It took me five years to figure out (a) I needed a story and (b) what the story was. It's hard. But one story beats a pile of AdWords A/B tests.
I have found that there are 2 kinds of stories: classes and instances...
Class: "X can solve problem Y using our product."
Instances:
"Acme saved $30,000 per month by figuring out how to better load their trucks using our optimization software."
"The Smith family had their first ever reunion when John and Linda Smith realized how easy our family organizing software was."
"Jones Gifts doubled their sales in 3 months using our bolt-on e-commerce solution."
The class is good. The instance is better. People love stories and the instance is a real story, while the class is the framework for a potential story. The class is a commercial; the instance is a testimonial. Also, an example cuts through all the clutter right to the reader's reptilian brain. Naturally, the closer the instance is to the reader's situation, the better.
OP's story was a class. I would have loved to hear a few instances of that class: some real stories about people who got real benefit from his product. People naturally want to know about other people.
Does that vary based on the kind of product (and has anybody studied with any rigor how class v. instance stories work)?
The BigCorp engineers I know really hate instance stories when trying to find information on possible products they might use; they view those stories as being mainly targeted at managers. Especially true if it's hard to find anything but those kinds of stories, which is the case with a lot of enterprise offerings. "Tell me what the damn thing does, not this marketingspeak about how SomeCorp leveraged your solution to save $3m" kind of thing.
Raising the interesting question, do manager types or developer types drive people past your product?
IE, professional bloggers and journalists. Are they more likely to be appealed too by the story, or the function? Sure, they're not buying your product, but they're advising the people who do.
And, you're right, some of them ARE technical people, and PREFER the function. But just as likely, more in my opinion, they're not.
If you're trying to market an optional solution (IE, one that adds value but isn't critical... Fun Unit Testing status lights, instead of IDEs) then you might NEED the story to let people know they WANT your product.
I agree entirely it's great to know what something does. I prefer it, but I don't think 'the market' (God I sound like a douche) does.
I often say when out, "What's inside counts... But what's outside gets them close enough to find out", because it's true. Look kinda creepy? No-one's going to want to find out the weird scar is from when you had an accident while drift-racing to fundraise for the "Save the Adorable Baby Panda from Breast Cancer" foundation.
Maybe I'm old school, but I think it comes down to work.
When I was the publicity directory of a college radio station at a small school, I'd put up 300-400 letter-sized posters to promote a dance with maybe 7-8 distinct designs. This would change the appearance of the campus and pack the house.
A lot of people, doing the same job, would put up 10 or 20 posters of the same design and waste more energy vociferously defending their right to be lazy and that "everybody will see them" than it would take to just make all the designs and walk around putting the signs up.
The main reason people fail at SEO and SMO is that they radically underestimate how much work is required to succeed. That's good news for people who do work hard, because out of 20 potential competitors, 18 of them are easy to beat.
I just finished up working on a project for an entrepreneurship class I am taking. The basis of the project was to promote various deals from local college town restaurantes that were being offered through a online menu service called Lionmenus. A lot of the groups tried to use Facebook, Twitter, and Google advertising techniques and they worked to some extent. However, my group won the contest by a landslide by simply making as many cheap coupons as possible and putting them under doors and even more revolutionary, handing them out directly to people.
I believe this worked because we were selling something people want, i.e. free food. I think that if what you are offering has a value proposition, or in other words people would want it, then nothing fancy needs to be done. You just need to force the what you are selling and peoples faces and they will eat it up.
...and getting backlinks is one of the areas where people most underestimate the amount of work required to do well. Everyone wishes on page factors made a much bigger difference than they actually do.
sometimes you get in a groove and you can get a lot of good links very quickly; over time you might develop relationships with people who can help you.
but, overall, this is emotionally difficult work where you can sometimes feel like you spent a whole day and accomplished nothing. it's a lot like cold calling, and it's just as necessary/
"Yes, you're going to do those things, but since millions of other people are doing that too, you're still invisible. Visibility-fail. Anyone-gives-a-crap-fail."
Hmmm..., I think we can say millions of people do (or will do in the near future) the methods you describe. I don't see why are those methods harder to do than the methods you categorize as default stuff.
I think what is hard is product market fit. You say:
"Ask a technical founder about his startup, and he'll proudly describe his stunning software — simple, compelling, useful, fun."
I think mostly this is the most important stuff unless someone is really incompetent at marketing. I think a really good product cannot win without any marketing, but a really good product can win with 'routine' marketing.
Product market fit is always important. Whether even technical merits are very important depends on how hard the problem technically is. Why there are no other machine tranlators than Google Translate? Because they have bad marketing? No, because the problem is incredibly hard technically.
Or, if you're not VC-funded, just start small and grow organically by word of mouth, if it's truly a good idea? Rather than try to hit a home run at launch? That also gives you more time to ramp up for demand, as you learn how to do it.
The greater lesson in here is to stay on top of the times, to differentiate yoursef:
> The obvious problem is that every new startup on Earth says exactly these things. Nowadays the "strategy" above sounds the same as:
>> "We'll have a website so people can read about us."
>> "We'll have an email address so people can communicate with us without picking up the phone."
> Yes, you're going to do those things, but since millions of other people are doing that too, you're still invisible. Visibility-fail. Anyone-gives-a-crap-fail.
I've certainly been guilty of thinking this way, but that example certainly casts such 'strategies' in a different light...
I have found that there are 2 kinds of stories: classes and instances...
Class: "X can solve problem Y using our product."
Instances:
"Acme saved $30,000 per month by figuring out how to better load their trucks using our optimization software."
"The Smith family had their first ever reunion when John and Linda Smith realized how easy our family organizing software was."
"Jones Gifts doubled their sales in 3 months using our bolt-on e-commerce solution."
The class is good. The instance is better. People love stories and the instance is a real story, while the class is the framework for a potential story. The class is a commercial; the instance is a testimonial. Also, an example cuts through all the clutter right to the reader's reptilian brain. Naturally, the closer the instance is to the reader's situation, the better.
OP's story was a class. I would have loved to hear a few instances of that class: some real stories about people who got real benefit from his product. People naturally want to know about other people.