product that the market wants - and is ready to pay for.

In your search, you'll need to accept that the person you'll hire should have
the duty and power to challenge your every product/market assumption. If you
think this would be ridiculous, let me ask you this.

\- Before starting to offer your product, how did you do the market study? If
you just looked at the competition, you haven't done a tenth of what you
should. \- Did you engage with potential customers? If it was just a handful
of customers with similar profiles, this isn't significant enough. \- Did you
decide on such an insufficient basis what was interesting to them and what
wasn't? How did you determine how to price your offers... You get the drift.

At the very start of a business, the responsibility for marketing should be
with the product manager. If you have one and if he could not / did not do
this marketing work, then you need to have a marketer that can work very
closely with your product manager, but does not report to him. If your product
manager is actually a technical lead, you need to first hire a product lead.

So to sum up, your hiring priority should be:

1) hire a product manager with some marketing abilities. this is a generalist
with good design, marketing, and management skills, and some technical skill
to understand what is being done by the dev team. Worst mistake you can do is
have your product lead focus on building and forget about all the rest he
needs to do.

2) hire a marketing person who is a marketing specialist, either from their
subject matter studying, or from their experience. Either way this should be
someone very analytical, and with some applied knowledge of sales so that
their role can span from product development to sales strategy and support.

3) hire a tech sales person who can speak the language of your customers. If
they are all devs, then someone with dev and sales skills. If they are
managers, someone more sales oriented should be preferred, with only an
understanding of the tech being a requirement.

