You’ve probably had to figure out why a product of yours soared or another tanked at some point, right? If so, there are two things to “blame”: marketing or the product itself.
Broadly speaking, there are two schools of thought when it comes to which matters most, the quality of the product or that of the marketing:
- If the product is great, people will talk about it, so you don’t even need marketing. You may have also heard of it in these words “build it and they will come”.
- Focus on your marketing, you can improve/upgrade your product after your first sales. Or: build a great post-purchase experience, people care about that more than the actual product.
There is some truth to both of these. But there is also a huge serving of bullshit.
Let’s dismantle it and put something better in its place.
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No, they will not come just because you built it
The world’s best product becomes the world’s best-kept secret without marketing.
In an ideal world, all you need is one customer. That customer tells five people, those five people tell five more each, and so on. Within days, you’ll have more customers than you can handle.
Except things don’t work that way. You usually need to incentivize people to leave a review or refer you to someone else. This is marketing too.
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To add insult to injury, people are likelier to leave a negative review than a positive one. When it comes to good things, they rarely talk about them with their friends, especially in B2B.
This answer tells you the whole story:
The big exception here: physical shops, especially those in areas with high foot traffic. People just stumble upon them, so you’ll need very little marketing if you can score such a location. All you need is a good product so that people keep coming back and so that they don’t leave negative reviews.
In the digital world (especially in B2B), on the other hand, you are responsible for creating “foot traffic” to your offers.
Marketing is more likely to drive sales, not the quality of the product
I know, it’s not fair. The products that sell better:
- Are placed at eye level on supermarket shelves (did you know brands pay a premium for that position?)
- Are backed by ad campaigns, influencer campaigns, partnerships, and more.
- Shout their benefits loudest
Think about Serena Williams, Cristiano Ronaldo, Taylor Swift — any public figure, athlete, musician, or movie star.
They have (they are!) a great product — their core skill. But the bulk of their fortune comes from marketing, not their core skill.
They make more money by selling merchandise or by recommending products as influencers than they do from their core skills.
More importantly, to make that happen, they have a huge marketing and PR machine that curates their image.
Does this mean you can put out crappy products with excellent marketing and still win?
Not in the long run.
The second school of thought posits that marketing is more important than the product. They’re half right: you can sell a bad product with good marketing, The part they leave out: only once or twice.
You know what they say: “fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
People wise up.
If you overhyped your product, they won’t return. And they’ll tell their friends too because, remember, people are more prone to leave negative reviews.
The solution? Build them together — your product and your marketing strategy. Never separately!
No matter how good your product is, if you don’t have a way to promote it properly, it won’t succeed. Similarly, if you have all it takes for a successful marketing campaign but the product is bad, your success will be short-lived.
So, where do we start?
There are two possible avenues:
1. You have an idea for a product, you need to figure out your marketing
Before you invest even a dime in marketing or time in building your product, test to see if it holds water.
Here’s how to make sure you build it because they need it, not because you can + the story of how I built one of my products, The Guided Strategy Template.
Still not sure if people are interested in buying? Try building a small version of your product, a self-liquidating offer that you sell for less than $100.
Cool, you now know there is a need for your product. The next step is figuring out if there is a large enough market for it.
Learn how to do it here. It’s a primer on finding your sweet spot: don’t go too niche, there will be too few people to buy and you won’t make ends meet. Don’t go too broad either, you won’t appeal to anyone.
Next on your agenda:
- What are the main benefits of your product? List them as if you were writing your landing page. Are they compelling? Could you send them for review to a group of peers or perhaps use them to survey your audience?
- Where can you promote this new product? Write everything down: channels, partnership opportunities, ad budget, and more.
- How many people will your marketing reach? Make it realistic. For instance, if you have 10,000 email subscribers and an open rate of 40%, assume you will reach 4000 people, not 10,000.
- What conversion rate can you expect? If you ran similar campaigns before, you can rely on historical data. If not, simply Google “conversion rate for [email] in [fashion eCommerce]” — replace the text between [] with your channels and industry. You will find research reports that give you a starting point. Just take them with a grain of salt — most are overly optimistic.
Do all of these before working on your product. It should take you no more than an hour or two.
Your answers should point to a viable product that can be supported by strong marketing and realistic math.
If the numbers don’t add up for you (the conversion rate part), spend some time figuring out new marketing tactics before your launch.
2. You have a large audience and marketing essentials, you need to figure out what to sell
While it’s a less common situation, there are cases when you know that your audience trusts you enough to buy from you, you just don’t know what to sell. Instead of overthinking it to death, do one thing: ask them.
Do it more than once, though. Let’s say you’re planning to build a course on knitting.
- Ask if they would be interested in learning how to knit from you.
- Then ask if they would prefer a live cohort with weekly/bi-weekly meet-ups or a pre-recorded course.
- Then ask what their main struggles with knitting are: finding supplies, choosing the yarns, finding the time to knit, and so on. → this will help you build a relevant curriculum.
- Next, ask what price would be comfortable for them: give them at least three options, starting with the lowest price that makes it profitable for you.
Additional/optional step: build an MVP of that product. If it’s a pre-recorded course, you can run it as a live workshop first.
This is what I did for Audience Accelerator, my course on audience building. I first ran it as a workshop, to gauge interest and vet my curriculum. Based on the feedback I got, I made some changes and launched it as a pre-recorded course a few months later.
Or you can pre-sell it before you actually build it to gauge interest. Be careful with this approach, though: if the interest is not what you had hoped for, you will have to refund everyone who bought it during the pre-sale.
There are countless approaches to vetting your product before you build it but none of them beats asking your audience. Whatever you choose, make sure you don’t just build something because it’s “easy money”.
You want your buyers to come back instead, not leave negative reviews because you got cocky and built a half-assed product.
✋ Limitations
The only perfect strategy is the one that hasn’t been applied yet. Just like the best parents are the ones who don’t have kids.
Treat your marketing strategy (and your product, when possible) as a living, breathing thing. You will need to adapt and pivot as you go because things don’t always go according to plan.
It is, however, infinitely better to have a plan, a roadmap you can follow during launch and after the launch.
How do you build new things? Do you start with marketing or product? Reply and let me know!
🎙️ My podcasts, interviews, and events
Next week, on Tuesday, August 27th, my friend Beatrice Gutknecht and I will talk about how to stand out on LinkedIn without looking like a gooroo. It’s a free event, join us here!
Adriana’s Picks
- A new study from the University of Toronto Scarborough reveals that people’s quest to dodge boredom by “digital switching” — jumping from one video to the next or fast-forwarding through content — actually makes their boredom worse. The solution? Long-form content. My take on it here.
- Finally! The FTC has decided to crack down on companies and influencers that buy fake followers for social media accounts they run for profit.
- Got a short attention span? Here’s how to increase it, according to CNN.
Need me in your corner? There are four ways I can help you:
- Need a bigger, more relevant audience? Who doesn’t, right? The Audience Accelerator course will teach you how to get it with zero hacks and sleazy bro tactics.
- Boost your chances of success by 400%: document your strategy with The Guided Strategy Template.
- Get my product launch email templates that sell: 5+1 emails you can send to your list in 45 seconds.
- Book a 1:1 strategy session with me. Let’s unlock your growth in 60 mins!
