Marketing for programmers

Another interesting blog entry by Seth Godin: Ten things programmers might want to know about marketers. The title says it all (being a “programmer”, I have to say there are really just 9 points). Although the list may seem kind of stating the obvious at first, most of the points are the kind of “hidden truths” that are ignored or denied during everyday work.

I especially like point 10: “Without marketing, all your great coding is worthless.”. I used to be a firm believer of the mantra “good stuff will sell itself”, but good stuff alone is not enough (I still do think it’s very important). Users need to want to use the product, developers need to want to develop the product, managers need to want to fight for a project in a meeting, maintainers need to want to read the documentation, etc. Marketing a product is important, not just from getting money of your customers, but to get a positive, proactive attitude within the organisation as well. Good code alone will not generate this kind of love, good code with good marketing does.