Page 27 - Intercom On Marketing
P. 27
Marketing at a
product first
company
By Matt Hodges, Senior Director of Marketing
Despite the mountain of evidence contradicting the mantra of “if you build it, they will come”, it’s still extremely prevalent among product-first companies. Why?
First, most founders don’t have a background in either
sales or marketing, and even though they’re told to “start marketing the day you start coding”, they just don’t know where to begin, or they’re incredibly overconfident. Sure, they probably know enough to build a landing page for capturing email addresses, but do they know what to say on that page and how to say it? Do they know where to go to promote their product, and how to do it once they get there?
Getting through the first launch requires more than a marketing Band-Aid; it requires instilling a company-wide philosophy that marketing and product aren’t two antithetical forces but two sides of the same coin.
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