Last summer John Dodd wrote a post he called Geek Marketing 101. It’s directed at technologists and technology companies and here’s the point it makes: Customers of technology like technology and they like making use of technology. They just don’t understand all the details of the technology. No wait, they don’t want to understand all the details because they don’t need to understand them in order to use the technology. At least they don’t need to if the company does a good job of explaining what the technology is good for.
Here’s the first three items in his list. Go to his post and spend five minutes to get the other seven.
1) Marketing is not a department.
Marketing is a combination of elements that creates the environment in which it is possible to meet a customer need (starting right back at product development). Promotion and sales are just sub-sets of marketing.
2) Marketing is a conversation, but most people don’t speak geek.
Successful technology marketing must translate the creations of the uncommunicative into the needs of the untechnical. Spin is not good marketing. Lucid two-way communication is.
3) Simplicity does not negate complexity.
Reductive marketing that simplifies ideas does not undersell your complex creation. It facilitates an entree to your world. You can’t have passionate users until they start using.
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