Andrew Chen wrote a very interesting piece called The Law of Sh-tty Clickthroughs. I recommend you read the whole thing before continuing here. Chen goes into great detail to explain just how ineffective banner ads and other marketing methods have become, and he gives some very astute reasons for why it’s happening:

Customers respond to novelty, which inevitably fades.

First-to-market never lasts.

More scale means less qualified customers.

In short, I loved the article. All the way to the last section. Here is Chen’s proposed solution to the problem:

The real solution: Discover the next untapped marketing channel

The 10X solution to solving the Law of Sh-tty Clickthroughs, even momentarily, is to discover the next untapped marketing channel. In addition to doubling down on traditional forms of online advertising like banners, search, and email, it’s important to work hard to get to the next marketing channel while it’s uncontested.

This is certainly a solution to the problem, but I think there’s a better one: Make an excellent product, and then support the crap out of it. I guess I’m suggesting that we’re entering a post-marketing world where people don’t care about how companies tell them they should feel. In response, we need to shift our focus away from traditional channels to focus on what’s really important: the thing we’re making.

Instapaper is famous for doing no marketing, and yet it’s an enormously successful app. The popularity of Sparrow seems largely due to unsolicited reviews and good word of mouth. Amazon.com has become the de facto place to get user reviews and do price comparison shopping – I’d argue that keeps them top-of-mind more than traditional marketing does.

The lasting benefits of “Word of Mouth” have long been acknowledged, but recently that worthy goal has been derailed by a frantic quest for the short-term benefits of “going viral”. The term “viral marketing” is presumably used without realizing the irony that viruses”¦ you know”¦ kill people.

So I’m not saying that you should try to make a video that millions of people watch on YouTube. I’m saying that there is indeed a formula for effective marketing, and it relies on an unending supply of good will from customers. The formula is quite simple, but unfortunately there are no shortcuts. It looks like this: make great products, sell it to people, support it well, and be patient.

And here’s the beauty of this strategy. This “marketing” method isn’t susceptible to all the issues that give traditional marketing channels such a short shelf-life of effectiveness:

• The novelty of a good product that keeps getting better doesn’t fade.
• There is no first-to-market messaging advantage to lose, because your focus is on the product, not the message.
• And finally, more scale means more and more people to talk about your product.

The other benefit? If the product fails, it will fail for the right reason: it’s just not good enough. Which gives you more time to focus on the next product that will be good enough.