Earlier today, John Chow put up a post on his blog, exclaiming that if you build it, they won’t come. This was meant to emphasize a very simple, but very important point: No matter how fantastic your product happens to be, if no one knows about it or if it is not marketed properly, it will never be a success. His post talks specifically about building a successful blog, but the same can be said with just about any product or service.

While I don’t completely agree that “successful blogging is 10% blogging and 90% marketing”, I do agree that far too many people pay far too little attention to the marketing side of things. If you really think about it, ideas like the pet rock are pretty mediocre at best, but they did a fantastic job of convincing everyone that they wanted one. The same can be said about the marketing machine behind children’s toys like Tamagotchi, Furby, and Tickle Me Elmo.

The type and style of marketing will depend largely on the scope of your product/service, the nature of your audience, and the prevailing trends in the marketplace. There are no hard and fast rules as to how you should market your blog, invention, or service, but it is clear that you shouldn’t let advertising and promotion slip out the back of your mind. Yes, you want a quality product, but you also need to ensure that people know about (and want) it.

In Chow’s own words: “What separates John Chow dot Com from the no traffic blog isn’t so much the content. There are tons of small blogs that can write better content than me. However, the best content in the world won’t do you any good if you can’t get people to read it. Building it is not enough. You need to learn how to market it.”