I listen to all 5by5 shows(except EE) and I must say that they are great &mdash entertaining and informative. They make my subway ride a little less annoying. In the 15th episode of The Conversation, titled "Scratching The Itch", I was a little disappointed by the ignorance of the participants. The episode is, obviously, a conversation between Dan Benjamin, Matt Tanase (co-founder of Slicehost and now DevStructure), Troy Davis (co-founder of Sevenscale and Cloudvox), and Garrett Dimon (creator of Sifter) about starting, growing, and selling startups.
The thing that bothered me the most was their view of marketing. They are clearly really bright people, but somehow have no idea that marketing isn't advertising. Here is what the interviewees said:
Matt Tanase - co-founder of slicehost.com, now working on devstructure.com
We didn't do any marketing at all. Companies should focus on the product and customer support over advertising. Word of mouth is the best advertising.
and
Garrett Dimon - sifterapp.com
The only thing that I could spend money on right now is marketing and hiring developers. Building a good product is the best kind of marketing, so having extra money right now is not a major priority.
I've written about marketing in the past, and I shouldn't have neglected my promise to cover the subject more thoroughly as now I would have more bullets to fire. Shame on me!
Marketing covers everything from product creation to pricing and customer support and, seems to me people's favorite, advertising. Marketing is "the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably". I can't imagine that they didn't plan or execute a strategy for the satisfaction of their clients in exchange for money. That is marketing.
Whether they knew it or not both Mr. Dimon and Mr. Tanase used marketing's tools to start and run their business. And they did a great job because their instincts worked fine. I happily used both services. But a business shouldn't rely on instincts. And tis is my problem. They are perpetuating the evil mantra of marketing in the web industry by saying that they didn't do any marketing at all.
Marketing has a lot of tools to use when: planning the product, selecting features, positioning yourself in the market, choosing a business model, deciding prices and meeting overall clients expectations, while earning a profit. Everybody does marketing whether they are good at it or not. I recommend Total Relationship Marketing by E. Gumesson. A lot of things apply to big budgets and corporations but there are a lot of gems on how to think and plan marketing.
When your instincts will be reinforced by knowledge then you can make educated decisions about your business.