Is your Company Market Driven or Product Driven?

The battle between Marketers and Engineers has been going on for a while, Engineers claim that building the best product is enough to succeed, and Marketers claim that understand the external forces (competitors, customers, needs) is the solution.

Update: saw an interesting tweet from tomob: “@jowyang – the engineer’s pipe dream = product so good we don’t need sales or marketing”

We’ve seen cases of heavy engineering companies like Google, with little marketing efforts become the most well known brand online. On the other hand, companies like Coke spends a major portion of their corporate budget on Marketing, to become the top brand in the world.

Or, take Apple, which has great products (although it was debated that Sony had a superior MP3 player –but didn’t know how to market it) also does sophisticated brand and emotional branding aimed at a be different lifestyle.

To add color, andrewparadies tweets: “@jowyang I’d argue that it takes a pretty strong combination of both to succeed. Apple has great marketing, but they also make solid product”

Now add social computing, where we companies are using blogs to market their companies, or SalesForce’s Ideas or Uservoice to let customers define how engineering will focus, things start to mix up, the lines blur. In the end, marketers need engineers, and engineers need marketers, but the balance will vary.

With social media, how will your company improve it’s marketing or engineering? Or do things stay the same.

35 Replies to “Is your Company Market Driven or Product Driven?”

  1. Just my two cents – but, use whatever means you can, but success, whether engineering or marketing, lies in building a product that the market wants. Brand loyalty only works so far (i.e. Apple Newton,) but market wants trump all. Social media is only one tool that should be used in gathering market requirements.

  2. If the products/services are high tech – some of the engineering skills are required for design and manufacturing, but both can be outsourced as well. But I tend to agree with Jeremiah’s first comment, web 2.0 enables engineers to by pass traditional marketing, sales and even purchasing and there are examples of that e.g. http://www.willitblend.com/.

    However, meaningful combination of new kind of marketing and new kind of engineering that will add value to consumers, is most likely to succeed. Unfortunately engineering & business schools still keep there areas far apart from each other…

  3. i want to generate income through advert in my newspaper.How do go about it?
    The market is very competitive and tight.

  4. How to market one’s product in Ghana has been come become very challenging because alot of newspaper, radio and TV stations has taking over the market with their sales executives. How do i market my company in this instance.

  5. Here the conapnly like apple has come up with a prodcuts which rules the market and enables customer to purchase it. prodcut is drving the market

  7. Specifically…..what are the different company use market driven,quality..for they competitive advantage..plz..answer..thanks…

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