M Is For ... The Death of Marketing?

There is something strange and beguiling about startup marketing. On the one hand, you shouldn't have to do any marketing at all, right? After all, your product sells and distributes itself by being functional, consumer-centric, or specific to the enterprise problem it solves. You shouldn't HAVE to tell anyone interesting about your product, because all they should have to do is use it, and then they see the benefit. 

This blog post was written by Douglas Crets, Social Media Strategist for Microsoft BizSpark, a program that supports over 50,000 startups globally by giving them free software and support.  

At least, we hear this in certain circles. 

On the other hand, without marketing,  you are not doing any storytelling. And if you are creating a new market category, like Yammer did. Or Uber. Or Facebook. There is a lot of narrative that needs to be distributed. 

But try doing marketing in a social web world, and you quickly learn that marketing messages get literally shut off. Advertisements get blocked. People have time for one thing, and one thing only. Themselves and their immediate needs. 

So, what do you do?

May I recommend first that you read "The Marketer is Dead, and We Have Killed Him," originally posted at TechCocktail, and then leave your comments here. 

Quote: 

This information leads to two assumptions, and I think they are wrong. But they are two assumptions anyone in marketing leans on to do their job.

The First Assumption – Marketing Is About Communicating a Unique Value Proposition (UVP)

The Second Assumption – The Web Tools We Use To Convey UVPs in Social Media Are One-Way Channels That Communicate That UVP