An interesting discussion happened tonight between me and some friends on Twitter. There's nothing i love better than having a decent conversation about these kind of things with incredible people i found on Twitter. It puts me to bed with a good mood.
So, it's based on my believe that startups (or companies) should rather focus on building their product rather than wasting their time doing too much marketing work. I saw startups spending 40% of their time (and money) for marketing and promoting their product, which i see as a sign of the product's weakness to market itself. I also tweeted that the so-called "experts" on marketing are really exaggerating and blurring the purpose of building a product.
I've been looking a great products from Nike shoes to Apple computers, and i kind of come up with a basic understanding about the interaction and balance between marketing and product management. Based on my observation, a good product is always a GREAT MARKETING factor and in some case you don't even have to do anything to market it because people will use it anyway. And people don't just use it, people will recommend it to their friends hence a viral Word of Mouth marketing campaign without spending a dime for it.
My point is, the industry should really turn their focus on building a great product for their users. When they're building a great product (ie. Apple, Google, Nike) the marketing effort would enrich the whole product to make sure that the messages from the product delivered correctly to the users. A good marketing effort won't make your product better and satisfy your users, a good social media effort could help you understand what your users want from your product, but that's a different issue.
Steve Jobs, is a visionaire, the man who sees the future. Is he a marketer? A really good one. But behind that, Steve Jobs is not selling a piece of junk that blinks. He's selling a great product with great features and put a standard on consumer product industry design. He's selling an insanely great range of products and he knows what the users want and need. By this assumption, i believe a good marketer with a bad product is Microsoft. Lots of people use their product and IT'S A REALLY GOOD BUSINESS! The dude even get to be the richest fella in the neighborhood (i have a wide wide circle), now that's a good business with some real deal. The guy, Bill Gates, successfully sell his product to companies as a corporate solution and was later used as a default OS for IBM PCs etc. But the thing is, their users are not as loyal as Apple's. Apple is like a cult, and i assure you I'm NOT a fanboy, but those who are - worship Steve Jobs.
This is what i like to call : good product + good marketing.
The same thing goes for Nike, they have great shoes (great designs and functionalities) and they have a good way of telling stories about Nike and athletes which was a part of their marketing campaign. And the result is incredible!
Of course, Nike doesn't specify about the features of their shoes on their ads but rather telling stories about the people who use their products. It's the same concept of when Apple release its "Think different" campaign, to tell stories about the people who change the world, and not putting info about the speed of the processor, how big is the hard drive, the monitor's resolution, nope. None of that.
Does this make the quality of the product irrelevant? Of course not. With all the big stories, the product have to match user's non-literal expectation based on the stories. A good product will always sell, add a good marketing puts a cherry on top. A great marketing effort will probably sell, but if the product sucked, then no one's falling for that marketing bullcrap anymore. Unfortunately nowadays, most companies do the latter. Making users and consumers skeptical about marketing as a mask to cover a shitty product.
Would love to hear your thoughts on this. Nothing turns me on better than a good discussion!
