No hot air marketing please

While reading comments posted to Dennis Howlett's blog, I came across this absolute beauty from Timo Elliott.

Anybody who thinks that marketing involves spitting streams of positive adjectives at people (e.g. “let me tell you about our brand-new, innovative, reliable, scalable, easy-to-use super-duper platform!”) should be shot — or at least made to take support calls from customers.

Spot on.

Far too much marketing consists of nothing more than hot air.

In my book, the best marketing is word of mouth, generated by having a good product or service.

Anything else has a nasty habit of being just guff.

And as someone who has taken support calls from customers in a previous incarnation, I can safely say that no matter how good the product itself is, customers need to learn how to use it. If you can't train them and help them, you'd better watch out, because they won't stay long.