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Ask HN: Resources to learn marketing?

12 points by juandazapata ↗ HN
What resources (e-books, videos, on-line lessons, formus, etc) can you people recommend to learn on-line marketing?

I have a couple of projects that need a marketing boost to get more clients, but since I'm programmer, I'm struggling a little bit with the marketing side.

Thanks in advance.

9 comments

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anexprogrammer
For SEO + Inbound Marketing start with Moz's beginners guide to SEO https://moz.com/learn/seo, and follow their blog.

and skim the Friday Whiteboards https://moz.com/blog/category/whiteboard-friday

https://inbound.org/ often has some good pointers to blog posts, though you'll sift through some PR puff pieces too.

Shopify's blog https://www.shopify.com/blog is also pretty good at the basics, albeit with a focus on ecommerce.

That's enough to get going.

Then dig into the search and SEO blogs as you need to dig deeper.

SerLava
Seconding all of this except for the end, where you have to be careful:

>Then dig into the search and SEO blogs as you need to dig deeper.

I'd recommend this for a marketer who works with other smart marketers.

If you're starting out all alone, it's very hard to tell what advice is reasonable. Search blogs can be the biggest piles of festering crap.

You pretty much can't go wrong with Moz though. You can find all the basics and plenty of the advanced info on the Moz blog.

Also, just don't do anything that seems spammy, ever. Tell people why your products are good, and use words that are similar to what someone would type in to find those products.

brudgers
One resource is Sam Altman's Startup Playbook. It is free and Altman is a purported to have some expertise in entrepreneurship.

http://playbook.samaltman.com/

It will not go into details about adwords and growth hacking. It will suggest talking with people directly; customers and potential customers.

Good luck.

vincentbarr
Marketing is a sprawling category.

Can you be more specific so that I can make a helpful recommendation?

E.g. Are you interested in learning about marketing at a high-level (positioning, messaging, value prop) or about more tactical online marketing (email, paid display & search, SEO, social)?

homeslice
Make sure you aren't spreading yourself too thin "I have a couple of projects that need a marketing boost" - can you limit it to 1 project and focus on marketing that?

Go try and market one single thing - that is by far the best way to learn.

Once we find one successful tactic - you can apply that to other projects and see if it works on other projects too.

revorad
There are many resources depending on what exactly your projects are. Justin Jackson's book "Marketing for Developers" was quite helpful to me. Here's my brief review - https://learnetto.com/blog/learning-marketing-from-justin-ja...

I run an online education site where we're going to launch some courses on marketing. I could give you free access if you email me at hrishi@learnetto.com and tell me more about what you're trying to do.

tixocloud
Traction by Gabriel Weinberg (http://tractionbook.com/) is a must-read. You'll learn that marketing is massive and not all tactics work for everyone. It's usually through trial and error.

For example, inbound marketing is great but it takes a lot of time to build up an audience and generate traffic. If you're looking for more short-term sales, outbound marketing might be more effective. It is expensive though. This is where the importance of your objective/goal comes in (i.e. sell more, generate awareness, etc).