Hiring or trying to become decent at marketing?

[flamontagne]

Hello everyone,

My associate and I are web application developers before anything else. Even though we also do the administrative tasks and everything else in our business, we are less comfortable when we are not analyzing / creating / building software.

So when it comes to marketing, it's the same thing, we just don't have it in our blood. We often discuss about this and we still haven't made up our mind about what would be the best thing to do : 1) Hire the sevices of a person/company to help us market our product OR 2) try to learn some basic marketing tips and do everything ourselves. At some point it is a monetary issue... but it is also more than that. A lot of questions remain unanswered in our minds like : Can the business founders really afford to be ignorant in an important aspect like marketing? Should we concentrate on our strong points instead of trying to improve our weak ones? Should we concentrate on our product and let the word of mouth does its job?

The solution of hiring someone to market our product is not without its problems. For example, we are perfectly fine with 'starting small' and having a strong quality product who steadily attracts new clients over time. For this reason we are not sure that a big 'marketing campaign' that would bring tons of users in a few weeks would be necessary or even ideal for us. Maybe this is the kind of things we could explain to the marketing company... so they could help market our product in a way that suit our needs?

I would really like to read your advices on this.

Thanks for reading!

[Harold Mansfield]

I think that you should tackle the marketing aspects that you can do on your own first.

Ensure that your company image is where you want it to be, ie: website, business cards, social media profiles, etc. Get those together first.

Second, you can market yourselves everyday to your contacts, friends, relatives by ensuring that you always have business cards on hand to pass to anyone that is listening.

Writing and submitting articles in your field to industry blogs and publications is something that you can also do for yourself, that will market your business to others.

Handle the stuff that you can do first, and then think about hiring someone of the outside to go to the next level of marketing and advertising.
No since in paying someone to do the easy stuff that you could have already taken care of.

[flamontagne]

These are very wise advices, eborg. Thanks!

In fact, I could say that we are somehow already doing what you are suggesting... but I never saw this as 'real' marketing... although it certainly is.

[Harold Mansfield]

These are very wise advices, eborg. Thanks!

In fact, I could say that we are somehow already doing what you are suggesting... but I never saw this as 'real' marketing... although it certainly is.

Everything is marketing (and most times advertising), all the way down to what you say when people ask "So what do you do ?"

I have even given my friends business cards to pass out if anyone ever asks "Do you know anyone that does...?", with a promise of a kickback (or commission) for any business that comes my way because of them.

[vangogh]

I would definitely spend some time learning how to market your business on your own, though down the road you may find the better solution is to hire out. At the very least the understanding you gain from learning on your own will help you to hire the right person. You don't want to let someone else run all your marketing blindly. You don't have to become a marketing expert, but it really is a good idea to have some understand of every part of your business.

One other option you may want to consider is taking on another partner who could handle the marketing. You're giving up part of the company, but it will alleviate some of the initial concerns of how to pay for marketing.

There's a lot to becoming a marketing expert though you can boil a lot of it down to a few basic ideas.

1. Figure out who your market is - Not necessarily quick and easy, but think about the type of person likely to be interested in what you're selling. Who are they? Why do they want your product? The more you can understand who your market is the better.

2. Where does your market spend its time - Where should you spread your message to maximize the odds of your market seeing it? Does your market tend to read a specific magazine? If so it makes sense to advertise there. Does your market spend time at certain sites online? Are they part of certain communities? If so then you should build a presence there.

3. Develop your brand and message - Why should people buy from you and not your competition? What is your brand about? What do you offer or do differently than compels me to buy from you?

The above is really basic and I'm sure some would disagree with me. There's clearly a lot of details I'm not mentioning, but if you think about what has to happen in order to make one sale you can really expand it to see the bigger picture of marketing.

In order to sell a product you have to be able to reach someone who's interested in what you're selling and convince them to buy from you. The someone interested is #1 above, the reach is #2, and the convincing is #3.

[Spider]

I'm more inclined to favor the "sell your strengths and hire your weaknesses" route.

That doesn't mean remain ignorant of marketing - at least take some general marketing courses so you, at least, understand the jargon, and why basic things are done the way they are done.

There are two reasons --

1. Being in business for yourself ought to be fun. You are likely to be working longer hours than an employed counterpart, so you'd better enjoy what you are doing. If you do not enjoy marketing, have someone else do it.

2. If you know how to do everything, the more of what needs to be done, the more you will do, and the slower your business will grow. If you want your business to grow, spend more of your time thinking and planning and directing things towards that bigger future, and let others handle today's stuff.

[seolman]

Hello everyone,

My associate and I are web application developers before anything else. Even though we also do the administrative tasks and everything else in our business, we are less comfortable when we are not analyzing / creating / building software.

Following the same thread as Vangogh I would emphasize three things:

a) What type of products are you good at developing?
b) What types of products can you make money at developing?
c) Is there a middle ground?

Once you answer these three questions you can identify your market more readily. From that point it is simply about gaining a good reputation in the marketplace - getting known for the type and quality of your work. Once you understand this factor marketing really isn't that hard.

[Blessed]

I'm agreeing with Frederick and Steve on this one.

Take some time to learn a little bit about marketing and who you need to be marketing too (your target market) but hire the actual marketing bit out. A good marketer will be able to help you with the learning process as well. In my opinion, I'm not doing my job right if a client doesn't understand what we are doing with their marketing and why. Further I find that as I educate the client, they are better able to tell me the answers to the questions I ask them.

[Jean-VA]

It's funny as I just recently wrote an article about this. I'm not sure if posting a link to my article on eZine articles is allowed here in the forum? I'm trying not to break any rules since I'm really brand new ;)

Anyway, answering your question based on what you described, it sounded like you should do the basic steps of the marketing on your own. At least for a little while.

The reasons:
1. You are perfectly fine with starting small, so there is no pressure of needing to make money right away. Enjoy the learning process. Consider it as another adventure in your new journey as entrepreneurs.

2. With that being said, approach marketing in a new sense. Think of it as spreading good news, by offering people help with something that they need help with. You know when you tell your friends what you do and turn out you could help them with some things. That's basically what marketing is. You tell people what you do.

3. The purpose of marketing is to sell. This is where the rubber meets the road. After people know what you do, if they're interested, they're prospects. If they're not, they are not. Maybe they can be your ambassador, maybe not. The trick is how to get your marketing message to the right people. If anything, this will be the part where you would need to hire the expert.

The question is, how bad do you need it right now?

My advice:

1. Try to read & learn a little bit more about marketing. It really is not like what most of us (non-marketing & non-sales personality people) think of it; the difficulties, complications, misrepresentations, etc. In fact, if you practice your marketing the right way, you'd be amazed by how much more clarity you would have about your business.

2. Implement a few basic steps that you could do, that are still related to computer, so it doesn't feel like you're straying too far away from the comfort zone. Some examples, write blogs, participate in online forums like this, join the internet groups of your fellow web developers and your other non-work-related interests (potential clients are everywhere).

Consider too the fact that you need to know what kind of software or web applications that people need, worth analyzing, have potential demands to be created. The purpose of your marketing (since you create/build something) is not only helping people with what they want or need, but also offering solution to their problems, bar them knowing that such solutions exist or do-able. Do you know what I mean?

3. If after doing it for quite some time and you still struggle and miserable every time you have to do it, or when you start seeing the time limit as to when you would start needing the income (proper business plan is needed), or even when you have way too many works and discovered that you could put your valuable time to a much better use if you could delegate the marketing part...then you should looking to hire an expert.

To end this long post, I was in the same situation as you. I'm good with what I do, but I dread and despise marketing. Then I started learning it, and even after my misconceptions clarified, I'm still struggling with speaking it. However, since my main line of work is virtual-based, verbal communication is not something I direly need to master urgently. Neither does it serve as a main factor to the do-or-die of my business. So I'm working on improving it slowly, take my time, and just kind of enjoy the process.

[vangogh]

if you practice your marketing the right way, you'd be amazed by how much more clarity you would have about your business.

That's a good point. I think most of us enter business with ideas about how the business will operate as far as the work we're going to do. We think of what we'll be doing the same was as if we held a job and someone else was providing the work. It's hard to see where that work will come from, but if you take the time to learn the basics of marketing it really does become more clear. You don't have to become an expert marketer, but learning the basics does pay off.


I'm more inclined to favor the "sell your strengths and hire your weaknesses" route.

That's a good approach. I think it's always a good idea to learn what you can about all parts of your business. At the very least understand the basics, but I agree that it makes sense to do what you do well and hire out for the things you don't do as well. No one can really do everything and there's nothing wrong with getting help where you need it most.

[huggytree]

I know a few small 2 man companies who hire a salesman..some of them went with a part time guy...they were bad at sales/marketing...when they spoke to groups they were just horrible....they were good at what they did, but they didnt understand how to sell it...most of those guys went out of business....they were too small to afford to hire a salesman, but because they werent talented they had no choice...they had to compete in a market which was low priced and they had to offset the salesman's fee's with their wages...basically they made very low wages....

I have good marketing idea's, but was lacking in the salesman role(still am), but i joined a networking group to get better at standing up in a group and discussing my product. Ive gotten pretty good at that after standing up weekly for 2 years.....

if you have the talent i say go for it....marketing is almost as important as the product..possibly more important in some cases...if you cant do it yourself i think your at a disadvantage, but if you can add the costs of a marketing/sales person to your bottom line I say do it.....it will give you more time to develop/improve your products

Id love to add $5 per hour onto my hourly rate and hire a salesman, but i cant....id have to keep my rate the same and take that $5 out of my pocket....thats not acceptable to me...i pass all expenses on to the customer.