SETH GODIN: 9 Tips On Creating A Remarkable Product

In the past, effective marketing could sell even the most ordinary product or service. But that era is over. Now you actually have to create something that's remarkable.

In Seth Godin's book, "Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable," he describes remarkable as "something worth talking about. Worth noticing. Exceptional. New. Interesting. It's a Purple Cow. Boring stuff is invisible. It's a brown cow."

And here are the Tips:

1. Create demand by making your product an outlier: "super-fast or super-slow, very exclusive or very cheap, very big or very small". Godin says to "go for the edges. Challenge yourself and your team to describe what those edges are, and then test which edge is most likely to deliver the marketing and financial results you seek."
2. Playing it safe is the riskiest strategy of all. "In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible"
3. When something's not going to work, recognize the sunk costs and move on. Instead of investing in a dying product, take profits and reinvest them in building something new."
4. Instead of trying to sell to the masses, focus on grabbing the attention of "the sneezers," the early adopters who will accept your product first.
5. "The Sneezers" will eventually enable your idea to "migrate to the rest of the masses".
6. It's easier to be remarkable during an economic downturn because everyone else is too afraid to test the waters. "Since just about everyone else if petrified of the [Purple] Cow, you can be remarkable with even less effort. If successful new products are the ones that stand out, and most people desire not to stand out, you're set!"
7. You don't have to be a genius to create a hit product, but you do need to have the right mindset.
8. If you've tried all outlets and it doesn't take off, then figure out a way to distribute it more cheaply. "If you could build a competitor that had costs that were 30 percent lower than yours, could you do it? If you could, why don't you?".
9. Once you've created a hit, it's time to launch a new remarkable product.  "Do it again (to the same audience), but also assume what was remarkable last time won't be so remarkable this time."                                                                              

Source: Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable