Marketing has evolved from the time when engineering designed a product, production built it and marketing were allocated a budget which they would use to buy advertising in the hope of selling the product. This cycle no longer works. Today Marketing is at the forefront of product design, production and sales. Large scale advertising activities alone are no longer enough to make a product successful one in the market. Purple Cow philosophy dictates that a product has to be different from the rest and be remarkable at the same time.
Advertising and reaching out to customers used to be all about buying large chunk of TV and print-media advertisements and then inundating these channels with the message about your product and service. This model no longer works since consumers are not interested in hearing about the marketing pitch. There is enough choice available to the consumer to successfully avoid such marketing messages. They want to know how the product will solve their problems, which by-the-way are not straightforward any more. What works better is that consumers hear about these products from other consumers who have used them. To this end, the new way to sell is to target a niche market by having "sneezers" spread the "ideavirus" amongst the niche group. Products that are well designed and are talked about a lot are typically the ones that are successful in today's crowded market place.
Social Media platforms provide easier way to recommend products and services that people like. Facebook's LIKE functionality is one such example. Its easier and more widely used compared to the online reviews. However marketers need to keep in mind that social media is not a silver bullet that can somehow compensate for an uninteresting or useless product. It all starts with a product or service that adds value for consumers.
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