When it comes to marketing, promotion is typically the center of attention. Out of the 4 P’s of the marketing mix, promotion is usually in the limelight while product, price, and place are at times neglected.
Although advertising and public relations are important, it is vital that organizations never put promotion ahead of what is most important – the product. Making a product more marketable through product enhancement or brand development is one of the best investments an organization can make.
Great products sell themselves. They create word of mouth. And essentially, they turn your customers into promoters. If you put marketability first, then promotion will only amplify the success already being generated from having a great product.
But if you do not have a great product – if it is not marketable – then promoting it will likely make things worse in the long run. After all, the quickest way to kill a bad product is with great advertising.
I agree that a quality, need-satisfying product (or service) is essential to organisational success; however, there are examples of excellent products that have not caught the market’s interest, and also of decent products that have sold better than could have been imagined – showing how promotion plays a crucial role. In the first case, ‘green’ products such as hybrid cars and solar water heaters can be used as an example. They provide clear benefits over traditional cars and geysers, though admittedly the technology still needs a lot of development, yet they are not selling as well as one could expect. This could be attributed to green ‘false marketing’ (King, as cited in Peattie & Crane, 2005), where the market became suspicious of green porducts’ benefits; the promotion element was lacking.
The corollary is that some products have outsold their competitors’, even if the products are similar. Intel and AMD microprocessors can be used to illustrate this. Intel and AMD processors are similar with regard to performance, though it seems that Intel has taken the lead lately. Even though the two processors are similar, Intel’s advertising and “Intel Inside” slogan have created a strong brand preference in the market, perhaps especially in the less-technically minded segment, which will buy the product they have heard of and what has been heavily advertised, rather than being able to decide based on relevant comparison of benefits. This shows that, while a great product is neccesary, promotion can also cripple or crown it.