Learn/Get-a-Marketing-Engineer-on-Board

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You’re a developer, with a great idea in the early stages of development - and I know what you’re thinking. ”I’ll just build my front-end, back-end and graphic design team and we’re ready to rock! Forget marketing for now-we can deal with that when the time comes. Marketing people cost a lot of money, take the development in directions we’re not ready to explore and make us uneasy in social situations.”

Regardless of your comfort level in social situations, it would behoove you to know that fears associated with “those marketing people” can be laid to rest if you see them as an ally from the start. It’s true that many marketers fail to understand the time, blood, sweat and tears that goes into developing new technology, though it’s just as true that development teams don’t always consider that it’s a poor business decision to develop a product and then think, “Well, now what?”** (**Also applies to lawyers).

All that valuable development time could have been spent working with a marketing professional to be a liason with consumers (this includes a plan to on-board early adopters and manage gigantic email lists), possible investors(who should see a complete business and marketing plan package, which makes you look like you know what you’re doing), affiliates (so influential people can invest a sense of ownership in your product and promote it through word-of-mouth) and the press (when the product launches, wouldn’t it be great if someone besides TechCrunch took notice?).

When engaged from the get-go, marketing engineers can help avoid costly mistakes and in some cases even pre-sell products before they’re officially released. They can help guide release features along the way and produce internal-facing communications as well as sales materials if you’re going after corporate sponsors. They have the connections, attitude and capacity for ensuring that your brilliant start-up idea actually makes money.

How do you know when you’ve found a trustworthy marketing professional?

  • The key is in the contract. If you’re able to bring all your concerns to the table (project scope ‘creep’, percentages and compensation options you’re willing to offer), they ought to be happy to negotiate with you and come to terms that work for everyone. If you’re feeling off at this meeting, don’t sign and part ways amicably. This way, you won’t feel like they’re trying to ‘take over’ the company, make you go in directions you’re not comfortable with or dominate your profit margin.
  • Good marketers also speak tech talk. It’s as important for them to speak to you intelligently, or how can you trust they’re using the proper language with investors, consumers and the press? As a side note, many people think marketing, PR and sales people do the same thing. That is incorrect. Each of those roles are different and thusly compensated in different ways. Hopefully the trustworthy marketer will lay their rates out in a way that makes sense given their expected role from the beginning. Generally speaking (and depending on where you are in your state of development), marketing gets paid just like members of the development team, PR may be on a retainer or could be project-based, and sales may get a lower amount and work on commissions/bonuses. Asking marketing, PR or sales people to work for free when other members of the team are being compensated is unacceptable and disrespectful.
  • They are able to draw up a business and marketing plan with you and factor in a compensation structure that everyone is happy with, before presenting to possible investors, and before any programming actually occurs. Road bumps along the way are to be expected but a good plan avoids the unexpected (and typically expensive) surprises.
  • They should be able to tell you what kinds of marketing you do and don’t need for your particular product and market. All too often, money is wasted creating ineffective marketing stunts that don’t effectively capture your audience. This is where the ‘engineering’ comes in. They are able to solve complex marketing problems because they can show you realistic and customized options.
  • A quality marketing professional should help you manage timing expectations, just as you can give accurate assessments of how long it might take to write a piece of code. Timing with marketing is extremely important.

Finding qualified Marketing Engineers can be tough (especially since they don't refer to themselves as engineers, per se, rather Marketing Managers or Marketing Directors), but starting with an agency or communications company for references might help you identify candidates to approach personally if you're not ready engage a whole agency, or do some research on linkedin, meetup.com and definitely get to some networking events in person. Good luck!


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