The challenges of marketing a product without a marketing team.
It’s not that I’m introverted, as I’m more than comfortable voicing my opinions in work about design and product direction (no doubt to the annoyance of my teammates). Yet, sit me in front of any social media platform and I struggle to think of a single interesting thing to say.…. If you’re bored at this point, I’ve probably proved my point.
What does this self critical analysis of my failings in social media have to do with Team Today? A lot it seems.Making products is easy if you’re willing to put the hard work in, it’s a straightforward pattern that I've been repeating for years and for the most part, it works. Whether or not it’s the right product, the right moment or the right fit is debatable but making them isn’t an issue.
Sales and marketing are where it gets hard.
I’ve recently found a new respect for all the marketing colleagues I’ve previously worked with. I typically sit in a product team surrounded by developers, researchers and product owners. Safely siloed away from the marketing team unless called upon for new layouts, a landing page or some assets. The two worlds often operate in near-total isolation, I know it shouldn’t be like that but in reality, it often is. Marketing teams often left thinking what are the product team up to? How can it take so long to build a simple website?
Product teams moaning about marketing, “they don’t understand agile processes or iterative development?”
As a team of two, myself and Andy have to wear many hats, marketing being one. It’s now you realise how symbiotic the relationship needs to be and the unbelievable amount of work and effort that marketing put in just to get someone to the shop window, let alone getting them through the door. As for sales, well, I’ll save that for its own article.
As we progress Team Today I’ll be sharing my thoughts on our marketing approach. We’ve got some experiments coming up with ads where we’ll be experimenting with messaging to articulate our value proposition. Our target market is small and medium-sized businesses that are adopting flexible work patterns. This sounds great in principle, but how do we get our message to them and ensure it's the right person receiving the message to have a view? If you're reading this and work in marketing, any advice is greatly appreciated.
I intend for us to share as much as possible during our continued development of Team Today. Blog posts allow us to do that, and we’ll try to keep the flow of articles pretty regular.
But if Team Today continues to grow then the first role we create should, and probably will be in marketing… then Andy and I can retreat back to our product team :)
Thanks for stopping by and reading.