I give you Geek Marketing 101, my views in geeks basic misunderstanding and consequent distrust of what marketing is, and a failure to realise that much technology marketing is no longer geek to geek since complex products are increasingly being bought by non-geeks. Of course, these views are equally applicable to geek to geek and non-geek businesses.

1) Marketing is not a department
Marketing is a combination of fundamentals that creates the surroundings in which it is possible to meet a customer need (starting right back at product conception). Product promotion and sales are just sub-sets of marketing.

2) Marketing is about communication, but most people don’t speak geek
Successful technology marketing must translate the products of the uncommunicative geek into the needs of the untechnical. Spin is not good marketing. Coherent two-way communication is.

3) Simplicity does not negate complexity
Reductive marketing that simplifies ideas does not undersell your intricate “product” creation. It facilitates an inauguration to your world. You can’t have passionate customers until they start using your “product”.

4) Don’t think how, think what!
Think of the “product” in terms of what it does for your customer, not how it does it. You may really be interested in the latter, but your customers generally aren’t. For example – Portable computer memory is not a difficult concept to articulate, yet flash drive and USB drive nomenclature is predicated on technological knowledge not the actual function. Long words confuse, don’t they?

5) Think will, not can
Think of the “product” in terms of what most people will be content doing with it and not in the countless possibilities it offers. You may think speed and multiple configurations are hot, but outside the lab such features may not provide the greatest satisfaction to the end customer. Simple, intuitive interfaces may.

6) Only you RTFM
Regular people don’t read the manual. It’s too big (see 5), too complex (see 3) and thus perplexing. It’s not that people are averse to technology or science – they are just averse to being made to feel powerless. The demand for books that simplify technology or science is huge the world over. Your manual is marketing.

7) Technical Support is marketing
In the lack of all of the above, your customers inescapably need help. A technical support section speaking in hand-holding, non-technical language transforms their purchase from waste of money to life-enhancing boon and is the most supreme marketing tool you have.

\8) You’re not marketing to people who hate marketing
Don’t allow your mistaken prejudices about advertising and so called “snake-oil” to infect your approach and damage sales. People hate spin, hype and unfulfilled expectations. They do not hate having their needs met (see 1).

9) You’re not marketing to people who hate technology products
They’re not Luddites, but nor are they geeks – that’s what you’re paid to be. However, they often hate how science and technology products make them feel because “baffling them with bullshit” does not work.

10) Marketing demystifies
As the conversations widen, the users understand your products better and you better recognize their needs. With increased self-assurance, they utilise more and more of your knowledge and, with increased awareness, you are better able to adapt to their needs or wants. They feel more warmly about you, the more potential they have becoming customers.

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