The closing line of Phil’s post (“it’s easy … everything takes care of itself” ) does sound a lot like “if we build it they will come”, however, his fundamental point is that “Chasing outcomes” … i.e. being focused strictly on top-line growth or bottom-line returns, is not a long-term strategy. To me it seemed that Phil was taking aim at bean-counters, and arguing in favor of User Experience. But he wasn’t arguing against a good outbound marketing strategy.

I think his last line was a poor summary of an otherwise good article.

Thanks for the comment. It’s interesting you mention Google, as I was thinking about them when I wrote the comment.

It’s been documented in books, but the short story of Google is that while they did come out with a better technical solution (i.e. PageRank based search engine) early on, it took them several (3 or 4) serious attempts to find a business model to monetize their service. The pay-per-click ad model was originated by Overture, which was later bought by Yahoo. But Google’s own Adwords combined with their dominance in search traffic was what found them their success.

I’m sure there are other people on this blog who know more about Google than I do (hint hint Ethan!), but Google’s success took a while to achieve.

Saeed

I totally agree with you. A good (not perfect or ideal, but good enough) product or service that solves a real need gives you a good chance at marketing. But without marketing, the good product or service has very less chance of success. People often mention how Google succeeded, but Google in my opinion is an outlier more than anything else. Promotion matters a whole lot. If you are not found, you don’t exist.

Gopal

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Thanks for the comment, and I agree with you. Your point about “if you build it….” is what struck me as well about the Tuned In comment. The thought that came to my mind was the line:

If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.

Again, without awareness, at minimum, no one is going anywhere. But it’s interesting that these kinds of thoughts continue to exist. Even with awareness, there are other issues related to competition, need etc. that must be dealt with. Everyone loves to hear about a success story, but rarely are the full details behind the success ever brought to the forefront.

Saeed

Of course, if you build into your product or service a viral element, enhancing the “word of mouth” effect, then you may have your customers helping you with the promotional aspect. But in my book that still resides on the promotion facet.

Nolan