Page 28 - Intercom On Marketing

Walk into any product-first company and you’ll notice the common misconception that “marketing” is a dirty word. Many startups build something for themselves only to discover that other people want it. Eventually they start selling it via word of mouth and little else before realizing that they need some sort of coherent marketing strategy if they want to accelerate growth.
At that point, they hire someone to run marketing, but leave that person to their own devices. Rather than truly invest in the department and integrate the marketers with the product team, they believe great products sell themselves.
When I was recruited to join Intercom as our first marketer, I remember receiving a LinkedIn InMail (back when people still read those) from Eoghan,
our CEO, who sold me the opportunity of building a marketing team at Intercom, while also trotting out that exact cliché: “The product almost completely sells itself.” Luckily, when I sat down with Eoghan, and Des, it turned out they were much bigger believers in marketing than I initially thought. They believe that neither product nor marketing can excel in isolation, which has become a core principle of our go-to-market strategy today.
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