Marketing isn't done in a vacuum

I spent the last week running potential customers through some proposed marketing content for my company. My takeaway from the sessions was that marketing needs to be done first. If you can't clearly articulate to potential customers what their need is, how you are addressing that need, and have the value of that solution resonate with them, then you shouldn't build a solution. Other learnings from the sessions:
  • Make the benefits as real as possible.
  • People want examples.
  • Keep it simple, nobody reads the text.
Going forward, I think before you ever go about building something, you need to:
  1. Identify the pain point.
  2. Communicate the benefit of the solution.
  3. Give 2 or 3 clear examples of how the pain point will be addressed by the benefit.
  4. Describe the solution.
Then you should run all of the above by potential customers and determine:
  1. Is the pain point real?
  2. Does the benefit match the pain point?
  3. Are there other products that already solve the pain / provide the benefit?
  4. Does the benefit credibly come from the solution.
If you get the right answers, you're going to build a pretty awesome product for your customers.