Comments on: Great marketing or a great product?

By: Greg Silcox

Greg Silcox — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 18:54:25 +0000

There’s two sides to marketing. Excellent product marketing will ensure you have a deep understanding of your customer’s needs and problems. With this awareness the product will become the best.

By: Robert Canales

Robert Canales — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 16:58:54 +0000

Business acumen and integrity don’t often mix. To feel good about my efforts, I’d have to absolutely be in love with a company/product first, and use that as a motivator for investment/evangelism.

Odd as it may be, I’d go with the “best product” of the two.

By: Oleg

Oleg — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:19:23 +0000

#2 obviously. #1 has only a chance if #2 has an exceptionally bad product and people start actively searching for alternatives.

By: Gabriel Somoza

Gabriel Somoza — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:56:41 +0000

If the marketing weakness in the first company would persist for a very long period of time, I would rather choose the second company.

I believe most people would prefer to buy an average product if the price compensates for the lower quality. So an effective marketing strategy would expose the product to a large amount of people. This would definitely increase sales, and as long as the price stays reasonable the company would prove to be a good investment.

If you have a great product, but nobody knows about it: how could you ever sell it? Even if your few clients are satisfied, it would take a very long time until you start to see some profit from your investment. This could be good as a long-term investement, but if there’s no hopes of reaching the masses with some good marketing (which there isn’t), then product won’t stay afloat for long as other competitors enter the game with similar quality but better marketing.

By: Paul Barry

Paul Barry — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 14:40:29 +0000

Depends on the product. If it’s in an industry where viral growth is likely to help spread the word about the product, a marketing strategy isn’t as important. But if no one finds out about your product, it doesn’t matter how good it is.

By: Adam Lindsay

Adam Lindsay — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:44:52 +0000

Selling product is all about awareness. You could have the best of something but if no one knows about it, you are not going to sell much. It would always be nice to have the best product, but given how quickly technology changes these days, odds are the product will need to go through numerous iterations in the future, giving you the opportunity to improve on it. Marketing however is much harder to achieve. Gravis had probably the best example with MSFT. Their products while clearly inferior at this point to many of their competitors, has not dramatically hurt them, since they are so incredibly powerful at getting word out that they exist.

By: Gravis

Gravis — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:30:44 +0000

Definitely the second one. This is why early microsoft shareholders are so rich today ;)

By: Vojto

Vojto — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 07:51:15 +0000

Neither if those facts are set in stone.

By: jDeppen

jDeppen — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:44:26 +0000

#2 – If you can’t be good, you have to be “there”.

Have you ever bought from a bad sales person? Most likely because he/she was “there”.

Credit – David Knox