Not all blogs are broken. Some still get it. They get it hard and consistently. Like Andy Sernovitz. Andy says that advertising is the price of being boring, explaining:
“…There is a direct relationship between being buzzworthy — earning word of mouth — and how much you’ll have to pay to promote yourself through paid marketing.”
If you *get* one thing today, get that. It’s a lot easier to market a great product than a mediocre one. Because great products don’t need to be advertised, they just are.
- If the cure for cancer was released tomorrow, no one would have to advertise it. It would simply explode.
- If you wrote a blog post that entertained while saying something completely new, you wouldn’t have to pay or annoy people to promote it for you. People would trip over themselves to be the one that “discovered” the content.
- If you developed an easy way to solve someone’s biggest problem, you’d only have to show them once to hook them. And then they’d tell all their friends.
- If you took a complicated process and broke it down to one Must Do step, the old way would be replaced and you’d become a hero.
If you don’t want to spend thousands of dollars marketing and advertising your product, then create one that people can’t live without and that solves their biggest problem. Something that does it easier, faster, and better than what’s out there.
When I was younger my mother would lock me and my brothers outside on a nice day and force us into entertaining ourselves. At 10am on a Summer day, out we’d go and we wouldn’t be allowed back in until dinner. Smart people are never bored and will always find something creative to do with their time. Smart business owners don’t have to rely on advertising to be successful. They know how to create something that just is, something that challenges us, makes life simpler or something we want to be associated with.
It’s a concept I wish more businesses understood. Its mind blowing the “products” or “services” people try to market. Sure, we can watch you throw thousands into an SEO or search engine marketing campaign…but you’re still not going to see results. Not because we’re not good at what we do, but because your product sucks. Good marketing won’t change that.
Instead, save your marketing cash and invest it in the core product. And yes, I just did tell you to save your dollars on marketing and actually use it for product development. And if you don’t hear from me tomorrow, it’s because Rhea and Rae, my partners in the Internet marketing company I part own, have smothered me for saying so.
