Marketing - my oddest hobby

My friend and frequent collaborator, Josh, pointed out that despite my technical background, my mind always seems to wander back to marketing. I’m happy with my job in the software engineering org at Opto, but yes, I do think an awful lot about marketing… so much I’d go so far as to call it a hobby. Josh asks valid question: why?

The Philosophical Core of Marketing

Marketing is often associated with advertising or sales support, and in some corners is almost a dirty word. There’s an implication of manipulation or undue pressure to purchase or buy into consumer capitalism.

I was heavily influenced by rethinking finance more broadily: as a framework for directing scare resources to where they’re most effective. This removes the percieved dirtiness. The same way, I think of marketing a solution to a search problem.

When done well, it articulates a desire or need that prospective consumers (“prospects”) have. The need may not be something the prospect has previously considered or is capable of articulating in this way its marketed - but it’s helping the prospect and the seller connect in a mutually beneficial way. This does assume an honest product and presentation, of course.

As I’ve gotten deeper into new product development, the “0 -> 1 problem”, I’ve realised that my largest challenge is always validating that the problem that I’m solving matters. In many cases this means that someone will open their wallet - but often times people are paying with their attention. Take the various open source software projects I’ve built - when no one seems to care, is it:

• that have I not presented it to the right people?
• that I’m not using the project in a way that connects?
• that it just needs more development?
• that it’s a dead end?

So I see getting better at marketing and learning more techniques/tools as enhancing my ability to “fail fast” on my silly ideas :) Or put less negatively, I can get my tools in the hands of a lot more people and succeed at a higher hit rate!

Other Reasons

The other thing that really appeals to me here is that it’s both a data-driven endeavour and an art. There aren’t a ton of people who can play in both realms, but I feel really native here. It’s a constant challenge. There are so many presentation methods & channels to reach an audience, so many tools designed to (many of which are terrible - and a surprisingly large amount of tools marketed to marketers are not marketed well…), but also no lack of opportunities to pull more data and information to generate hypotheses.

I find that the constant experimentation and the ability to (sometimes) come up with a pretty appealing success metric is really fun. Often times it’s monetary, and I’ve found that people are very happy to tell you that they love an idea but never convert. There is some truth in people spending money!

Finally - as I laid out in my talk at PyBay on AI, the technical elements of marketing are likely to accelerate. People can spend more time on storytelling and less on the robotic elements that ultimately moved me out of the field.