How to explain what you do to your mom if you work in tech
Since I began my career in tech after grad school 7 years ago or so, my mom has been confused. She made a career in finance and business valuation supporting chemical products and later running a business serving as an expert witness in fraud, discrimination and other high-profile litigation. Pretty heady stuff. But yet, she still can’t quite grasp what it is I do as a product marketer for technology companies.
This is my attempt to explain what I do, eliminating all jargon and buzzwords. You can call me on how well I’ve succeeded.
I’ve worked for companies like Disney where we sold a product directly to “guests”; Jive where we sold software to other businesses; and, now Timshel where we sell technology to nonprofits. No matter your audience, a product is a product is a product and your goal is always the same: build a useful thing that solves a real problem and get people to pay you for it. Repeat. Ideally, over and over until you have enough money and support from your audience to build another great product that solves a real problem and they give you money for it. And of course, they tell their friends about you and your product.
Marketing and marketers, I fear, have gotten just as bad a rap as lawyers for making things unnecessarily complex. They, well admittedly myself included, like to think they’re an exclusive group that has all the answers and they mask what is dead simple with terms like “engagement”, “content marketing”, “growth hacking”, “over-indexing”, “SEO,” “listicles”….and the list (no pun intended) goes on. How many emails do I get every day with the latest top 5 things you have to do to build your database or followers or subscribers or how to beat the Google algorithm? I really need to stop signing up for this crap.
And yes, I’m very aware and agree that technology has amplified the awareness that our world is a matrix of “the strength of weak ties”, but this theory was popularized in the 70s (see the link). Community building isn’t a new concept. It’s just how it’s manifest in technology that makes it feel overwhelming.
So getting back to explaining what I do to my mom…
Every day I think about my audience. In my current role, it’s nonprofits and the leaders therein what do they care about? What mission are they trying to achieve? How are they trying to change the world and what is stopping them from doing that? Can technology help make their efforts better, faster, smarter, cheaper such that they can spend the majority of their time working within their communities to stop hunger, homelessness, poverty, etc? “Walking around in their skin,” or what I like to call the Atticus Finch priciple (To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus), yields an empathy with your audience (those who might buy your products) unlike any other buzzword-y growth hack-y trick. PICK UP THE PHONE AND TALK TO PEOPLE. The phone. That’s all the technology that I need to do the most important part of my job and it’s almost 150 years old. And when you ask good questions and legitimately care about what these people are trying to do, they will share all the information you need to: 1) understand if there’s a true problem you can solve; 2) how to build a product that they’d need, want, will pay for and tell their friends about. That’s pretty much all the need to build a great strategy.
Now, about execution. There is no try, right? If you understand your audience, you need to come up with a message that illustrates you understand who they are, what they do, what their problem is and will convince them that your product is the only thing that will solve that problem. It’s kind of like how we’ve been convinced that if we have a runny nose, the only thing to solve that problem is a Kleenex. Not a tissue. Many companies make tissues, but I bet most often that not, you say you need a Kleenex. That’s brilliant marketing.
So, you understand your audience. You’ve built a product that solves a real problem they have. You know how to talk to your audience about it. Now you need to figure out how to price it and where to sell it. This is tricky, but also one of my favorite parts of marketing.
Pricing: are you the first to market with this product? Or are there competitors? Have the competitors been around for a while and successful? Not successful? Are there a lot of new competing products? How are you different? Note: people see through bull shit differentiators pretty quickly so make sure your product really is better, faster/more efficient. Less expensive isn’t necessarily going to win you customers. It could in the short term, but I could write a much longer piece on this issue so I’ll save it.
Where you sell and how you sell are also extremely important. Here’s where the “physicality” of your product can make a big difference. If you’re selling a huge piece of real estate, potential customers may research online, but they won’t purchase online. If you’re selling software as a service, there’s nothing for them to “touch” any more before they buy. Instead they sign up for your newsletter or 30 day trial or pay as they use the product. There’s no doubt that trying is still and will always be a crucial part to buying. As much as you have empathy for and understand your customers, they need to trust you.
Ramble aside, Mom; what I do is try to understand lots of different people, figure out what motivates them, what makes their lives difficult and then build products to make them happier, help them realize their goals/mission/purpose in life. I relish the word game of trying to figure out exactly what to say at what time and through which medium so they’ll trust me just a little bit to start a relationship. Then hopefully once we’re friends, they’ll want to know more about my product and buy exclusively from me over and over again.
Hope that helps.
