Which is more important: making a great product or doing effective marketing?
Hello, Product Hunt! đ
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).â¨I think the time and money needed to create a good product have significantly decreased thanks to various SaaS programs.
However, I still donât have any references to introduce to you (đš).â¨I feel like Iâve 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! đ
).
Making a good product and promoting it are both important, and itâs 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
Marketing.
Distribution determines winners and losers.
The product is obvious vital... but if you don't have water flowing through your property everybody dies.
Graphify
@matt__mcdonagh Especially, because your product can be replaces. Not having good marketing, means not getting any customers.
@matt__mcdonagh any tips for doing marketing as a solo indie maker?
Iâm currently building Lvlpedia. Still figuring things out, especially on the marketing side, so any help or advice would mean a lot! đ
Appreciate yâall in advance đ
@ian_tirta Hey Ian, I feel youâmarketing can feel like a whole second startup! I'm prepping to launch PageX, a Chrome extension for SEO/content folks, and I'm leaning hard on community-driven channels like Product Hunt (shoutout to this awesome space đŤś).
Itâs been a mix of figuring things out, sharing openly, and hoping to get better one post at a time. Iâll definitely need support when the launch goes live soonâwould love to stay in touch and cheer each other on! đ
@ian_tirta Study (or hire) how to create a winnign landing page that converts. Creating that with strategy in mind helps you with all the other marketing efforts you'll do.
Graphify
Iâd say itâs 70% marketing, 30% product, at least in the early days. Later on, the product has to improve because people wonât stick around otherwise. But at the beginning, most users are just happy the product exists and solves something for them, even if itâs not perfect yet. Without marketing, theyâd never even find it in the first place.
@hussein_r I worked hard on this, but I can't reach the users.
I just want to hear real user feedback instead of fake numbers.
Graphify
@mattt_lim I get that, real feedback beats fake numbers every time. More happy users = better real numbers in the long run. Whatâs the app or tool youâve built, and whatâs it about? And which marketing channels have you tried so far? Maybe I can help a bit better if I know more about your context đ
@hussein_r The project that will be launched soon is still in the stage of developing a marketing strategy, so I haven't tried anything yet.
I really appreciate your offer to help. đĽ°đ
Let me explain my project.
1. Main target:
- freelancers working alone, vibe coders, digital nomads, indie makers, etc.
2. Pain points:
- Irregular work patterns â the boundary between life and work becomes blurred.
- Loneliness â there are no colleagues.
3. MVP solution:
- Provides a work record dashboard.
- Allows finding work patterns through work records.
- Enables communication with colleagues around you.
4. MVP marketing:
- Brand message - stack your work, discover new balance.
- No marketing strategy.
Yes.
Product Hunt
@chrismessina Agreed. I actually think making a great product and positioning it and marketing it well are very closely related. There's more overlap than most people think. Building a great product involves seeing it through the eyes of users. That's also what great marketing is.
@chrismessina Agreed here too. I think it's not about which outweighs the other. The point should be how to make product great AND spread it effectively.
@chrismessina I completely agree.
Finding something important is a pointless argument. However, it seems like they are looking for the cause of failure in marketing due to a lack of understanding. That's a bad habit.
You can have the best product ever, if you don't brand it...
Nothing will happen :)
1st MVP + superb marketing. Building is easy now with AI - distribution is 10x harder. Even a simple product wins if people see it. For indie makers, marketing is everything. ;)
@viriava Yes, I completely think so too.
minimalist phone: creating folders
Distribution of a great product :)
@ben_griese hi!
Looks like the post is still not being displayed?! Of course, I didn't expect it to improve immediately. I was going to wait and see, but I still wanted to let you know. (For the last time...)
Product Hunt
@mattt_lim hi Mattt â all forum posts are subject to review. It may take a moment while our team works on other tasks.
I know there are n number of resources available currently to learn marketing. Still I am greedy (for say curious) enough to ask for 'The resources' (courses, blogs, tools etc.), which you have tried in your journey as 'Indie marketers'?
I agree with you @mattt_lim , I've seen great products die without a Marketing. I've seen stupid products doing great with right Marketing.
@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, Iâm definitely feeling the weight of getting it in front of the right eyes. Itâs not just about building anymore, itâs about making sure the right people find it and know its worth.
Iâve been learning a lot from this community, and Iâd love to hear how others in the PH fam have dealt with marketing in the early daysâespecially when youâre 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_ayyangar 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_patil8 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_lee "Good products are good marketing."
That's right, I've thought this way for years.â¨But growth feels slow, and Iâm getting tired of waiting.â¨In the end, is it really that "speed = money"?
@mattt_lim 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.
This is a GREAT question!!!!
There's 4 ways to make money in a business:
Acquire new customers (conversion / ROAS)
Charge more (ASP)
Keep existing customers (retention / churn)
Expand existing users (upsell rate / net retention)
Where you should focus depends on which lever you pull has the highest output and your goals.
If you want to make as much money as possible in a big market, then you may just want to plow money into marketing and try to get as many people to use the thing as possible. If you want to raise money or sell the company, then showing great retention and user experience illustrates a massive opportunity to invest in marketing since you know you'll be able to keep the customers long-term.
If you have a recurring revenue business and by making a small tweak, you're able to radically improve retention, then that will have lasting and compounding effects. Retention is the best thing you can do to have the highest ROI when you have a great customer acquistion mechanism.
IF I HAD TO PICK A SIDE, I'd say the simple answer (assuming you're in a large market) is MARKETING.
I know many founders who are able to create INCREDIBLE products, but no one knows about them and then they die. Then you have these 18-year old scammers who are incredible marketers but then have garbage offerings on the back end and still manage to make more money than the high quality founder has ever dreamed of.
Then you have founders who had a mediocre product, went viral, then used all the customer feedback and revenue to plow money into development and create something amazing.
We work with many influencers in my current role and they all want to get into some sort of proprietary software company because it has recurring revenue and high margins. They know they can grow anything with their following. Then we know many founders who want to partner with an influencer because they know that influencer can drive them traffic.
The point is that it if you have an amazing product and no one knows about it, it's worthless and if you have a terrible product with amazing marketing, you'll likely make a lot of money.
So for startups, marketing and for mature businesses, retention.
Hope this is helpful!!!
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.