What I Learned After Starting as a Freelancer | Even if Your Product Is Good, It Won't Sell If It Isn't Communicated
Note: This is a record of my ongoing process of verifying the 0 to 1 phase.
There is a school of thought that says, "If a product is truly good, it doesn't need an explanation."
Honestly, I believe this is different from the truth. In the actual situations I have witnessed, the opposite was almost always the case.
Situations where good things are being made, but aren't being chosen
Food trucks and cafes that are high quality, down to the ingredients. Beauty salons with high technical skills and high-level treatments.
I have seen many such sole proprietors. Yet, customers aren't coming as expected.
The quality of their products and skills is by no means low. The problem was that their quality was not being communicated.
The idea that good products spread naturally is an ideal
The idea that "if it's a truly good product, it will spread through word of mouth" certainly happens in some cases.
But in reality, there is a hurdle to getting the first person to pick it up. If you can't clear that hurdle, it ends before word of mouth can even be generated.
No matter how good a product is, if its existence isn't known, it won't even have the opportunity to be evaluated.
Designing how to communicate is not the same as excessive promotion
Some people view the effort to communicate as "something to compensate for a product's weakness," but I believe that is wrong.
Designing how to communicate is the work of correctly delivering the quality that already exists. It is not about exaggerating, but simply making the existing value visible.
Releasing a product's appeal to the world in a form close to 100%—that is designing how to communicate.
Commitment to ingredients and technical skill in treatments are the same as non-existent if they aren't communicated.
Making good things and communicating them are both necessary. With only one or the other, the quality you worked so hard for will end before it ever reaches anyone.