How founders should think about marketing

Source: Startup Archive interview of Tony Fadell

The argues: we must be able to articulate the “why” of what you’re building before we build it.

How it’s often happened in company:

  1. Tech and product teams develop products.
  2. They call the marketing team and ask them to tell a story about the product and get it out to the world.
  3. The marketing team will try to create a story around ‘what is our product’ and not ‘why we have built this product’.
    • express “you’re bringing or the pain you’re killing for your end customer?”

=> The product and the marketing both need to be created at the beginning together. That will keep every stakeholder in sync and help the team tell a cohesive, non-fictional story.

I already wrote a TL;DR about Simon Senek, who argues to start with the why.

In my opinion:

  • It’s a red flag if the tech and product cannot clearly explain and communicate why they develop the product.
  • Expressing the why should be a core part of the product team, and for that, a product person would be better able to communicate about the product than the marketing team.
  • The marketing team sells wind, ok, but why? The tech team provides enough value to help the marketing team build the right story. Maybe not, maybe yes, but the final result is that marketing often doesn’t communicate the right product value.
    In fact, marketing professionals have a direct impact on users via social media. It is important to propagate good values, and the core message at the first interaction is important.

A recent personal experience was the first time I interacted with a marketing person.

I almost went freelance with a founder who was 100% marketing, and after a few meetings, I wanted to run away because of his way of thinking and the wrong incentives for doing this.
With transparency, I was staying a bit because I needed money, so I tried to abstract this part and just build a realistic scope that provides value in x delay.

Unfortunately or not, we don’t work together, and the project doesn’t start after 3 months.

Why customers trust is important?

Source: Why Customer Trust is Important for Business Growth by Brand Craft

Why customer trust in important for business growth?

  • that enable customer to become evengelists of your product
  • attract stronger customer based on the sharing values

Built product in Internet, expose your company to a concurrence, and users have a choose between you and others solutions.

So why them will trust you than another company?

  1. No trust equals no customers
    • same if your company promise to deliver a superbe product but your customers don’t trust you can deliver it, it doesn’t matter
    • when users think about what you doing, become the first name in their mind = caputure their attention
  2. Happy customers provide insights to your marketing strategy
    • marketing strategies is not only lead to greter visibility, more customers and increased revenue
    • establish to trust to making your users happy
  3. Competitive edge
    • trust is a must-have for consumers and the best way to capture their attention
    • users are more hyper-aware of whom do business with. They care about being transparent, authentic and focus on building genuine relationship rather than making the next sale
  4. Improved reputation
    • good reputation will increase its perceived value, attract more customers
    • bad reputation will quickly steer customers away and stop business operations

How to start to build trust with your customers?

  1. Excel at customer service
    • show to your users you’re worth investing in, put them first by cultivating the best customer experience
    • have dedicated support staff; listen your customers to understand their needs and concers; providing quality service;
  2. Leverage customer reviews and testimonials
    • provide a proof than you listen your users
    • highlight the best reviews you received from your users
  3. Put your customer First
    • ensure your company has a customer-centric culture

Advices for company

  • ask you, how you can establish trust with your customers. They will depense their money into your product, respect them.
  • focus your marketing strategies to put emphasis on making your customers happy
  • be ready to listen your customers to understand their needs and concers (core part of product person)

In my opinion, trust is closely related to transparency. That join the TL;DR I out last week about case study of Wise by Bandan Jot Singh.

Become a thinker-doer person

Source: Startup Archive, interview of Steve Jobs

  • Create, build what you think and contribute or change a part of your industry.
  • Take part in the adjacent domain of your industrie.
    • Example with crypto and AI. But also work on your social skills; like communication, argumentation and reasoning.

=> Combinated those differents skills will improve your reflexion and activate new way to think and execute.

  • Stop to give any credit to think about something.
  • Give credit to peoples who really did and work about what they think.

At my personal level, I applied something similar by: in mid-October, I changed my way of working and started to build in public by creating this website

Yesterday, I talked with Nicolas and how I can apply to Nimbora (simple message answer; figma CV; my current CV?). The last suggestion it was to do it on my website.

I was excited about because to show a certain degree of transparency. That out me of the box to out that in public and also it’s a temporal feedback for me. Discover the result.

Process: think > why this idea is good? > doing = Open Letter section is created, where I will share personal think, outside product reflections.