My computer’s monitor shuffles between motivating quotes every 15 minutes. A while ago, I found this to be quite powerful for inspiring me and getting me started on my work. However, having same old, same old quotes display on my monitor stops working after a couple of weeks, or months.
Every now and then I look around the web for new quotes to add to my personal kick in the “back” desktop wallpaper. Recently, during such a searching session I came upon two interesting, yet opposing quotes.
Both of the quotes that inspired me are from renowned men:
- Edwin Land, scientist and inventor
- Milan Kundera, Czech writer
In this post, I’ll examine the validity of these quotes and discuss how they relate to freelance marketing.
[Editor's Note: the opinions expressed here are those of the author and not the entire Freelance Folder community.]
Do You Need to Market a Great Product?
According to a quote from Edwin Land, “marketing is what you do when your product is no good.”
For example, the success of Apple’s products seems to prove this point. Apple products seem to practically sell themselves. I also personally think this statement is perfectly true.
When your product or service is very good, you don’t really have to market it a lot because people will gladly talk about it to their friends, partners etc. For example, a lot of PC users say that we, Macintosh users, are more fans than customers of Apple. And we do talk about how cool our Macs are…
Is Marketing a Vital Part of a Freelance Business?
According to a quote from Milan Kundera, “Business has only two functions–marketing and innovation.”
I personally agree with this quote too. Why? Because I am a perfectionist and number one thing I want to do throughout my life is to innovate and discover new ways of doing my job done and helping my clients in the best way possible!
But, the above quote states that there’s another side to any business, besides creating innovative products and services. That side is marketing. This leads us to a paradox–you do marketing when your product is no good, but you should also market your innovative products and services.
Why would you do that? Why would you try to market something that’s innovative unless it is no good? And then it wouldn’t be innovative, would it?
So what do you think? Who’s right? Were they both possibly wrong? Any other ideas?
Let me point out one other idea.
Let the Crowd be the Judge
Isaac Newton said the following: “If I had seen further than others, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” Impressive, right? But, how does that apply to our discussion?
To me this means that it’s best to be part of the innovation process. This way you’re on top of the wave. Don’t wait for technology to catch up to you because you’ll end up on the back side of the wave.
But, how do we stay on top of the wave? We do that by being in the crowd, because the crowd creates the ecosystem from which innovation emerges. The crowd provides the giants Newton was talking about. We need to stay focused, sharp and see what ideas pass before us, join and help others. This way we get a grasp of what people around us are capable of, or we may find a way to get to people who are capable of great things. Moreover, we can meet people that can help us improve and innovate. We can find our giants!
Innovation is hard work, requires hundreds or thousands of hours of work and we need something to drive us through our research and practice. We need to be open and share what we think and what we have even if it is our darkest secret. By means of internet and social media, hundreds, thousands, millions may help us improve. And once we have something that’s just a bit . . . great, the information about our product or service will go viral without us doing anything. People will talk about us and our services or products. They will do our marketing for free, just like Apple fans do.
The crowd will fuel our desire to innovate and do the marketing for us, so do we need marketing when we innovate by using the worldwide crowd around us? Were Edwin Land and Milan Kundera wrong and Newton right?
What About You?
What are your thoughts on the importance of marketing? Do you have favorite quotes that inspire you to work better?
Share your thoughts in the comments.
Image by ryan_franklin_az
Related posts:
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar