When our marketing is light years ahead of the product. We lose.
For every time we exaggerate about just how useful or powerful our product, we open up ourselves to the risk of losing customers who experience it and decide “this sucks”. Some people say all marketers are liars, others say all marketers are simply great storytellers, but liars or not, the job of marketing is to get people hooked on your product. That will not happen if your product quality does not match your marketing noise.
Several years ago, the whole Nigerian Internet space was set on fire in anticipation of a new social network that was about to be launched. After all the marketing and people finally started signing up, few could connect what was promised to the reality of the product on ground. That startup is dead today. Everyday, I receive emails from startups that promise heaven on earth with their products, they do not make good on their promises and that pisses people off.
A better option is to focus on building a quality product. Build something really useful and you would even see word-of-mouth working for you as satisfied users will recommend you to others without you even asking for it. Neither Facebook nor Whatsapp have done any advertising in Nigeria, yet look at all the millions of users they have here, how did they do it? I have seen people go from been skeptic about Whatsapp to becoming (free) Whatsapp brand champions in hours.
It is simply really: invest your time into building a solid product. Stop marketing products that suck or products that you are yet to even build.
