Rule #1, Marketing
Rule #1 is that when marketing, you have to appeal to other people, people who are not you. Marketing requires understanding what other people desire, what they fear, what keeps them busy and what makes them happy.
To illustrate how to think about other people, see Remarkable Communications‘ blog post about 50 Things Your Customers Wish You Knew. The author, Sonia Simone, is a skilled communicator, and understands that communication is not about you, it is about your audience. Some of her 50 things are hard-won experience for me:
1. I don’t need you to be perfect, but I do need to know I can rely on you.
For small software companies that work closely with customers, I’ve found that the quality of the software is much less important than delivering useful features on time, answering the phone, and fixing problems quickly. My customers often don’t mind bugs if my programmers fix them quickly and we are delivering valuable features to them on a timely basis.
30. I’ll give you anything you ask if you can help me not feel silly.
39. Embarrassment scares me more than death.
For my last software business, one of the most important guidelines was to never make the user feel stupid. We were very explicit with customers that if they made a mistake using the software, or could not figure something out, it was our fault. There are many more poorly designed programs than there are stupid users.
47. I don’t know what I want most of the time. You need to figure it out for me.
In designing software, we don’t ask customers what they want the software to do; we ask what their problems are. When customers tell us how the software should work, we ask “Why? What problem would that solve?” We also do a lot of research before asking questions, so we don’t have to ask a lot of questions.
Read the whole list; every item is worth remembering.
Sonia ends her list with this summary:
50. It really is all about me.
