Excellent advice here for anyone marketing themselves or another business, with kudos to Seth Godin for posting this on his blog.

Ask 37signals: 10 ways to "get ink" - (37signals)

Cheers,

Steve

It's roughly the same thing copywriter Gary Bencivenga wrote “A gifted product is mightier than a gifted pen."

And about the same thing I wrote in correcting faulty Unique Selling Propositions.

Speaking of Godin, it's also the gist of his Purple Cow book.

Steve Martin does add the missing touch with "it's not what people want to hear."

Someone once asked me what their marketing budget should be. I told them a good rule of thumb is: Inversely proportional to the market research and development which went into the product before you asked what the budget should be.

If you spent relatively little on finding out about what customers want, and spent almost nothing making absolutely sure you built the right product for a target customer segment, count on spending almost infinite amounts of money on marketing and copy. Unfortunately, "I know everything I need to" doesn't count for much in this equation.

And it really doesn't matter who you get to write your copy.

Halbert's quote is much more about how well Gary screens clients rather than suggestive of how often people come to market with products that don't fit the market.

Yes, the eccentric inventor working in secret does occasionally make a hit product. ...Every so often the public does beat a path to your door for that moustrap. Even a blind pig will find the occasional truffle ...But that's not the way to bet.

People want marketing and copywriting to make people buy their products. Sorry, but if it isn't in the product or service, it won't be in the copy. All copy will do is announce to the world how utterly unremarkable the product is. If you waited until the "serious work" is done until you did your marketing, it's not going to be in the product.

The other side of "getting ink" is having to buy ink.

The article is good, but it's basically about the one thing most companies will not do. What they will do is play "monkey-see, monkey-do" on the off chance somebody (somewhere) did the research. Consequently, many market categories are followers ....following other followers.

The market leaders are basically those followers who rake the most money into the biggest pile, and then burn it.

Think about what this article is saying in relation to this past year. The biggest marketing flop of 2007 ( and probably 2006 - 08 ) should be the Apple iPhone.

That there is marketing strategy hole you can drive a fleet of trucks hauling 1,389,000 iPhones at premium prices through is Exhibit A in the "nobody pays attention to Seth Godin" case file.

If Godin wanted a book which reflects marketing strategy-as-practiced he shouldn't call it Purple Cow -- he should call it Monkey-See Monkey-Do. Or "Inbred Marketing for Fun and Almost No Profit."

Double post. Removed.