HAVE A GREAT PRODUCT.
At the risk of stating the obvious, a big key for marketing success is having a great product. In his best-selling book, Purple Cow, marketing guru Seth Godin calls it, “being remarkable.” Though many not-so-remarkable products may seem to do well because they have great marketing, no long-term success can be achieved without a great product. In fact, if a product is not great, great marketing will usually make it fail faster. Because though people may buy it, they won’t buy it again and may tell all their friends it’s bad. Case in point: Ever see an exciting teaser for an upcoming movie? It can make a lot of people buy a ticket. The problem starts when folks actually see the movie, hate it, and then spread the word.

Here’s another example. Remember New Coke? Despite the marketing muscle that Coke put behind it, the Coke-drinking public decided they were happy with the old Coke. Another case involves a new tropical hotel. Eager to jump-start his business the owner got tour directors and travel writers to visit and then hopefully generate some good buzz. Problem was, the hotel wasn’t ready. Had he waited a couple more months he would’ve gotten great reviews. Now he’ll be lucky if those influencers give him second shot. So, if businesses spent a little less energy trying to push their product and more on making it great, they’d have a lot more success in the long run.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 24th, 2008 at 3:58 am and is filed under Advertising, Marketing, Small Business Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.