Marketing transparency step 2

2. Came to believe that transparency in marketing could restore us to sanity.

Hi, my name is Jon, and I’m a reformed marketer (yeah, yeah, I know I should have said that in my step 1 post…). In the past, I wrote disingenuous ad copy, marketed vaporware, and even used terms like market-leading when it wasn’t clear there was even a market for what we were selling. This was in the dot-com era, when marketers and PR agencies sold value where there was none.

Being new to high tech at the time, I got swept away in the moment. Sure, the whole IPO thing was fun… up to the point where everyone started equating the value of IPO stock with sheets of toilet paper. And then there was that downsizing. That wasn’t much fun.

So, it goes without saying that it’s good to have moved on from those days to working on selling real products (uh, you know, the kind that work as advertised ). Transparency in what Atlassian does has always been part of the formula. It wasn’t a layer that was applied on top of the business model, it’s just how Mike and Scott did business from the start.

Transparency exists before and after the sale. The more you help your customers — by giving them insight into what you’re working on, problems you’re trying to fix, questions that other customers have — the more you’re also helping evaluators. And visa versa. Transparent pricing, transparent bug tracking, transparent license agreements — things evaluators need to make clear purchase decisions, and helps customers if they want to do additional business with you. There’s a huge net gain because of the trust that is built up. In turn, trust builds long-term business relationships. All in all, it’s a much more sane way to do business.