You’ve got a great product, but you forgot to tell anyone

September 14, 2009

Marketing: The act of getting the word out about your product or service. Or: How you win customers, and specifically, their wallets.

It’s a subject I’ve taken a backseat interest in since releasing my first commercial product half a year ago. Like any other skill, it’s a bit tough at first, but gets easier with practice and patience.

I’ve begun to sense an improvement in my own marketing efforts, so I figured I’d share a few things I’ve learned thus far.

So what is marketing?

Marketing is more than your product’s website and advertisements. But rather, everything you do in the public eye ties into marketing.

Don’t buy that? Consider John Mackey, the CEO of Whole Foods. He recently wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, arguing against Obama’s healthcare reform. In no way did it reflect his company’s official stance on the matter; it was his own thing. But now there is a widespread Whole Foods boycott amongst American liberals.

So be mindful of this every time you tweet, post on the forums, etc.

Be! Excited! Be! Be! Excited!

With the exception of food ads, which are geared to spark an immediate craving, we generally don’t react to advertisements in a tangible way until a later point in time. So marketing, I think, should have one basic goal: to get people excited about your product.

Stay away from fluff. People see right through it, and it comes across as diffidence (big turn-off). Instead, be concrete. And be honest. Why are you excited about your product? Chances are, your target audience will share your sentiment.

Find a clear, consistent message

To market your product effectively, you need to come up with a clear and consistent message. Put some thought into this. Much like branding, changing your message down the road is like starting over. That’s not to say that changing your message is wrong; products change over time for a variety of reasons, and messaging should reflect that.

37signals recommends coming up with a single sentence to define your product, before you even begin working on it. That sentence can double as a starting point for your messaging. Let everything else branch out from there.

Wygwam’s core message is simple: it’s the premier WYSIWYG editor for ExpressionEngine. Why? Because it uses the best editor in town, it’s really easy to set up, and it looks great alongside other fields in the Publish page. Because that message is simple (and accurate), a search for “wygwam” on Twitter reveals that people tend to echo it when they talk about Wygwam themselves. That’s a beautiful thing.

The lost conference

No blog post would be complete without an example of what not to do, so let’s pull out the old magnifying glass and focus it on EE Roadshow, an upcoming conference for ExpressionEngine users.

I’ll be participating in a panel at the conference along with other notable EE add-on developers. The full lineup of speakers is quite impressive, and it should make for an extremely insightful and educational day.

But you wouldn’t know it by visiting the website.

Although the core message is right up at the top, it’s in the form of an endorsement (which it isn’t; it’s attributed to the EE Roadshow Team themselves), it’s wordy, and if you removed “ExpressionEngine”, it could be used to describe any conference. It positions the conference as a place to hang out with people who do what you do. But that need is already met. It’s called SXSW. So instead, the message should be about the educational value.

The remainder of the visible page is composed of more fluffy, repetitive verbiage, a Twitter stream, and “news”. There is a Speakers section on the page, but I had to actually scroll down before I could see it. And I’m using a 24-inch display. That list of speakers should be driving the core message. It should be right up at the top. After all, it’s what you’re paying for.

Late last week, EllisLab published a blog post about the conference, written by Kevin Shoesmith, one of the conference’s founders. While it does stick with the core message, there’s no mention of who will be speaking, examples of who will be attending, or even how many attendees have signed up. Instead, it reads like a car commercial, attempting to “appeal to your imagination” (as Kenny Meyers put it), and leaves one with a sour taste in the mouth. Given the reach of the EE Blog, this was certainly a missed opportunity (as evidenced by the lack of discussion in the forums).

Compare all this with the ExpressionEngine and CodeIgnighter Conference, another such EE gathering at which I’ll be speaking. Their website and tweets both convey the same brand, message, and attitude. The website is well-designed (an important distinction when targeting web designers), displays the list of speakers prominently toward the top, and is limited to short, action-packed copy. There’s a lesson to be learned in that.

In conclusion

Marketing is a good thing. If you’ve got a product that is going to enhance people’s lives, it’s your responsibility to get the word out about it, clearly and honestly.

Don’t reach for things to say when talking about your product. You’ll either come across as desperate and push people away, or you’ll build it up so high that your customers will be disappointed after purchasing. Find the things that get you excited about it, and share that excitement. Simple, right?