Over the past 17 years, I’ve been a design practitioner. In 2006-2008, I designed graphic assets for distance education courses for the Center of Teaching and Learning under, then, Director Debbie Stanzak at Vincennes University. From there, I went on to work at a local Design Print Shop called the Printing Plant from 2008-2011. During that time I was exposed to a variety of marketing collateral. Business Cards to Web sites. It was at this time I also was studying product design in pursuit of my Bachelors of Design Studies at SIUC. This part-time student/designer lifestyle gave way to a hybrid understanding of real business on the job, and product design theory. So, you could imagine the built up inner angst I had when I started as a full-time salary designer at Vionic late 2011. At first, I stayed comfortable in my lane. Yet, eventually I grew weary of the same ol’ same ol’ waterfall design process I had done for the previous 5 years. I was ready to move from mere marketing design to product design. This is the moment when I opened the ol’ books from SIUC and re-read them. In particular one book stood out above the rest. “Creating breakthrough Product” by Jonathan Cagen and Craig Vogel. In this book, I was shown strategic frameworks to guide my team. This is when I began practicing product management on the job at Vionic. I formed a Gantt Chart and met 1:1 with cross-discipline team members. I doubled their time estimates that each one gave me, and it turned out to be accurate. We launched on time.
Fast forward 10 years later, and I’ve now taught and mentored UX Design for the past 5 years at both UCSD and Springboard. During this time, I’ve had mentees and students get told during job interviews, “we’re looking for someone with product SaaS experience.” They looked at me like a deer caught in headlights. It was at this moment, I felt responsible. I felt their pain. Then it dawned on me. I remembered an old quote from Steve Jobs who quoted his mentor Regis McKenna.
“The best marketing is education.” — Regis McKenna
It was at this moment I realized that the information we provide people, the instructions, the FAQs, and more. It’s all marketing. Yet, then where is the line in the sand that distinguishes marketing from product? Well, one day while doom scrolling Twitter, I came across Jared Spool’s thread.
“Usability is the opposite of training.” — Jared Spool
It was at this moment, I realized that all the wizards, tutorials, training, and onboarding that I had done in the past was all marketing’s attempt to compensate for unusable product. It was a bandaid on the symptom rather than fixing the actual core problem. Aha!
The difference between product and marketing is that marketing teaches while product “solves a problem in real-time!” Now, why is this important?
For students/mentees transitioning in their careers, it’s important to know the difference between marketing and product not only for job interview and job role success, but because product design roles pay more. A product designer is expected to know a bit more about the technical requirements developers have, and the business requirements sales & marketing have. Yet, they’re deep on the UX and Product Design meaning, they use anticipatory design to solve a human’s problem in real-time without delay. Where as, the go to marketing strategy of the day as I write and am doing so now, is Content Marketing Strategy. What does this mean?
Content Marketing Strategy is essentially providing free information to teach people. The problem with it today is sometimes sales & marketers get a little too pushy and “salesly” in their copywriting. This has an unintended consequence when it backfires on the court. Instead, the best content marketing today provides unobtrusive DIY instruction as a guide for the person to solve their own problem. The catch? What if that person doesn’t have time, but does have the money? Then you can upsell your product/service offering to solve that problem in real-time for them. So, they don’t have to! Genius right?!
Now, let’s get back to the product equation. Many people don’t understand the complexity involved in actually building an MVP, then improving that initial feature overtime, and finally solidifying this cohesive robust product that can handle scaling and the mainstream. In reality, if you’re starting a “product” you’ll likely start as a “service” first. Overtime, you’ll begin doing sales & marketing of that service before you take the profit from your endeavors and invest in actually having a team build said product. Many people rush to build the product right away rather than testing the waters over time. My guess is that’s ok, because we live and learn.
Today, it’s never been easier to jump right in and start building a product SaaS. Bubble.io is a great option for those pivoting into entrepreneurship. Solopereneurs are self-employed and can run a whole business by themselves. They’re generalists and they alone have built and market the product. No-Code movement is a great accelerant on this lifestyle. I recently started UXPRENEUR to help UX Designers transition into entrepreneurship. You see, in everyone’s life, there’s this eventuality that you’ll retire. Then what?
Thanks to those like Tim Ferris, Mr. Money Mustache, and other giants that have come before us, there’s this trend of working nomads. The trouble is they have to work asynchronously on a team, or the perk is they’re solopreneurs. Eventually, SaaS can become passive income so you can live your life and escape the rat race. It’s not going to happen overnight, but it’s important to keep as a vision on your wall. This way you keep yourself in check on the big picture.
Somewhere out there, there’s a list of top 10 passive income ideas, and SaaS definitely sneaks in there. Others that are more effective in a shorter duration of time are things like Real Estate, Stock, Bonds, Peer to Peer lending, and knowledge products. For me knowledge products have proven to be a good source of income, like my mentors before me. As a UX Designer our case studies are knowledge that we can provide to an industry. We just need the confidence to market ourselves as thought leaders in this way.
Finally, I’d like to offer a different interpretation of marketing. Instead of thinking of marketing as traditional advertising which can feel pushy to consumers, we could think of marketing as cultivating an audience of people with shared problem. This way, you don’t have to convince people to buy your product, you merely design a product that solves their problem.
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