Comments on: Litmus Test of a Startup. Get Rid of your Marketing Team. http://www.startuphustle.com/2008/06/03/litmus-test-of-a-startup-get-rid-of-your-marketing-team/ Internet Business Strategy For The Startup and Small Business Owner Wed, 10 Mar 2010 18:22:20 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6 By: Bryan Zmijewski http://www.startuphustle.com/2008/06/03/litmus-test-of-a-startup-get-rid-of-your-marketing-team/#comment-14589 Bryan Zmijewski Wed, 02 Jul 2008 21:54:43 +0000 http://www.startuphustle.com/?p=123#comment-14589 Nice post. I just wrote 16 Tactics for Starting an Internet Company and surprisingly marketing was not on the list! http://www.zurb.com/article/43/16-tactics-for-starting-an-internet-compa Sometimes we call this Un-Marketing. Nice post. I just wrote 16 Tactics for Starting an Internet Company and surprisingly marketing was not on the list! http://www.zurb.com/article/43/16-tactics-for-starting-an-internet-compa

Sometimes we call this Un-Marketing.

]]> By: Tobin http://www.startuphustle.com/2008/06/03/litmus-test-of-a-startup-get-rid-of-your-marketing-team/#comment-12325 Tobin Tue, 03 Jun 2008 21:31:31 +0000 http://www.startuphustle.com/?p=123#comment-12325 I think you've hit it head on. You really need to make sure your product solves a real problem/pain. If your product doesn't solve a problem, then you are selling vitamins when you really want to be in the medicine business. We've been going back in our product to make it more usable and trying to attract more usage. I also agree about getting on TechCrunch... We've been mentioned on mashable.com a few times (and we're very grateful for it!), but we've found that a majority of users come in from independent blogs that have a more personal community. One thing I've personally been struggling with (as being part of a 2 person team) is that we're not very savvy at marketing. We're developers. We want to learn and want to understand more, but we find it's tough covering all aspects in depth. In general I think a lot of developers hope for the "field of dreams" approach of building a product that gets mentioned on the TechCrunch like blogs and rise to the top. So as you hint, it's not uncommon for people to have that sort of expectation. After the relaunch of our product we're planning on doing a very regionally targeted campaign. Hopefully we'll have some more insight into what may work, but we want to try and narrow our approach of trying to market our product and see if users respond to it. I think you’ve hit it head on. You really need to make sure your product solves a real problem/pain. If your product doesn’t solve a problem, then you are selling vitamins when you really want to be in the medicine business.

We’ve been going back in our product to make it more usable and trying to attract more usage.

I also agree about getting on TechCrunch… We’ve been mentioned on mashable.com a few times (and we’re very grateful for it!), but we’ve found that a majority of users come in from independent blogs that have a more personal community.

One thing I’ve personally been struggling with (as being part of a 2 person team) is that we’re not very savvy at marketing. We’re developers. We want to learn and want to understand more, but we find it’s tough covering all aspects in depth. In general I think a lot of developers hope for the “field of dreams” approach of building a product that gets mentioned on the TechCrunch like blogs and rise to the top. So as you hint, it’s not uncommon for people to have that sort of expectation.

After the relaunch of our product we’re planning on doing a very regionally targeted campaign. Hopefully we’ll have some more insight into what may work, but we want to try and narrow our approach of trying to market our product and see if users respond to it.

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