2. Blog posts/guest blog posts/screencasts by your users showing how your product makes them awesome at doing 'x'. You could aim high (Railscasts) or target a growing niche (Spree users, etc.) - though you want to be careful not to push this too hard. The best recommendations will be totally organic, but you can nudge things by mentioning developers/apps on your own blog, etc.
3. Blog posts by partners (e.g. Sendgrid talking about their Heroku integration).
I didn't mean for all my points to be calls for blog posts, but I guess there's a lesson in there. Use your blog to SHOW what you and your users are doing and you're on the right track. I'm not even sure this is marketing - more like developer outreach. But I'm assuming the goal of your marketing is more developers using your platform.
There's been a lot of layoffs in technical company's marketing departments over past few years, so there's PLENTY of candidates out there that understand tech and can market well (and should be affordable). Some tips:
- What KIND of marketing do you need? Sales? Leads? Branding? PR? Know what you want and what kind of marketing skills in general would provide that (e-mail campaigns, buying ads, working with press, A/B web testing, etc.) so you can ask for specific experience in those marketing approaches.
- Make sure the person can WRITE well. There's a lot of good marketing people out there (great at developing campaigns, analytics, etc.) who can't write -- and you don't need that at a small shop; you won't be able to afford outsourcing every project to a freelance writer. Ask for samples and give a writing test.
- Marketing is all about results -- if they can't go into detail about how this project they did compared to that project they did compared to industry average, walk away.
Just like any other job, references are big. Talk to people you trust; they probably know someone who knows someone who is perfect and is just out of work right now because of the downsizing.
I'm sorry but they're relatively useless. Focus on delivering a great product. Interact w/ your customers through gaining feedback and providing support. Deliver messages to your customers through a single channel. Spread the word about your product by participating in communities that could take advantage of your product.
So for example if you're an auto parts maker. Heavily participate in local racing leagues and drag clubs. Setup shop on the weekends at local auto parts retailers offering free install lessons. Create a an opt-in mailing list, only email customers when you truly have something new and valuable to offer them. Actively seek out customer feedback through the events mentioned above. Likewise support channels should serve to notify customers of additional products in your lineup that could benefit them.
None of these methods require a separate marketing person. The only requirement is someone who is knowledgeable about your product lineup and community and is a good people person w/ decent writing skills.
The point of marketing is that you don't necessarily know what a great product is. You might think you do, but that's not based on evidence (except if you have loads of experience in a market and industry, as in 5 years +). And even if you do manage through experience or sheer luck to put out a great product, selling / monetizing it through luck as well is unlikely.
My feedback:
1) You could narrow down needs. Imagine how hiring a "tech person" to build a cloud service is too broad.
2) Read about marketing people with technical skills to understand what they do. Decent but dated example:
http://okdork.com/2010/10/14/how-mint-beat-wesabe/
Many other examples blur lines too (patio11, SEOMoz, etc)
3) Couldn't tell if they had investors but that might be a source too. As hackers can find hackers, I bet investors can find marketers.
4) Find a successful competitor who filled the position. Write a job description based on that person's bio.
5) Consider trying out a contractor or consultant first. If having that person in the office would destroy culture, maybe you don't need them.
This post is pretty light on information. Definitely need more to make a good recommendation. Just like there are different types of developers (different languages, different areas of the stack, etc.), there are different types of marketers. It really depends on your specific needs. I'm happy to answer any questions about finding a good marketer (I have 9 years of marketing experience). My email is in my profile.
It seems to me you're confusing technical sales and marketing, as your post describes more of a tech sales role. If this is tech sales / business dev guy you're looking for, it's pretty straightforward: trial and error. Hire a few people, see how they perform, keep the one(s) that bring in the best sales (doesn't always means most btw, quality of relationship affects lifetime customer value a lot).
Now, if you're talking marketing, and if this is your first marketing person to join, I'd recommend you look at people who can do good market analysis, sales strategy and support, and also product strategy. These people don't necessarily need to give a damn about Ruby btw, because the more they can look at the product from the customer and market point of view, the better they'll help you. As in, they'll educate you on the market, and you'll educate them on what the technical constraints are, and this process will allow creating a great product that the market wants - and is ready to pay for.
In your search, you'll need to accept that the person you'll hire should have the duty and power to challenge your every product/market assumption. If you think this would be ridiculous, let me ask you this.
- Before starting to offer your product, how did you do the market study? If you just looked at the competition, you haven't done a tenth of what you should.
- Did you engage with potential customers? If it was just a handful of customers with similar profiles, this isn't significant enough.
- Did you decide on such an insufficient basis what was interesting to them and what wasn't? How did you determine how to price your offers... You get the drift.
At the very start of a business, the responsibility for marketing should be with the product manager. If you have one and if he could not / did not do this marketing work, then you need to have a marketer that can work very closely with your product manager, but does not report to him. If your product manager is actually a technical lead, you need to first hire a product lead.
So to sum up, your hiring priority should be:
1) hire a product manager with some marketing abilities. this is a generalist with good design, marketing, and management skills, and some technical skill to understand what is being done by the dev team. Worst mistake you can do is have your product lead focus on building and forget about all the rest he needs to do.
2) hire a marketing person who is a marketing specialist, either from their subject matter studying, or from their experience. Either way this should be someone very analytical, and with some applied knowledge of sales so that their role can span from product development to sales strategy and support.
3) hire a tech sales person who can speak the language of your customers. If they are all devs, then someone with dev and sales skills. If they are managers, someone more sales oriented should be preferred, with only an understanding of the tech being a requirement.
But I can tell you how I've heard of most products, services and companies that have turned me into a user or potential user.
1. Blog posts celebrating the way your product makes 'x' way easier and/or faster and/or better than the way I'm used to. See http://trigger.io/cross-platform-application-development-blo...
2. Blog posts/guest blog posts/screencasts by your users showing how your product makes them awesome at doing 'x'. You could aim high (Railscasts) or target a growing niche (Spree users, etc.) - though you want to be careful not to push this too hard. The best recommendations will be totally organic, but you can nudge things by mentioning developers/apps on your own blog, etc.
3. Blog posts by partners (e.g. Sendgrid talking about their Heroku integration).
I didn't mean for all my points to be calls for blog posts, but I guess there's a lesson in there. Use your blog to SHOW what you and your users are doing and you're on the right track. I'm not even sure this is marketing - more like developer outreach. But I'm assuming the goal of your marketing is more developers using your platform.