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How much can content and marketing make up for a mediocre product?
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6 Answers
I'm not sure I'd approach content or marketing on this basis. But here are a few thoughts.
Many products on the market are similar to others. What differentiates them is the company selling them. This can be expertise that's a value add to the product, customer service that blows their socks off, simple and fast implementation, user adoption preferences, etc.
Find what that is and focus on those as your competitive advantage. There has to be something viable there or your company wouldn't be in business.
In fact, I'd recommend that the first thing you do is talk to customers and find out why they like and use your "mediocre" product. Is it because it's a work horse with only the features they need? Is it because Sally in customer service is like a mind reader and always gets them back on track in 5 minutes? Gather your customer sentiments and then examine them for nuggets of gold that you can use to fuel your content and marketing strategies.
In a word, business success or failure hinges on DIFFERENTIATION...
Thousands of "mediocre" products have become top sellers simply because smart marketing has successfully differentiated them. Conversely, just having a "superior" product will never guarantee you top market share if your marketing sucks and doesn't differentiate you. (How many thousands of companies have made that mistake!)
A lot of companies throw their hands up, thinking that their product really is no "better" than their competitors – and therefore assuming they have no basis for differentiation. That is NEVER true. Think about bottled water. Think about differentiation that's based upon the color or shape of the package. It just takes smarter marketing — or maybe a smarter marketing agency.
Al Shultz
http://www.alshultz.com/
I think masking a mediocre product with great marketing is a short term survival strategy at best, and a going-out-of-business strategy in the longer term. You may fool a customer into trying the product the first time but unless you change the mediocre product to a differentiated one you'll simply end up with ticked off customers who will drop you at the first site of an alternative, and tell the world about the raw deal they got from you. Marketing works best when there's real value underneath..
Nick, I would agree with you if we were talking about a terrible product or one that doesn't work... However, Sarah's question asked about a "mediocre" product, which means a so-so product, a product that's neither better nor worse than many others... Of course it's always easier to market an inherently superior product. And of course you should always strive to improve your product...
But think about all those hundreds of thousands products that have been top-selling for many years. Could you really say ALL of those are "superior" products? No, a great many of them are simply products that do their job but are in fact no better or worse than others you could buy. The difference is, smart marketing has differentiated them and established them in the PERCEPTIONS of the market as something unique and special.
That's what smart marketing can do very powerfully, and that's what I'm talking about.
Al Shultz
http://www.alshultz.com/
You make valid points Al. It does depend on the definition of the word "mediocre". I think I am using a more literal definition. In my years in product marketing, at least in the technology space, mediocre doesn't cut it in the long run. There's just too much competition out there. To me, "mediocre" is like climbing a steep mountain and stopping about the half way point. Staying there is not an option (muscles start giving way and gravity does its job). You either keep climbing (improve the product to be differentiated and strong), or go back down to the base of the mountain and try again when you feel stronger and have a new strategy.
It's a big question this one, and a lot depends on other things.
What's the size of the market place?
Is this a new entrant or established product?
What's the level of market saturation?
What's your brand value?
You can differentiate a product through marketing but it's hard to win over a market of customers using other products with a mediocre one, no matter how well marketed.
So for example; the OpenOffice suite, which is free but adds almost nothing to the office experience of using say the Microsoft products. Yes it has market share at a zero entry cost, but not all that much. It has a clear differentiation - price, but nobody cares enough to make the change.
Whereas Microsoft Office is also a mediocre product, gives very little value particularly on upgrades (minor functionality tweaks for hundreds of dollars in outlay) but the brand is well established and trusted (why? no-one really knows, do they really have any happy customers?) and thus despite diminishing returns, it continues to dominate the office market.
And then take StarOffice the step up from OpenOffice for corporates, which has the smallest of all installed user bases of the the three. Yet it's a decent if undistinguished solution which comes with great support, for very little outlay, but again no-one cares.
Now... take the Apple iPod which in it's first generation was crummy (if pretty) but went into a weak market place (it was not the first MP3 audio player) with plenty of growth opportunity, and was excellently marketed. Even today it holds off many excellent competitive offerings because it got there first and used marketing to wring every advantage from a nascent market.
And let's not go there with New Coke...
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