No matter the product you have. No matter if it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Without a good marketing plan behind it, and without people pushing sales, you will never make it. Ive found this out the hard way two successive times.
The first time was with an application i built to be sold. This application kicks ass i may add. It is some of my best work compiled into a tight little package that does everything its supposed to and more. But i can tell you how good it is, and how much it kicks ass all day if i want to. Doesnt mean that anyone is buying. I “hired” some people do sales for me, (Because ill be the first to admit i really suck at pushing sales). But all that did was infuriate me further because my beautiful product was selling as it should. It doesnt matter how awesome the application is, if people dont know about it, or where to buy, then they arent going to be handing over their cash anytime soon.
This time around, ive got a service im offering. The service is once again, a kick ass product. Doing the marketing myself this time, im falling behind a bit. I can push CPA offers all day if i had to, but when it comes to selling something that i own, something semi-tangible. I just really bite the dust. And once again, if people knew about the service, they would snap it up in an instant. But without knowing about the service, they are sitting in the dark.
Lets take this to a real world example.
Lets think about Ebay. Ebay has a considerable monopoly over the whole Internet Auction Site market. Really there is no other (Atleast AFAIK in the USA/UK). But lets face it, Ebay is crraapp. I once tried to list a product on Ebay, and it just led me in circles until it finally told me, it wanted every piece of information about my life including all my paypal info (Well yes, Ebay owns Paypal, but still). Im just trying to sell my sneakers, not my soul.
On top of that, every single auction on ebay looks crud. It all comes down to allowing HTML which lets be honest here. Many people just look up the < marquee> and the < h1> tags and spam them everywhere. Letting people use HTML in their auctions is a big mistake, And led to ebays own downfall of their Partner Network. People were cookie stuffing Ebay affiliate cookies into their own auctions (Because it allows html). And so instead of removing a bunch of html except for the basics, they instead pissed off half the affiliate world by screwing up their partner network to pay pennies.
So we have gathered Ebay is crap. So why doesnt someone just build a simple auction site to beat Ebay. Wouldn’t be hard!
Well because Ebay has the marketing and the Brand behind it. Now it isnt about the product of ebay, but the marketing of how it is “the” place to trade online. Even if a perfect alternative came along that was 10x better. It probably wouldn’t have the branding, and the marketing power behind it like ebay does.
Here in New Zealand we have something called TradeMe. Its an Ebay like site, but only for us Kiwi’s. Trust me when i say this, it is 100x better then Ebay. No HTML in auctions, no looping navigation systems. Just perfect. Trademe bucked the trend a little, by competing with Ebay for the New Zealand market (And trademe won, we dont have ebay here, or atleast you have to trade on ebay.com.au). But Trademe has been trying a while now to break into the Australian market, will it make it? I have my money on “Yes, But only just”. Australia is still entrenched in Ebay mania, and even though Trademe is so much better, Branding and Marketing is what its all about.
