What Marketers Can Learn from Software Engineers
Marketing Lessons from a Single Hacknight Project
Many times I’ve felt honored to be surrounded by HubSpot’s brilliant software engineers. They not only have the technical skills to build awesome apps, but are also incredibly driven to do so. Today, however, they impressed me with a completely unexpected skill: their marketing acumen.
The moment I realized that HubSpot’s developers are also sharp marketers is when I saw this video. It’s a two-minute video explaining a project that two software engineers worked on. This is the epitome of creating something remarkable, capturing people’s attention and educating them on a problem and a solution. My first instinct after seeing this was to show it to my marketing friends for inspiration.
The content and the production of the video were outstanding. But what was even more inspiring was the thought that went into the creation process. It’s a recipe for a fun marketing project that presents a bunch of excellent lessons:
It started with a hacknight for crushing the front-end backlog.
Lesson: Host hacknights!
Many todos were completed, including a Selenium-based test infrastructure project.
Lesson: Give makers autonomy to work on important projects.
To ensure adoption of their project, the two makers decided to create a video.
Lesson: Think about the education aspect of your creation.
They did it during the hacknight.
Lesson: Be fast and agile.
They themselves did the drawing and the sound for the video.
Lesson: Be creative and get your hands dirty.
They presented the video in front of the entire team.
Lesson: Use a few channels to educate and market your idea.
I am blown away by the elegance with which this was executed and presented. I know my marketing friends will appreciate it, too. Just one tip that I’ll afford to add: don’t forget the call-to-action at the end of the video. ;)
