{"id":328,"date":"2009-05-29T08:28:44","date_gmt":"2009-05-29T12:28:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/?p=328"},"modified":"2009-05-29T08:28:44","modified_gmt":"2009-05-29T12:28:44","slug":"the-secret-to-knowing-if-your-product-will-be-a-hit-or-a-flop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/2009\/05\/29\/the-secret-to-knowing-if-your-product-will-be-a-hit-or-a-flop\/","title":{"rendered":"The Secret To Knowing If Your Product Will Be a Hit or a Flop"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the few television shows I watch regularly is Pitchmen<\/strong><\/em>.\u00a0 It’s a new reality show on the Discovery Channel that follows TV pitchmen Billy Mays<\/strong> and Anthony Sullivan<\/strong>.\u00a0 I did a blog post earlier about it here<\/strong><\/a> and you can learn more about it on Discovery’s site here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the recurring patterns on the show is that an entrepreneur’s product will be test-advertised, it will fail and the entrepreneur will blame the failure on Billy and Sully.\u00a0 They will insist that with the right marketing<\/strong><\/em> their product will sell and announce to the world that they are going to keep moving forward and prove everyone wrong.<\/p>\n

While I admire the dedication, drive and character of these entrepreneurs, they nonetheless, are making a critical (and all too common) mistake.<\/p>\n

You see, there’s a reason Billy Mays, Anthony Sullivan and the top direct response television companies will immediately drop a product if it fails with initial test advertising.\u00a0 And that reason is because no one will ever buy it.\u00a0 Period.\u00a0 No matter what.\u00a0 It’s a flop.<\/p>\n

I actually have my own saying when it comes to this.\u00a0 It’s something I teach all my students at Web Video University<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 And it goes like this:<\/p>\n

The best marketing in the world will not sell a product no one wants to buy.\u00a0 But the worst marketing in the world will<\/em> sell a product that people want.\u00a0 And damn good marketing will sell a thousand times more of that product.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

While I’d love to say I’ve always instinctively known this, to do so would be a lie.\u00a0 You see, I had to learn this lesson the hard way.<\/p>\n

It all started back in 1995 (yes, the Internet existed back then).\u00a0 I put up an embarrassingly bad web site, selling a book I hadn’t even written yet.\u00a0 I had obnoxious flashing graphics everywhere, planes flying across the screen saying “Welcome To Our Site!” and even more that I don’t care to mention.\u00a0 All in all, I think I had about two paragraphs of actual sales text.<\/p>\n

Within a couple weeks though, I had a stack of checks sitting on my desk…all from people who had ordered from the site (online credit card transactions didn’t exist in those days…people had to snail mail me checks…seriously).\u00a0 I knew I had a hit, so I cleaned up the marketing on the site and got a lot more checks<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n

But I didn’t learn my lesson.<\/p>\n

I thought I always knew what people wanted to buy…simply because I thought<\/strong><\/em> it was a good idea.\u00a0 Reality came crashing down with my next product.\u00a0 I had brilliant marketing.\u00a0 Everyone loved it.\u00a0 I did everything right.<\/p>\n

The first warning sign came after thousands of visitors landed on my new site…but no one bought.\u00a0 I figured it was the visitors fault…and decided to go directly to the TV shopping networks.\u00a0 I got an audience with them, but they all told me the same thing.\u00a0 It was NO<\/strong> (but they also shared some critical lessons with me…lessons that have served me well ever since).<\/p>\n

Still undaunted, still out to prove everyone wrong, I tried both direct mail and retail next.\u00a0 Each were total failures.\u00a0 Then it dawned on me…duh…no one wants to buy your product Dave…no matter how much you tweak this, that or the other thing.<\/p>\n

In the end, I wound up with a garage full of a product that no one wanted to buy and an empty bank account.\u00a0 But I had also learned a priceless lesson; put your product out there first, even if your marketing is far from perfect, and see if people will buy it.\u00a0 If they don’t, drop it immediately and move on.\u00a0 If they do, then and only then, invest your time and money in properly marketing the product.<\/p>\n

It’s a lesson most people, unfortuantely, have to learn the hard way (like me).\u00a0 And worse yet, a lot of people never learn it at all.<\/p>\n

Hopefully now, you know better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the few television shows I watch regularly is Pitchmen.\u00a0 It’s a new reality show on the Discovery Channel that follows TV pitchmen Billy Mays and Anthony Sullivan.\u00a0 I did a blog post earlier about it here and you can learn more about it on Discovery’s site here. One of the recurring patterns on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[19],"tags":[232,77,16],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webvideouniversity.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}