Johs,
Respectfully, you're just wrong.
Considering that I spend my work day doing business development for
software products (well, systems built around software products) - and
have done so for about 45 years, in multiple industries and for multiple
firms (including a couple of my own) - I think I can speak with some
authority on the subject.
Marketing brings people to your door, or gets you in their door - but
after that, it's all about sales. Two very different activities - but
something that marketeers never seem to understand (salesmen always do).
Marketing remains the way we find prospects, make them aware of our
existence, spark their interest, open a door. After that, it's hands on
sales - building and maintaining relationships, keeping track of
specific opportunities as they arise, influencing RFPs, writing
proposals, and so forth.
Sure, the equation has changed a bit for commodity products - with
marketing leading directly to "click to buy" - but anything that has a
serious price tag, or a custom component - remains more about sales,
than marketing. Marketing may bring the eyeballs to the "add to cart"
button, but it doesn't get someone to click the button. You still have
to induce someone to click "buy" for your product or service, rather
than moving on to someone else's offer, or not buying anything. That's
all sales.
Re. "No one sells me Mac or iPhone, Apple don't bother turning me into a
lead. They serve my needs and wants. Same thing with AWS."
Of course Apple turns you (and me) into a lead - they conduct market
research to understand your (my) type of customer, they make a decision
to serve customers like you (or me), they manage specifications to
tailor products to your (my) market segment. Then they let people about
their current products - through advertising, stores, literature (online
and off), promotion, and so forth -- all designed to make sure that when
one is ready to buy their next computer, they either walk into an Apple
Store, or go to Apple's web site (or maybe Best Buy). That's all lead
generation. Inducing someone to take the next step, and plunk down
$1000+ for a new PowerBook, rather than listen to one of the other
voices in their head ("maybe I'm ready to switch to a linux desktop," or
"boy that MicroSoft Surface is a sweet machine") - that's still sales
(as is helping one decide which model, with which options, and which
add-ons).
Miles
Johs. E wrote:
Hi Miles,
leads gen is another concept in the sales paradigm of the 1960's that is
very popular in companies that dont't understand the marketing concept.
Marketing is really about leaving sales behind.
No one sells me Mac or iPhone, Apple don't bother turning me into a lead.
They serve my needs and wants. Same thing with AWS.
Johs:)
2015-05-12 14:28 GMT+02:00 Miles Fidelman <[email protected]>:
I've always preferred the functional view of marketing: Lead Generation.
After getting someone's attention, and getting them to ask for more
information, then we're talking sales.
Miles Fidelman
Johs Ensby wrote:
Jan,
Hi PMC,
I would like to share my two favourite definitions of marketing.
1) the externally oriented:
Create value and extract a fair share of it
Even if it is the Harvard Business School definition and points at
monetary reward proportionate to the (much bigger) value created for
customers (users), I think it applies. CouchDB developers create value for
users, for which they are rewarded in more than economical ways. Reward is
in the end proportionate to the value created for external parties.
2) the internally oriented:
Align resources to meed customer needs
This is why it is so important to have target groups and distribution
channels in mind. CouchDB has more than one target group, reducing it to
the core developers themselves in a “I do what inspires me” is of course
the extreme, but even reducing the target group to developers with a
specific skill set is a dramatic choice, as is reducing the target group to
developers at large, since they are often not the most influential decision
makers in the selection of technology. When a developer suggests a
technology to a customer or a management team they will be looking at the
challenge of recruiting people as one of their first concerns.
Imagine the developer who says CouchDB seems like the most promising
NoSql option, and his non-developer peers do this:
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=couchdb%2C%20redis%2C%20mongodb&date=1%2F2009%2073m&cmpt=q&tz=
<https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=couchdb, redis,
mongodb&date=1/2009 73m&cmpt=q&tz=>
Wouldn’t it be nice if a million young developers were playing with the
technology in a way that recruited another million and those two millions
recruited another two millions and….
https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=couchdb%2C%20couch%20app%2C%20react.js%2C%20angular.js&date=1%2F2009%2073m&cmpt=q&tz=
<https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=couchdb, couch app, react.js,
angular.js&date=1/2009 73m&cmpt=q&tz=>
What would it take?
You are spot-on re Couch apps here, Jan :
On 11 May 2015, at 18:53, Jan Lehnardt <[email protected]> wrote:
FWIW, I don’t think there’d be massive changes, just some rearrangements
and some additions and some cuts and mostly story telling on our various
media outlets.
What is stopping us right now, is a misconception of what marketing
actually is.
Marketing is much more than promotion -- like language is much more than
speaking French or writing in C. It is fundamentally about 2-way
communication with the audience you choose.
I am not looking for a Wozniak/Jobs or Straubel/Musk kind of balance
between the developer and marketing discipline.
Jan, your “can play a role” through “figuring out the story” is more than
enough for me, but I don’t see the point in contributing if the PMC keeps
up the policing against discussions about features.
marketing@ can play a role in defining the features of CouchDB through
the figuring out the story of CouchDB.
The best part of your take on this is that it is not a one-way street
from communicators to developers or vice versa, which seems to be where the
present misconception is rooted. There needs to be certain portion of
mutual respect between at least those two disciplines for marketing to
happen. Defining features and figuring out the story is an iterative,
dialogue-based process, where starting in one end is not better than
starting in the other.
Johs
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
--
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is. .... Yogi Berra
