Conflict of Marketing Advice–RESOLVED
By swikan on July 7th, 2009Posted In: Promotion
I have been reading marketing books and blogs for a couple of months now, and a GLARING conflict always shows in the articles and lists and stuff. It has to do with the product.
I consulted the gurus of marketing, both online in blogs and offline in books. These are the first two things that they ALL say about the current marketing environment:
- It’s not about the product, it’s about the perception.
- Make a good/desirable product.
Do you see the contradiction here? It is about the product!
Well, I’m working on my product. In my case, my product is my characters. I want to promote them and their strip and get them known and loved. A creative product like this improves only by DOING it. Well, I’m doing it! Publishing on the web, practicing art and writing techniques nearly every day is showing in the steady improvement of my comic.
But is my product desirable? Interesting? If not, how do I make it so? How will I know when it is? None of the books/articles I have read tell you how to tell if your product is desirable. All I know is that my comic is interesting/desirable to ME and a few others… which is the same feeling every creator for every single other comic has when they are starting out.
The ONLY answer for me and for other comickers is to do the following: Continue to do your art regularly, consciously work to improve your skill, experiment and recognize what works for you and what doesn’t, and proceed on the assumption that your work/product is desirable. Then you will give the appearance … the PERCEPTION… that your product is desirable.
When we embark on promotion strategies for our comics, we must do the same thing: Promote regularly, consciously work to improve our promotion skills, experiment (!) and note what works and what doesn’t work.
I do not think you should proceed with promotions techniques on the assumption that they work, though. You just promote with the assumption that your product is desirable, or at least worthy enough for others to consider for themselves whether or not they desire it.
What do you think?
UPDATE: Because the marketing books and articles are made by marketers for marketers, someone like me gets hung up on the basics. The authors assume that I know things I just can’t automatically grasp.
I was getting very frustrated about “it not being about the product but make a marketable product.” Since it comes first in all the marketing books/articles I’m reading, it was diluting my trust in what these successful people were trying to convey. It just seemed to me that no matter what they SAID they did, it was just dumb luck that their strategies were successful.
I still needed help in marketing/promotion, though. I am constantly turning what I’m reading in my mind to make it “fit” into my natural thought process. (The two always feel incompatible.) Thinking about this conflict recently, something *clicked* into place: When they say “it isn’t about the product” they mean “MARKETING isn’t about the product,” but you still need a good product to promote.
Ah-HA! With this in mind, I hope I can be more open to the other concepts I am learning about. ~ Samantha
Testing, testing 123
if you figure out something marketable, plz let me know. been tryin to sell tbowl stuff for 3 years and cant get 10% of the way towards breaking even.
ps. make a beanie plushy of your main character.
It’s the old tell everyone it’s great and eventually someone will believe it and pass it along before anyone knows better way of marketing. In some cases, it’s just obvious it’s not, microsoffftttt….
test successful? man I hate this barebones theme..
Indeed. Howard Taylor said something along similar lines: “Charisma is *not* a dump stat.” How you present yourself and your artwork goes a long way towards how what you do will be perceived.
Those of us whose modus operandi is built upon the concepts of self-deprecating humor are often holding themselves back in this very manner.
tbowl: I am trying to learn. As I come across anything good, I’ll be sure to post it here.
siabur: I think “fake it until you make it” is a good strategy. But it only works if you are continually evaluating your product for its viability. Somewhere, there has to be point where you come to the conclusion that your product ISN’T marketable/desirable. Then you have to decide whether you like the product enough to do it for yourself and your few friends, or if you want to move on. That is a tough place to be, I think.
Frumph: Successful. I have been betting a lot of spam on this blog and it was very discouraging. As for the theme, I wanted something simple and serious. So *I* like it. *thbbbpt* (that doesn’t mean I won’t change it when I next get the whim.)
n9uxu: I have often wondered how successful people who are so self-deprecating manage to be successful.
I had a thought just now (while I was in the shower.. WHY do I think more in there than anywhere else?) about what the marketing books are trying to say about it not being about the product. The MARKETING is not about the product. *sheesh* I’m going to change the article right now.