Below are the video and slides of the “Marketing for microISVS – embracing the ‘dark side’?” talk I gave at ESWC 2009 in Berlin. This is a high-speed ramble through a vast subject. In the 45 minutes available I do my best to dispel some of the myths software developers have about marketing and discuss some marketing concepts, including: branding; positioning; pricing; and segmentation. Taking in Harley Davidsons, tinned tomatoes, Coca Cola and food blenders on the way. The first couple of minutes, where I dispel the myth that good software sells itself without marketing, are missing from the video due to a dead camera battery. But you knew that anyway, so I don’t think this detracts much overall.
Video:
Slides (which might not make much sense without the video):
NB/ When I said 47Signals, I meant 37Signals (brand inflation?). Thanks to Tarek for the correction.
Links to some of the things mentioned in the talk:
- Brief reviews of all the books mentioned (plus a few others)
- Bob Walsh’s ‘microISV sites that sell!’ e-book
- Neil Davidson’s ‘Don’t Just Roll The Dice – A Usefully Short Guide to Software Pricing’ e-book (PDF)
- Brandz ‘Top 100 brand ranking 2008’ (PDF)
- Will it blend?
- Headset hotties
- Alwin Hoogerdijk’s blog
- Eric Sink’s blog
A big thank you to Alwin and Sytske of collectorz.com for hot-footing it from Alwin’s talk to do the video (you can see Alwin’s excellent talk on web app pros and cons here). And also to David and Panagiota for all the hard work that goes on behind the scenes organizing ESWC.
If you found this talk useful you might also like 10 mistakes microISVS make.
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Nicely done! Market, Marketing, Aesthetics, and Functionality. The Magic 4 things you need to sell your microISV product. And most people fall asleep after #1, waking up around #3, completely missing the point.
Maybe it’s just because we start out from the technical side and that’s so easy for us, we naturally gravitate there…Either way, it’s valuable information.
Much too fast to listen to.
I have watched the whole video,
firstly, the presentation is great even though i thought you kind of spoke a little bit fast, or it might be owing to my being from Turkey. The examples are very clarifying, the things that us , i mean , developers should do as you recommended to master ourselves in a different field like business , management , finance to get familiar with the Marketing, that makes us entrepreneurship .
I had a post about it if you are interested in
http://www.techgunluk.com/2009/10/entrepreneurship-rocks
Best Regards
I had to talk fast. I had a lot of ground to cover. ;0)
Well documented talk! It was a bit fast however very informative if you can keep up :)
Hope I’ll be able to attend ESWC in 2010.
Thanks for sharing the slideshow as well.
A bit late, but I had a look at the slideshow and I found some of the slides very interesting. I had already read some of the stuff (e.g. Don’t just roll the dice) but some other was new to me (e.g. the positioning statement from Erik Sink). Thanks for sharing.
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