What’s More Important - A Quality Product Or Marketing?
Posted by Louis under Uncategorized 8 commentsI was playing this cool Fantastic Contraption game last night with my brother, who said something like “I wish I had the idea to make a game like this - these guys must be making a fortune”. It got me wondering whether having a unique idea and useful product was enough by itself to become successful, without knowing much about marketing. Unfortunately, however, my experience is that you can make ANYTHING sell with the right marketing - whereas having a great product doesn’t guarantee success.
In fact, I regularly come across great products — in huge markets with plenty of demand, I should add — that don’t sell, simply because the product owner doesn’t know how to market their product effectively. I think of brilliant products I use everyday like PromoSoft that are mostly unknown. On the other side of the coin, there are totally useless products that sell into the thousands everyday, because (you guessed it) the product owner knows how to market effectively.
I’m regularly involved with promoting products off ClickBank as an affiliate, and one thing I have definitely noticed is that the top gravity products that sell really well aren’t actually that good. Most of them are hyped-up “get rich quick” scheme’s that get promoted by thousands of affiliates just because they offer a generous 75% commission. And when you do a Google search for reviews of a product on clickbank, you’ll find all of them are simply disguised affiliate marketing “reviews” that just want you to buy it so they’ll get a commission from it.
There was a thread on the Warrior Forum about this a while back (I’ll try to dig it up) where the forum admin (who I am sure makes at least $1 million per year) went on about how providing value isn’t the most important thing to make money - it’s your system. Without a proper system for generating traffic, promoting the right things and converting your visitors, you don’t make money. There are marketers who have a system nailed down for generating huge profits each day. But the quality of products they sell simply don’t have much to do with how much they money they make.
I believe that you definitely SHOULD provide 100x the value someone ever pays for your product. Always try to underpromise and overdeliver to people, regardless of what you are selling. Your profits may not dramatically increase, but you will have a reputable business that genuinely helps people, and that’s becoming something of a rarity with online businesses today.
Anyways, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this issue - Does having a great product guarantee success? Or is your marketing strategy more important? I know a lot of people will disagree with the above. Let me know what you think.
Readers have left 8 comments on "What’s More Important - A Quality Product Or Marketing?".
Yeah. Marketing is what most people think will work. But marketing can only get you so far. A real value product is what people are looking for, and they buy a quality product sooner or later. Quality comes first.
By the way, that Fantastic Contraption game was really nice. I’m playing it now.
Thoughts that the forum admin had (who would never get a dime from me) is why there is so much well marketed crap around.
A high quality products that has a market is the key….very few take the time to research first to see if anyone actually wants what they have for sale.
I think that quality product is step in your marketing strategy and it make your strategy more strong and successful.
I think that you can have a so so product, but with superior marketing, it could go far. Look at Vista.
~ Kristi
Hmmm… this is a tough one.
While good marketing can only get you so far, for me, quality product still matters more.
But let’s admit it, most buyers are awed by those very good marketers that they instantly purchase the item being offered to them, only to find out later on that the product wasn’t as good as the marketer has promised it to be. As a result, people will start spreading the words about how bad the product was, hence, discouraging other potential buyers to purchase the said product.
On the other hand, if a product is really good but poor marketing is being done, then it spells disaster… low sales, low income! But, word-of-mouth will prove how good the product is. This will, in turn, bring in new customers, and most especially establish trust and confidence from current customers.
I say…why not both?:)
Well, nice post…
But I think you need a combanation of both, I mean you always need marketing to sell your product but not even the best marketing can sell a crappy product.
So yeah, a good medium between the two would be ideal, IMO…
This is a really tough one.
I guess for me it depends. You know people sometimes are selling their own veggies on the street, or at their house outside. Yeah, their marketing sucks, but probably those veggies (carrots, apples, cucumbers) are far more healthier and better than those you can buy in a supermarket.
Then again, those veggies, fruits you can buy in the supermarket have nice shiny package, nice logo on them and so on, but they are with chemicals, or even genetically modified, which is not good. Those people who are selling on the street don’t have any fancy packaging, logo, or what ever, but they’re far more better, if they are grown in their own garden.
I prefer quality tho, but I must say also that I have many times bought the veggies in supermarket instead from the guy on the street, if you know what I mean.
Best regards,
The Moneyac
What do you think? Have your say!