Which is more important: making a great product or doing effective marketing?
Hello, Product Hunt! š
I vote for "marketing is more important!"
Recently, building has become really easy with the help of AI agents and tools like Cursor(thx Ai).āØI think the time and money needed to create a good product have significantly decreased thanks to various SaaS programs.
However, I still donāt have any references to introduce to you (š¹).āØI feel like Iāve neglected marketing, which is more important than making the product. (Please tell me this is the real reason...) Especially for indie makers like me, marketing is the hardest part (I wish someone could do it for me! š
).
Making a good product and promoting it are both important, and itās a pointless debate.
Still, making vs. marketing? What do you all think?
And if there are any cost-free ways for indie marketers or beginner marketers to try out, could you let me know?
Replies
those two can't live without each other. I was stuck in a cycle of doing too much and feeling like it was never enough. I tried planners, apps, late nightsānothing worked. What really helped was letting go of the idea that I had to do it all alone. Academized academized.com/write-my-dissertation stepped in, and with them helping out, Iāve found more time for self-care and rest.
@mattt_lim I completely get what you're saying about marketing being the real challenge! With our in house product PageX coming up for launch, Iām definitely feeling the weight of getting it in front of the right eyes. Itās not just about building anymore, itās about making sure the right people find it and know its worth.
Iāve been learning a lot from this community, and Iād love to hear how others in the PH fam have dealt with marketing in the early daysāespecially when youāre building on a small budget. Any advice or insights would mean a lot!
if product is good enough and solves a real problem, marketing is the challenge and way more important.
Product Hunt
@mattt_lim What kind of product are you building, and what is behind this question? We can always debate where to focus, but if you share more about your specific situation and what's causing the question, I bet you'll get some insights from the community.
@rajiv_ayyangarĀ I didn't provide a detailed explanation. I'm sorry.
I'm creating a work record app for indie makers, freelancers, and people who work alone.
It's not finished yet, but I'm feeling overwhelmed about how to get started.
Marketing for sure. But it's very hard to determine how to market SaaS these days. What are some good marketing platforms?
@sakshi_patil8Ā I'm curious too.
I think having a great product at hand already before going into marketing is a prerequisite.
In the short time window, there will be virtuous cycle of the product and marketing boosting each other.
In the long run, I believe the market always identify which ones give real value to people and only ones that got "pass" from this proof process survive.
Not-valuable product with the huge boost of marketing would survive in the short term, or as long as boosted by marketing with tremendous amount of expenditure, but I think that's unsustainable.
@hyuntak_leeĀ "Good products are good marketing."
That's right, I've thought this way for years.āØBut growth feels slow, and Iām getting tired of waiting.āØIn the end, is it really that "speed = money"?
@mattt_limĀ I agree with your point that growth is important and I know the importance of effective marketing for fast growth. Let me clarify what I wanted to say.
I'm not outweighing product quality over marketing. It takes tones of time for a product to speak of itself in the market.
What I wanted to say is this - Good products and good marketing, each one of them are important aspects we should care. And I believe it's not about which one is more important. NONE of them should be overlooked. What I emphasize here is, if you're to go into the marketing phase, make sure you have a good product in hand as prerequisite. And then do good marketing.
Good products are good marketing, and marketing good products leads to growth, but good marketing doesn't make to good product.
Even though there are so many marketing automation tools out there, marketing still feels like a real challenge.
Marketing and making the product are both important nowadays, because when you market your product to the right audience and in the right way.
You may focus on both things in the early days of making a product.