Why so much hate for marketing?
Recently, I’ve seen a number of content on IH that’s geared towards ‘growth without marketing’. In those posts, OPs speak as if marketing is something so evil, and it should be cancelled.
Why?
What did marketing ever do to you?
Sure, it’s a great accomplishment that you can grow a product or a service without marketing. But this isn’t a competition. You’re not proving anything.
You grew your company without marketing?
Great!
So what?
What’s the punchline?
Do you realize that WITH marketing, you could’ve achieved 5-10x (or even more) of what you already achieved within the same timeframe? Did you even consider the opportunity cost of you not using any marketing?
Marketing doesn’t cost anything except for a little time commitment. It’s not rocket science either. You can pretty much DIY and get great results. It’s not this giant black hole that’s out to ‘get you’. You do the right stuff, you get customers.
Simple.
You don’t have to choose. You can have it both ways.
Be smart. Be great.
I absolutely support what you've said here. Achieving growth without marketing is not easy, and what sometimes people see is 'not marketing', is marketing anyway.
I agree. I've noticed that devs tend to look at marketing as icky or almost deceitful.
I think dev types (myself included!) tend to think that the quality of their product should be enough to convince people. We end up making lists of features and hoping that when people see this list, they'll rationally see that the product is beneficial to them and immediately buy. (And if they don't buy, we wouldn't be able to convince them anyway.)
Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way. Despite the quality of your product, you still have to "sell" it to someone. You have to let them know what problem they have that your product can solve. You have to show them how much better they will be with your product. I think analytical types don't naturally think in that way ("how can I help you" vs. "here's this thing I built, you should use it").
Just having the product out there and hoping someone finds it isn't enough.
Yeah, I mean there’s a IH staff member that says they tend to perceive marketers with skepticism on this thread. On the other hand, I can’t blame them either. Most marketers are pretty manipulative.
But, at the end of the day, the market doesn’t care about our feelings, our emotions, our opinions, etc. If you market the right way, you’ll get customers. You can either get results, or you can give excuses. Doesn’t change anything.
("how can I help you" vs. "here's this thing I built, you should use it").
I'm the latter, however this sounds biased.
"Here's the solution to your problem" vs "I'll convince you, this is the solution"
Marketing should be seen as educating. You should be educating your audience on how your product can solve their pain points. But in the recent years, I've seen too much spamming of content without really addressing peoples pain points. Maybe this is why people hate marketing?
The best definition for marketing is ‘inspiring your prospects into making a decision’. And yes, that includes educating them as well. I mean, if you’re not offering any value to them, they wouldn’t even scroll down on a landing page, much less buy from you.
And people are getting smart. They’re seeking sources that solve their problems and avoid the spammy ones. So there’s always hope for Indie Hackers with good intentions.
Thank you for the response.
There is a significant difference between marketing and promotion, and we have reached a critical mass where promotion has become the default mode of operation. Digital marketing is so cheap to implement that this may have been an inevitable state. It's not always nefarious operators, sometimes it's just unsophisticated ones.
The best thing you can do in "marketing" is answer the questions people have not just on your product but on your industry - this is content marketing that has utility. The second best thing you can do is create a community around your product that is built on listening and elevating.
I get a staggering number of marketing emails that tell me how and what people are trying to sell me without first telling me why I should be interested, or what the benefit is. There is no interest in cultivating my patronage - it's just a hammer over the head.
Marketing doesn't have to be a war of attrition, it can be an invitation into a partnership that is mutually beneficial - if you value that.
You hit the nail on the head here (pun intended). "Why should I be interested?" and "What is the benefit to me?" are the most important things to communicate and yet these points are often completely missing from landing pages or marketing copy.
In general, doing marketing to get good results is not easy. Indie hackers are better at creating products, and most are not good at marketing. That is just reality.
I totally understand. Nothing wrong with just sticking to what you know.
But you can always partner up with someone who can take care of this side. I mean, there’s a section on IH just for that purpose.
Thank you for the response, mate.
You just got down to the real issue. They were supposed to be the star. Not those sleezy marketers lol
I even suck at conveying the message on my landing page.
Someone was telling me the sub-header in your landing page conveys the message better than your main message...
I don't know, it looks good to me, but obviously it's not clear enough. The same story about marketing in other aspects as well.
Correct, not hate
This, exactly summarize my hatred towards marketing.
It's not rocket science, but a bunch of lies. Marketing suppose to be about getting heard, not to trick people. Those who are good at it, thinks they are better, doing greater and being smarter. While they are only compromising more than other. 🤷♂️
No marketer can say FU to their customer's face. They suck it up and move on with the transaction at all costs. There is lie in it, hypocrisy in it, you name it. So it's not a perfect fit for everybody.
An interesting approach. I doubt there has to be a reason to avoid something. But here we go; I'm willing put the hard work, but without "marketing" myself, I can't find any work. Basically clowns in marketing dominates the space with false promises, destroying trust thus ruining my entrepreneurial life. Forcing me to play it on hard mode, to do stuff that I'm not willing to.
Finally, opportunity cost sounds like a shortcut to insanity. Living a life thinking about the lost possibilities doesn't sound so healthy to me.
Be happy.
Anyone that hates marketing is not a business person, and builds a SaaS as a hobby.
Business person sounds a bit wide. I'd prefer to be called as a not corporate person or not entrepreneurial. I like to do business without fluff.
I wouldn't built a SaaS as a hobby but poor marketing may force it to stay as a hobby revenue-wise.
First off, thank you for the response. I’ll try to address your points one by one.
There are a lot of great inventions in mankind, that are being (mis)used for bad intentions all over the world. That’s what bad people do. They ruin sh*t for everyone else.
What you described here isn’t ‘marketing’. It’s ‘manipulation’. Nothing more, nothing less. It has been used by bad people since the beginning of time, and it will continue until the end of time. There are dozens of books written about manipulation based on CIA’s manual on deception and manipulation.
Marketing is about being heard. It’s not a bunch of lies. There’s stuff that works, and the stuff that doesn’t work. It changes over time due to one reason or another, and yes, bad people doing bad stuff is a main reason. But it doesn’t hinder the potential of marketing (if done right).
Not everyone who uses marketing is a crook or giving out false promises. Personally, I’ve marketed SMEs that are truly making a difference within their community. There’s also non-profits (the ones that actually did things) that I’ve been a part of that helped people. So there’s a ton of good things that are amplified because of marketing too.
Do you think you’re the only one who has to play it on hard mode? All of us do that. All day, every day. Yes, even marketers. Things aren’t so easy anymore. More people in the marketplace. More sellers. More voices. More faces. More names. More emails. More Tweets. More ads. More everything. And we have to come out on top to ‘be heard’.
And yes, we are smart because we figured out how. But that only lasts for a small time because out tactics get saturated since everyone is using them now, and we have to be ‘dumb’ and search for something that works and learn it all over again.
Also, there’s a reason to avoid anything. You either know it or you don’t.
Honestly, at the end of the day, we all reap what we sow. And just because we do (or don’t do) something doesn’t make us morally superior or inferior than anyone else. Only psychopaths think like that.
This is a free world, and we’re free to believe whatever we want to believe and follow whatever path we feel like following. That’s what makes us mortals interesting.
Cheers, mate.
Great inventions like nuclear energy. Some hates.
As a former manipulative psycho, I can confirm.
I'm not competing with non-profits. Single bad apple in a category can ruin everything for the rest. There is competition, things only escalate and only option is to raise the hand.
Someone documented several youtube channels were hurting animals to "save" them later. There is evil even under the name of non-profits. Marketing 🤘
I'm confident about the hardness level of the game I play.
"And yes, we are smart because we figured out how." I'm waiting for the time this phrase will sound cute. Still triggering. Feeling superior just because others choose not to do what they think is alright...
I have to ask since you figured. In which game someone has a chance against a crook? Rook's moves are limited if you play it by the rules, beat someone playing their rooks as they are bishop.
Marketing being necessary doesn't make it appealing.
Appreciated the kind and thorough response.
Cheers.
I only said we’re smart. Not smarter. Objective. Not comparative.
Of course you have a chance against a manipulator. Everybody does. Just like I said, if you do the right stuff, employ the right tactics, execute the right strategies, you can achieve your goals.
I’m willing to help people mate. If you need any help with your projects, hit me up. My email is listed on my IH profile.
Cheers.
English is not my mother tongue but saying marketers are smart, makes non-marketers what. In the capitalist world we live in that's acceptable however there are people rooting for alternatives.
I tried to put stress on it's a choice for some people. Not because they didn't figure it out.
Best example would be here, csallen shared his opinions about best content to share in indiehackers several times. I can follow his advises, prepare those posts, get boosted and pinned on the popular feed. Get along with him, grow my network through him.
People who figured that out, selling their courses to 7 figures, running paid communities, doing wonders outside. Whereas me debating with him anytime possible. Not rocket science.
Just to make it clear, if anything felt personal. I didn't mean it that way. I was trying to answer a straight question "Why so much hate for marketing?", generalizing marketing all together.
So anyways welcome to indiehackers 🎉. Looking forward to learn a few marketing tricks so I can finally make a few bucks.
I think we're going to have to disavow the digital nomads in Google Search Console lol
I couldn't agree more. As a digital marketer myself I have come across so many clients who were resistant to marketing their products but changed their minds after seeing the positive returns.
It's just much more boring than coding. Even knowing I can't gain a financial results without marketing, it's super hard for me to start doing it. And it's not only boring, but it's also not simple, it's embarrassing very often, it requires other skills than coding (social skills) that many people like me prefer to avoid.
I understand the boring and hard part, but how is it embarrassing? Just curious.
For example, if they say "no" or "not interested" or don't respond at all... the fact itself I have to ask someone is embarrassing. In the ideal world, I'd create something cool, say "look!" and thousand people rush out to see how to use it :))))
If you offer to help out an elderly lady, would you be embarrassed? Would you be embarrassed if she rejected your help? Even if the rejection hurts, you know that you at least tried to do a good thing.
If your product or service actually delivers value to the target audience, you have nothing to be embarrassed about.
Work on your message so that they’ll understand what value you’re providing. There are scripts for this online. It’s a Google search away.
Don’t ever reject yourself. Let the marketplace reject you.
I'm sorry but I didn't ask you for a piece of advice. Neither reject myself. So, you got my message wrong. I just explained to you why I found marketing embarrassing.
Thanks for keeping it real. This is what's going on. And it's okay but they need to not come for marketers in the process. We deserve to eat too lol
I could be mistaken, but I don't think the sentiment is that marketing is evil as much as it's out of many peoples' comfort zones. I imagine coders would prefer to spend their time coding in the same way that marketers would rather spend their time on marketing tasks than technical work.
Correct
But some of the best things in life lie beyond our ‘comfort zones’, right?
Though I understand that coders aren’t marketers.
As I said to @tiagorbf above, you don’t have to do much to get results. Only a few things actually matter in marketing. All it takes is a bit of a time commitment.
Thank you for the response.
"All it takes is a bit of a time commitment." There is a lot of assumptions in a general statement like this. For a person (indie hacker or any other person) who has attributes that are conducive to learning and doing marketing that produces a good result, the statement is true. But for most people, knowing at a higher level of what to do is not the same as knowing how to execute to get a good result. For example, we know SEO is important for websites. There are books, videos, articles, courses, etc. that explain how to do SEO. After consuming all those information, I can tell you how to do SEO in a theoretical sense. But I still can't write any TOFU/MOFU/BOFU articles that readers would find useful, entertaining, sightful, etc. to improve website ranking because I suck at writing.
You make a good point about sucking at writing (or marketing). It doesn't come naturally to most of us. However, I could say the same thing about writing code. A lot of us are good at it (hopefully!) because we've worked through lots of projects and wanted to learn and improve.
If you're able to build a service or an app today, it's because you worked at it. You chose to improve that skill. You probably weren't immediately good at it.
So with writing and marketing, I think it's something as an indie hacker you have to recognize is important and commit resources to improving on.
I think there might be a tendency to treat marketing as a nuisance as opposed to a vital skill that can be improved.
That's how I think about marketing too.
I suck at it, badly, but I'm getting better at it. It takes time, it's painful, specially as a bootstrapping founder, but I don't see any shortcuts.
I wish there was a way to get better at it faster, but unless you find someone from whom you can learn, it's just learning through trial and error.
Yes. I wasn't suggesting people shouldn't step outside their comfort zone; merely offering a perspective on your question.
I do, however, think you're oversimplifying marketing. It takes more than "a bit of time." It requires knowledge, specific skills, time, and in many cases, money. And the time portion is probably the biggest hurdle for the average indie hacker, because time is finite. Plus, it's going to take longer for someone who has less experience and interest in those tasks.
Again, that's not to say that people should avoid marketing. It's an important part of growing any business. But it's also perfectly understandable why the growth without marketing posts appeal to coders who want to spend as little time as possible on it.
They don't really care about us. They think everyone will get fired from the company and only they will work there once they build enough features. lol
Exactly. Do NOT put ego before results. 🙌
We're all susceptible to this at time.
When it happens, step back, look at it from a bird's eye view.
🚀⚡
Say it again for the people in the back. You nailed it. Results are what matters not who got them.
I've noticed that many people work in a silo and don't trust or fully understand the work of other teams. I think this is a symptom of that. I've seen so many products advertised as "x without the y" and gotten similarly frustrated knowing that "y" (whatever it may be) is an integral component. Agreed that you can have it both ways!!
Um... It's interesting to see a company that decided to develop without marketing... Have you actually encountered such statements from IH users?
Yeah I did. That’s why I decided to post this thread.
And did you not see the other comments in this thread?
Marketing is not evil. But most of it is just slow.
And respectfully to you as a marketing expert, most founders do not have marketing skills so it can eat up a lot of their time learning, making mistakes and not moving the startup forward.
Early-stage startups do not have time on their side. They need to come out of the traps fast. And find clients and revenue. Fast.
Most marketing needs to wait until they are past the will I survive mode in 3 or 6-12 months time.
However, the catch-all term marketing really is the problem, because obviously it covers a lot of things - which most of us do not understand.
So what would be useful to hear from an expert like yourself, are details of a few very specific examples of marketing quick wins that any non-marketer can do and that do not take much of their time.
I think it's often the long feedback cycle which is associated with marketing that most founders tend to run away from them while with building you can quickly see the results
But the fact that's overlooked is that marketing can bring in exponential results than the a strategy without it :)
I also had a personal experience recently
If I think of marketing as a strategic Ad campaign that is communicating a brand and the benefits of a product I don't mind it.
But in the last few years marketing has been bastardized into shamelessly vying for attention on broadcast mediums such as Twitter using whatever means possible. This seems more like high pressure sales tactics than marketing, a bit like when you go to the mall and get attacked by those folks selling soap or a timeshare. The result for me personally is just a whole lot of noise and I'm less likely as a consumer to purchase or trust these people. I respect IH who find alternatives to promote their creations.
Oh, I feel the same way. It’s been so abused that I don’t trust anything on the internet anymore unless I can confirm it myself. We can thank black hat marketing and PR for that. These days, I don’t even buy anything without doing thorough research.
But, it also offers an opportunity for whoever that can execute the right strategies and tactics to get a considerable piece of the pie for themselves.
And as it stands, anyone can do those things with only a bit of a time commitment.
Thank you for the response.
I guess for me, I just don't like the fact that in order for my project to work I need to focus 80% in marketing... Is too much! It really helps to be able to share this journey with the members of the WBE Space. We are all in the same boat...
Thank you for the response.
You don’t have to do much in terms of marketing to achieve decent results. I know it’s pretty murky waters these days with everyone offering marketing advice and strategies, but it only comes down to a few key tactics that anyone can execute.
Remember. 80-20 rule applies to marketing in a big way.
Then maybe I am doing marketing wrong... My biggest channels are IH and Twitter and they require daily work to stay active...
There’s a lot of misinformation about marketing, it’s easier to get things wrong. This thread is too messy to have a full blown conversation. Hit me up on my email (it’s listed on my IH profile), and I’ll help you out with your marketing strategy.
I think people look at marketing as a less than ideal practice. I would know because I was that person many years ago. However when I started to see the power of putting in a dollar in a machine and getting ten back out, I wanted to know everything I could about it.
Marketing is really hard honestly after spending thousands of dollars on building your product. The alternative to marketing is doing a Lifetime deal, which are incredible momentum generators that’ll help launch and scale your SaaS company. However, as has been repeated time and again, you should take the time to research it properly. Choose a platform which doesn't steal your profits but offers a founder-friendly deal terms with audit and advisory to helps you improve your product. And not just that but does launch marketing and outreach for your deals too. After my personal research all the other giants out there charge a huge amount of share on the profit some goes to 80/90%. But out of all these market giant I came across RocketHub.com, they grow your business with you. They have a deal partner, elai.io and after a successful deal launch they ended up closing a pre seed funding round. They couldn't have done it without there help.
Great question, Jay! 🔥🔥🔥
Be sure to follow me here and on Twitter so you don't miss my upcoming answers:
Hey there,
In general, doing marketing to get good results is not easy. Indie hackers are better at creating products, and most are not good at marketing. That is just reality, I want to start marketing of my website on indie hacker. But I analyze they not provide the good results check my website https://www.suncoastlaw.com/
I think one of the problems are content marketing and especially ai generated content + content that is just derived from other sources.
Still, I think marketing has ok rep among indie hackers. Although, "marketing" is really a bit to vague as it could be: copywriting, ads, content marketing, customer support, offline marketing, 100s of other things. Or do you mean all those things have a bad rep?
I remember from one news source where they tested searching some content on Google and it showed that full-blown plagiarized articles were ranking much higher than the original article itself. This is an ongoing issue with Google and other search engines and they’ve been trying so hard to plug this.
I don’t think copywriting and content writing are hated by IHers. It’s just doing promotional campaigns that they don’t like because the learning curve is steep and things take time to gain traction.
Marketing is filled with misinformation, so it's easier to make mistakes. A full-blown conversation is not possible in this thread. I find this intriguing. INot sure why you would want to avoid something.But here we go; I'm willing put the hard work, but without "marketing" myself, I can't find any work. Basically clowns in marketing dominates the space with false promises, destroying trust thus ruining my entrepreneurial life.
Best regards
Khan
https://www.tractorcorner.com/ng/
I tried to view your website but it’s not accessible.
I’m open to conversation anytime. Just hit me up on my email. It’s listed on my IH profile.