For too long now, I have been painfully aware of just how dimly acquainted technology is with marketing.
I’ve heard all the usual reasons; heck, I’ve even subscribed to most of them myself at one time or another. But these excuses simply don’t hold up to scrutiny.
Technology companies tend to be engineering-driven, and gears just don’t get marketing, goes perhaps the most common refrain. It’s true that most technology ventures are engineering ventures, but I think marketers are letting themselves too easily off the hook by bleating that the engineers don’t understand what we do and that’s why they won’t support it. We’re supposed to be in the explanation and persuasion business; if we can’t explain ourselves to our own bosses and clients and persuade them why they should invest heavily in what we do then we deserve the dim respect marketing so often seems to attract.
Lack of budget is the next most common excuse for not engaging in marketing. This one has more legitimacy, but it also betrays a failure by marketers. If we can’t get the funds we need to do the job we believe needs to be done, it’s because we have failed to adequately plot the line between cause and effect, between marketing outflow and revenue income. What rational person would decline to invest a second and third dollar into a marketing program that has proven that the first dollar actually produced the revenue we said it would?
I could go on. There are many other shibboleths trotted out to explain the disaffection technology companies have for the so-called black art of marketing. But here’s the rub: Good technology desperately needs superb marketing if it is going to succeed. And as someone who is equally passionate about both technology and marketing, I want the excuse making to stop so that the essential marriage between technology and marketing can be consummated.
That’s the focus of the posts we’re going to be contributing here at Business-Software.com. Although the emphasis will be on technology companies, the lessons, approaches and best practices we’ll be writing about will usually apply to most small and medium-sized businesses.
In particular, we will be writing about new ventures, and the unique challenges they face. And those challenges cut across all sectors. For example, I recently wrote a post on our own blog about what I consider to be the worst marketing sin. And it’s not the absence of spending on marketing or inadequate spending. It’s the starting to spend and then stopping because the desired-for results are not immediately gained.
Want to read more insider-perspective posts on marketing techniques and platforms? Check out our marketing software resource center for additional marketing content such as product reviews and implementation tips. Or browse our entire archive of tips and advice from software industry experts by visiting the Industry Insights section of the Business-Software.com blog.
[This post first appeared on francis-moran.com]