More Lousy Marketers Than Lousy Products (01:59)

Weekly Marketing TipCast #1: Remember There Are More Lousy Marketers than Lousy Products!
Your Host: Jay Jennings

If you’ve ever spent time reading popular forums, you’ve heard people complaining about how bad a product is or praising it for how excellent the information is — or how functional it is. This is especially true of marketing forums, where people are always discussing the latest product launch.

It’s not uncommon to see oppositional approaches to discussing new product launches, too. One approach will always focus on the negative parts of the product, saying it’s a sham or dysfunctional. The other approach will be a little more realistic and look at what was good and what could be improved upon.

Often, you will see the negative comments coming from those who have had little to no success promoting the product — or who have had no real experience in successfully launching a product.

In contrast, you will likely see the positive comments coming from those who have successfully promoted the product; or those who know marketing well enough that they could successfully promote the product if they decided to do so.

There’s a good reason for this: those who can successfully promote products and earn money know that almost any product, no matter how mundane it is, can be promoted with a high degree of success. They also know that a product doesn’t necessarily have to be radically different in order to provide information that the end-user needs most.

One prime example of this is McDonald’s. Their food was really nothing new or different or better than their competitors — and yet they swiftly defeated everyone else in the market to achieve dominance.

The difference was in how the business was positioned and marketed. In the hands of a bad marketer, it would have floundered; in the hands of a skillful marketer, it became one of the largest corporations in the world.

So keep this in mind next time you hear someone attacking the latest digital product release: not every product is great, but there are more lousy marketers than there are lousy digital products!