>> build it and they will come" was true in 2005 and hasn't been true since 2015.
It wasn't true in 2005. It wasn't true in 1995. It's never been true.
I joined a fledgling industry in the mid 90s. There were some established names. (Established in those days meant your ad appeared in a trade magazine a couple times a year.) My offering was good, maybe even very good. I advertised in the same places and sales were ok. (Without the advertising it would have been nil.)
I started traveling to do in-person demos at conferences, user groups and so on. Sales rocketed up, and stayed up. I won simply by taking the time to market a different way. By meeting prospective customers in person. In many ways they responded to the marketing effort, not the product.
Obviously today marketing channels are different. But the approach is the same. Marketing matters. And the mouse trap thing? It was never true.
It wasn't true in 2005. It wasn't true in 1995. It's never been true.
I joined a fledgling industry in the mid 90s. There were some established names. (Established in those days meant your ad appeared in a trade magazine a couple times a year.) My offering was good, maybe even very good. I advertised in the same places and sales were ok. (Without the advertising it would have been nil.)
I started traveling to do in-person demos at conferences, user groups and so on. Sales rocketed up, and stayed up. I won simply by taking the time to market a different way. By meeting prospective customers in person. In many ways they responded to the marketing effort, not the product.
Obviously today marketing channels are different. But the approach is the same. Marketing matters. And the mouse trap thing? It was never true.