[Veuxdo]

> Marketing is like juicing in athletics.

This is far, far too cynical. Marketing is not cheating. To keep the sports metaphor, marketing is training. It's unglamorous, time-consuming, and (for most) not fun. But, if you want to succeed as a professional, you have to do it.

[yojo]

As a single business, marketing is a totally rational way to boost sales. Collectively, it’s just a tax.

If no one was paying, but people were still writing, the best solutions would likely bubble to the top. But as soon as someone pays for placement, everyone needs to. You end up with a new normal that’s the same as before (modulo those products that are better at marketing) but everyone had to pay a bunch of money.

Short of literally banning advertising, there’s no way around it/any serious business needs to do it. But I get the take that it’s a cost that is only necessary because everyone else is doing it.

[Veuxdo]

> If no one was paying, but people were still writing, the best solutions would likely bubble to the top.

I think that's far from guaranteed. It could very well be the case that the oldest, most established, solutions would dominate the top, for instance.

[pakitan]

You're confusing paid advertising with marketing. Marketing is interweaved in almost any business activity. No marketing means you literally register a company and then wait in your house for someone to randomly walk in and pay you for you services. And if that miraculously happens, you treat them as badly as you can and do the worst possible job, just to make sure you don't inadvertently get some word of mouth referrals.

[Veuxdo]

This is a good point that I'm glad you called out. Having a logo is marketing. Having a website is marketing. Every blog post, tweet, like, reshare, etc. is marketing. This comment could be considered marketing if you look hard enough.

[imtringued]

Marketing is the act of bringing a product to the market in such a way that it is received well.

Product, price, place, promotion.

All of those are marketing. Yes, even the product itself is marketing. When people claim they are not doing marketing, but going by word of mouth, they are using the product itself as marketing.

[yojo]

You’re right that I was implicitly referring to top of funnel marketing - things you do to make people aware of your business and get them to your business. And yes, I was most focused on advertising.

I would argue that customer service and the actual job done are part of the product, since they’re part of the value you’re delivering to the customer. By that logic one could include the warm fuzzy feeling they get from some really slick copy, but to my mind it feels different. I’m having trouble formalizing the line here.

I’ll also concede that there are things that fall under the aegis of “marketing” that are not direct transfers of money for placement - e.g. cold calling, content marketing, SEO, etc. many of them are zero-sum games, a few are not.

[thfuran]

>You end up with a new normal that’s the same as before (modulo those products that are better at marketing) but everyone had to pay a bunch of money.

I think the situation is almost guaranteed to be worse because there are now stronger incentives to manipulate and deceive.

[thfuran]

Training actually improves the product (athletic performance). Does an athlete going on a commercial to hawk shoes make them a better athlete or make the shoes better? Would the answer be different once we change domains back to software? Marketing may be a necessary business activity in the current environment, but it is not at all like training in its fundamental effect on the quality of the product. (Though in that regard, I think juicing was a bit awkward as an analogy)