Short Answer: You can’t.
Long Answer:
As an external marketing solutions provider, we stand to gain when companies outsource their marketing. We’re also okay if they do their marketing inhouse.
But what gets my goat is to misunderstand marketing and claim that it’s not necessary for a product’s success.
Or, worse, use some of the most classical marketing tactics around and still claim to have created a best selling product without any marketing spend.
The first claim happens very often.
Although not as frequently, the second claim does pop up from time to time.
Like it did in a recent LinkedIn post. I can’t find the post now – apparently, LinkedIn deletes all posts older than one month.* But I remember the gist of it:
We used email outreach to sell our product and didn’t incur any marketing spend.
I commented that email campaign is one of the most popular marketing tactics around and quizzed the writer why, despite openly admitting to using it, he claimed to have incurred no marketing spend.
He replied that he didn’t spend any money on print ads, search ads or social network ads, so he incurred no marketing spend.
This was a eureka moment for me.
This guy was confusing advertising with marketing. The former entails spending money on print, TV, search, social networks, billboards, and other media. Whereas the latter can be done with inhouse resources and tools without forking out cash for media.
Inhouse resources and tools like email server cost money. While they may be charged to payroll and infrastructure expenses, they’re still part of marketing spend.
TIL that the common practice of pegging marketing spend to a fixed % of sales is called “peanut butter approach”.https://t.co/2oRXEgIvg4
— Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) July 12, 2017
It’s not only this guy. Many people claim that they don’t spend money on marketing when they actually do. Why?
I’m not a psychologist but many product developers tend to believe that a good product will sell itself aka “build and they will come”. They fear that marketing will undermine their contribution to the success of the product. I call this the “Product or Marketing” mindset.
Successful product companies recognize this mindset for what it is – terribly flawed. They see no conflict between product and marketing and appreciate that both are required for winning in a crowded marketplace. I call this the “Product and Marketing” mindset.
I may be biased as a marketer but it’s the second mindset that succeeds. Whether you do it inhouse or outsource it, marketing is the lifeblood of any product. People with the “Product and Marketing” mindset understand that very well.
As I highlighted in Developing The Product Mindset, a typical American product company spends 1.5-2X dollars in marketing for every X dollars spent on engineering / product development.
While on the subject, marketing compromises of product, price, place and promotion (4Ps) and includes positioning, messaging, content, inbound and outbound marketing campaign, PR, advertising, etc.
The next time somebody claims that they created a best selling product without any marketing, ask them to define marketing. You may be in for a few surprises.
*: UPDATE DATED 20 MARCH 2019:
I got a notification from LinkedIn today that someone liked my comment on the said LinkedIn post.
As a result, I was able to locate the original post. I’m reproducing my comment below in full since I noticed that it covers a few areas that were not covered in my above original post.
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Original Poster:
How our ten games went Trending on the Google Play Store within a month with no marketing spend!
Jatin Solanki on LinkedIn
Me:
You acknowledge the role played by “Mass SMS and email campaigns” for the success of your 10 games. Considering that email marketing is consistently rated as one of the most effective marketing tactics, not sure why you say “no marketing spend” and include the claim in the title of your blog post. Just so that we’re on the same page, I’m using the most common definition of “marketing spend”, which refers to the total expenditure on marketing activities, whether spent on internal resources (manpower, time, etc.) or paid out to an external agency.
OP:
Good insights Ketharaman! Yes, surely – manpower is a cost. Someone or the other did get involved in the above activities. But yet again, there was no external agency involved for marketing, neither an internal marketing team. Its the same passionate team which was involved in building the product who carried out the above steps. About email and sms marketing- we did go with some subscription model (with sendinblue / mailchimp) – which was again nominal cost. About being more specific to the word No Marketing Spend – I would say – keeping no budget aside for promoting these app or paying per install how its done these days. Or not even setting budget campaigns for FB / Google Ads. Not that we are against any of these paid marketing methods or using an external agency or forming an internal marketing team. This blog was just to help startups with good product who want initial traction with no marketing budget as such.
Me:
TY for your reply. As an external marketing solutions provider, we’d obviously want companies to outsource their marketing to external agencies (like us!). Notwithstanding that vested interest, we have nothing against founders doing marketing inhouse. However I just thought I’ll share a few thoughts about marketing lest others reading this blog post – or just the title! – jump to the wrong conclusion, as I’ve seen many companies do.
(1) Pay per Install is a Middle of Funnel (MOFU) marketing tactic
(2) Using email and SMS to spread awareness and urge people to install an app is a Top of Funnel (TOFU) marketing tactic.
(3) So, a company that uses pay per install and a company that does email marketing both do marketing. Ergo, they have both have marketing spend. Period. Therefore, the reference to “no marketing spend” in the blog post – in the title, no less! – is not an accurate representation of the facts. It hardly matters whether they allocate a marketing budget upfront or stumble onto activities that pertain to marketing.
(4) I’ve known many startups – and have funded and mentored some of them as well – who think from Day One that the secret of success is not “product OR passion OR marketing” but “product AND passion AND marketing” and accept that, just as experts are needed for product, experts are equally well needed for marketing. It hardly matters whether one of their founders is that marketing expert or that they hire marketing experts into their company or that they outsource the function to an external agency – these are a matter of detail. What really matters is that they do marketing. They all also uniformly believe that using the same product people to do marketing may be a disservice to both product development and marketing.
(5) Maybe these startups got funding and were able to allocate a budget for marketing because they had the right mindset?
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