5 marketing technology truisms

As a shorter and more light-hearted post for the holiday weekend, here are five truisms about technology in the marketing world that I’ve found as good rules of thumb — somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but not entirely:

1. The Great Paradox

Software developers are usually bad at creative marketing. Creative marketers are usually bad at software development. Excellent digital marketing requires both.

2. The Shoemaker’s Children?

If you’re considering buying online marketing software or services from a company, how good is their own online marketing? If it sort of sucks, pause to reflect on the implications.

3. The Napkin Test

If a marketing technology vendor can explain their solution on the back of a napkin — and it’s compelling and credible — then they just might have something great.

4. The Gym Membership Fallacy

Software that gives you the potential to do something great still relies on you to actually do it. Spending money is easier than spending the time and energy to put that money to good use. (Blog software is a good example of this.)

5. The Support Transparency Rule

If a software company makes all their technical support resources publicly available on the web, that’s a good sign. If they don’t, that’s a bad sign.

Any nuggets of wisdom that you’d add?