Product vs Marketing

When bootstrapping a new business, a common dilemma is whether to focus on your product first or marketing. 

While it’s true that if you keep focusing on the content, your product might not get noticed. It’s also true that focusing on marketing too early can fragment your attention and lead to lower-quality content. 

You might also start focusing on the wrong metrics, such as the number of followers, or take on user feedback too early. This can cause you to become reactive and lose sight of your vision. In the long run, this would be much worse than having a stellar product that nobody knows about (yet).

Without marketing, you would still have a great product, and over time you ARE likely to get noticed as long as you don’t give up and keep focusing on creating quality content. However, without excellent quality, you would be flooding the market with SPAM and hurt the brand you are trying to build.

There’s a certain balance to be made. Like adding fuel to the fire, great marketing can amplify a great product. But it’s a high-quality product that stands out and brings value to other people. 

Quality is what you want to focus on.

It’s OK to sprinkle a little marketing in there to get the word out, but don’t lose sight of what you are trying to create or let the marketing effort consume you to the point where it becomes your primary focus.

A great product doesn’t require extensive promotion because your users will become fans and spread your message for you.

Create something so good that the product itself is the marketing.