Ep. 155 Why Great Products Don't Sell (And What Actually Makes Brands Stand Out)

Trevor: I was talking to a founder and she was telling me, Hey, I'm really struggling to win right now. Like I have the best product on the market and I cannot win. But her products, her ingredients are significantly better, right? Because everyone says that. Cleanest, healthiest, the best. Best. Yeah, everyone is using these terms. And so it one for one, she's in a very crowded space. And I'm looking at it and I'm like, yeah, this is really cool, but I would never look at this and say, I'm gonna buy this. Nowadays, it's not good enough just to be good. You have all the good. Like you're checking the boxes when you're talking about the natural ingredients and how it's good for families and kids and whatever. Like you're good, but like that is now just table stakes. Having a good product is just table stakes.

Mark: Like people want to know like why they should spend their money on something for their kid. How is this gonna be worth it?

unknown: Yeah.

Trevor: Yo, what's going on, everybody? Welcome to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. With me as always, it's Mark Goldhart, my co-host. How are you, Mark Goldhart? I'm great. Tired. Tired.

Mark: We got a newborn.

Trevor: That's true. That's just all you needed to say.

Mark: It's a little rough right now.

Trevor: Is he not a great sleeper?

Mark: I mean, he's fine, but he's like five weeks. Yeah.

Trevor: Like three hours on?

Mark: Yeah, you know. 20 minutes off. Yeah. Uh we love him.

Trevor: Is he still in the room with you guys?

Mark: Oh yeah.

Trevor: Yeah. Yeah. When does that stop for you guys?

Mark: Uh too late. Probably.

Trevor: Okay.

Mark: I don't know. I can't even remember. Probably what it was. 18 months?

Trevor: Really? Probably. Maybe I need to ask my wife. I have a bassinet. We are maybe like five months. But maybe I'm way wrong.

Mark: We're not co-sleepers, but we have like this bassinet that's like right.

Trevor: Yeah, yeah. Like sits next to your wife's side. Yeah. Yeah, that's how we are too. My wife remembers a lot of stuff like that, and I do not. Well, it goes by fast. So I wonder, I wonder, like, I I I wouldn't actually be surprised if she's like, oh yeah, we're like we're like 18 months too. But in my brain, it's like four or five months, maybe. Maybe even less. Three to five months would be my guess.

Mark: Yeah, one once it's over, it's over, and then you forget.

Trevor: Kids are liking liking him. Oh yeah, yeah.

Mark: He's uh No jealousy? No. That's nice. No, he's a fan favorite. It helps that our three-year-old thinks that it's her baby. Yeah. Um But man, it's just the we're just in the death march of summer.

Trevor: Yeah, we're in the third game. In fact, we were just talking, this may be our last episode for the summer.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah.

Trevor: Because life is crazy between family and summer and client work and people taking vacations and other people having to fill like this at the time everyone's taking vacations, so we're doing a lot more than we nor than we normally do. You know?

Mark: Yes. So it's feeling summer's always a little weird.

Trevor: Yeah, and I was just remembering. We do always take a break, I'm pretty sure in the summer. Yeah, we do. And I didn't even think about it. This may be the last episode.

Mark: Not forever. Yeah. But for now. We'll see. Um just a little break.

Trevor: Yeah. Tiny little break.

Mark: But the good news.

Trevor: The good news is this is a banger.

Mark: Yeah, there's gonna be a banger.

Trevor: Yeah.

Mark: We're gonna talk about what everyone is probably struggling to do right now.

Trevor: Yes. Um I think I'm just gonna use this example. I was talking to a founder, and she was telling me, hey, I'm really struggling to win right now. Like sales, like I have I have the best product on the market, um, and I cannot win. And she referenced a couple competitors who had almost an identical product, but she says, Hey, for let's say it's in the the health and beauty world, that her products, her ingredients are significantly better, which is always a challenging thing to say, right? Because everyone says that cleanest, healthiest, the best, best, most natural, you know. So organic. Yeah, everyone is using these terms. And so it one for one, she's in a very crowded space. Um, and so as as we're walking through her numbers and we're talking, and and I'm looking at it, and I'm like, yeah, this is really cool, but I would never look at this and say, I'm gonna buy this. Just because to me it looks very similar to other things. And I know about these two brands that do it who have more clout, they've been around longer, so I'm gonna just naturally trust these brands, for example. So I asked her the question, I said, What, why are you doing this? Like, what made you decide to do this? And she was like, Oh, I don't know anything about marketing, I don't know anything about product development. I'm like, Okay, that's fine, but what like what was the rationale behind this? And she was like, Oh, I'm actually a uh, you know, we're making stuff up. I'm actually actually a nutritional therapist. Um, I have all of these degrees, I deal with people who have these chronic illnesses. And so I and especially in the kid space, and so I needed to build something. I I as after doing all this research, after seeing thousands of patients, there was nothing that solved these patients' problems. So I built it.

Mark: And you're like, wow.

Trevor: And so I jumped on her Instagram and on her website, and I I said, Hey, the only place I can see maybe a quarter of this story is on your about us section of your website, which most people don't go to.

Mark: Nobody goes to.

Trevor: And so I just asked, why aren't you doing like, why aren't you talking about this? Because once she told me her story and all that stuff, I was like, Oh, all of a sudden I'm immediately gonna tell my wife about this brand, because it was the type of stuff my wife would buy. So immediately I texted my wife, like, hey, go check this out. Right? But it was because all of a sudden I had understood this person is an expert in this world and she's gone through all this pain and suffering, or other people that she's worked with have gone through pain and suffering. So my my conversation I ended up having with her was you know, we we're in such a uh there's so much going on on the internet right now. So no longer is competition like Nike versus Adidas or New Balance, it's Nike versus content creators who are getting more attention than Nike. Right? So your competitor isn't just Adidas, your competitor is Jake Paul who gets attention for athletes. Right?

Mark: I mean your competit I mean Well, yeah, the way I would f yeah, I I like I don't disagree with what you're saying, but the way I would frame this paradigm shift is you know, you've talked about this before on the podcast too. It it's more of traditional advertising. You had your TV shows, for example, and then you had commercials. And so but now what do people do at night? Well, they might watch TV shows, they might be on Netflix, they might be on their phone, they might be on a walk. Like there's five, six, seven different places for them now to consume media.

Trevor: Yes.

Mark: Where in the past there was one. It was the newspaper, TV radio. TV radio. Or so three, sorry. Yeah. But mainly like TV would be like your big advertisements of you know what we considered like advertising back in, you know, when we were growing up. But now it's everywhere. So now you're competing with so like with Nike, so like to your point, I just think it's the mediums that you're competing in now. It's like you're now competing with Nike and Facebook. Like Facebook is no longer just a bunch of mom pa shops back in 2014 who jumped on it. Yeah. Yeah. You're you're com you're trying to compete with everybody all the time, and the attention of people whose attention is divided between five different apps, three different streaming platforms. Totally. Five different sporting events. Yeah. You know, and whatever else is going on.

Trevor: Yeah. So we say this all the time. Like, it's well, and so you and you take that and then you add the fact that it's never been easier to start a business.

Mark: Anyone doesn't had more competition.

Trevor: Yeah. So it's like 2016, 2012, whatever you want to call it, never easier to stand out because of the mediums.

Mark: Yeah, if you were I mean, if you were an early adopter on Instagram, you were an influencer.

Trevor: Never easier, yeah, exactly. Never easier to stand out, never harder to start a business.

Mark: Yeah.

Trevor: And then it's flipped, right? Now, 2026, never easier to start a business, never harder to stand out. So, anyways.

Mark: Remember blogs?

Trevor: Yeah. That was a medium, too. Dude, I remember there was this girl in my high school who like, I'm not gonna say her name, but she is a famous influencer. She was she a blogger? Tens of millions of followers, tens of millions, it makes tens of millions, I mean, wildly rich. Okay. And if you would have known her in high school, and somebody would have been like, she is going to be this as a as just during high school.

Mark: Just because she was like introverted?

Trevor: Yes, she was introverted, she was odd. Once again, I'm talking I'm I'm high school from a high schooler's perspective, right? And she is so wildly successful because she was a very early adopter. And she's done a great job. That doesn't like she is obviously just because she's early adopted, but then she has elongated it, right? To elongate that career is is a lot.

Mark: And guess what? It takes something to be an early adopter. A hundred percent. Like so there's not yeah. It's not like most people didn't do it.

Trevor: You they did. I didn't. So anyways. Anyways, so I'm telling this, I tell this woman, I said, listen, you're like nowadays, it's not good enough just to be good. You have all the good, like you're checking the boxes when you're talking about the natural ingredients and how it's good for families and kids and whatever. Like, you're good, but like that is now just table stakes. Having a good product is just table stakes. You need to add the different piece to it. So, what makes you stand out? What makes you different? And I was telling her, I'm like, a lot of people think it has to be the product. Like, oh, it has to be a snapback hat that makes it easier to snap. Like, it's not always a re-in like a new invention.

Mark: Yeah.

Trevor: It can be difference in several things. And in her case, it was the difference in the why and the story. Hey, I'm an expert in this field. This is why you should listen to me. And when you all of a sudden you go from Well, that goes back to features and benefits.

Mark: Yeah. Right? And then why? The why. Like, I know so the benefits and the why of a story, the story behind a brand, those are emotional connections that you can make with people. Yeah. Where features can be, yeah, but it depends on your ICP. Yeah. So we say this all the time. Like when we're when we're talking with certain clients that are operating in certain types of like product verticals, there are certain ones where you just want to go features. Like that's literally what matters the most. Like it does not matter if you talk about, oh, I'm like a great one would be uh stuff in like the kids space. A lot of people will just talk about like, well, I'm a mom or a dad too. It's like, yeah, so is most people.

Trevor: Right.

Mark: You know, like yeah, uh like people want to know like why they should spend their money on something for their kids going to make that might be even more expensive. Yeah, yeah. How is this gonna be worth it? Yeah, for sure. Because like we can already see clothes, like we know clothes look good and don't look good.

Trevor: Totally. Yeah, 100%. So, yeah, I mean, I mean, r really at the at the end of the day, um I lost my train of thought. What was what was I about to say?

Mark: You're just saying the why of her story was not showcased anywhere, even though it was the most compelling thing about her. Yes, her brand.

Trevor: Exactly. Yes, yeah, it all of a sudden takes it so that her why becomes the differentiator. And so now you have this world of all these brands that are selling better for you products and that don't stand out at all. Right? And now all of a sudden it starts to shrink that world because this person is a valued expert in that field that I am now interested in understanding what she's doing.

Mark: Yeah, don't underestimate in the age of AI that people still want human connection.

Trevor: Totally.

Mark: And that's why that story matters so much, is and when you're an expert, there's validation there too, right? Well, and people are willing to I think this goes with anything in life. It's the reason why people are willing to stop and buy lemonade at a lemonade stand from kids.

Trevor: What do you mean?

Mark: They are willing to pay a premium for something that where the product may or may not be the best if there is an emotional connection or like experience. Oh, I'm also helping this person do something.

Trevor: Yeah.

Mark: So with with that story of like, hey, this person actually cares. Like this person cares, like this kid on the street cares that they're doing something. Yeah. You know, maybe you know, they don't have like a grand vision, but it's like, hey, I'm gonna stop and I'm gonna get something because I can make a difference in this kid's life, but also this kid cares about what they're doing, so like it's okay if it yeah, it's just a starting point. Totally. So I'm willing to pay a premium to help a kid.

Trevor: Yeah.

Mark: And I'm also willing to pay a premium when the company aligns with my values and my life, and I know that they care behind the scenes. It's not just hey, we're uh big corporation. Like we get it, we're all trying to make money.

Trevor: We're proctoring gamble, this is what we're doing.

Mark: Yeah, but it's like I'd rather buy from them than the proctor and gamble sellout over there.

Trevor: That's a really big trend, too, right? Like this people want to support smaller stuff. So yeah, I think that brands um a lot of times you you may have a product that you think, oh my gosh, this is so good. This is such a great product, but I'm not selling, I'm not selling. It's nine times out of ten, it's a distribution issue. And distribution might not necessarily mean I can't get it in front of the right eyes. It just means that you're not putting the right message to get in front of the right eyes. And so I think that um, like I said, I think you can c come up with differentiators by a product. So like what's a let's think of like what's what's a product feature that no like can you think of a good like a good standout thing? Um that's like brand new invention, like a squatty potty.

Mark: Well, not brand new, but like you can talk about Birken stocks. They have a unique feature about them because of the the quirk.

Trevor: Yeah, and then everybody's kind of copied them.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. Tom's shoes. Tom's shoes had a unique selling feature.

Trevor: Yeah, they had a new that was more of like a yeah, a unique selling feature point, right? This, you know, buy and help help other people.

Mark: Kizick, yes, purple, purple mattress.

Trevor: Yeah, these people that come up with a new thing that people haven't seen before, right? Purple has mattress that is cooling technology. Kizzik has shoes that you can slide into and not have to tie, and they help pregnant women and old people and young people, you know, young kids. Um, so product. That's the that's the hardest one, I think, but the easiest one to conceptualize. Oh, if I just create something different, then that's product market fit, right? The second one is the the actual message and the why, which is what we just talked about with this girl, right? She's created a product that there are probably dozens of products like that, but she has the medical accolades, the experience of dealing with kids who struggle with those kinds of things. She has a story, so you do it through the content you produce. I'm selling pretty much the same thing everyone else's, but my content is what's going to make me stand out as a differentiator. And then I think um a third way, uh that not that we need to get into this one, is is through your audience. So I I bring this one up all the time when we had Chris Hall on from the uh on the podcast, he he was the CMO over at Bruce Bolt, which is a baseball glove company. And I remember on the podcast. Batting gloves, yeah, sorry.

Mark: Batting gloves.

Trevor: Batting gloves, thank you. I remember when I had him on the podcast, we had him on the podcast, I was like, okay, so you're like marketing the little league, you know? And he's like, No. Travel teams. We do not market to little leaguers. Which, like, why wouldn't you want little leaguers buying your baseball gloves? And he says, We market to travel ball baseball players because they have the money. There's not that they have the money, but they spend money, like they're already spending so much money to get their kids to play baseball year round that they're always buying the nicest bats, they're buying the nicest mitts, they're buying the nicest training materials, so they're gonna buy these things. And not only that, but those people are a lot more. I mean, I remember he said something, those people are very superstitious. Baseball players are so superstitious, so that if they do well in their gloves, they will never not buy Bruce Wolf Biden gloves because that's how I hit home runs. And they start to like establish those connections. So I thought that was so cool. Like, dad gang is another one, also they're all trendy too.

Mark: So, like totally you get one kid on the team wearing them, and then the whole team wears it, and then the next team wears it.

Trevor: Yeah, but dad dad gang, the hat company is another one, right? Like, they're not going after moms, they could come up with a mom gang, but they're going after new dads, and they're selling hats, and they're they've I think I just saw that they did like Forbes just did something on those guys. They I can't remember, sold a hundred million dollars worth of hats. Not in a year, but I think total, which is just stupid. You know, $35 price point, $42 price point, or something like that.

Mark: But the why? But it's their story.

Trevor: It's the audience.

Mark: This is who this is who the story I would argue the story going back to point to the story creates the audience.

Trevor: Yeah, very much so.

Mark: Yeah.

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Mark: So, yeah, I I think it does. It's because it's like what I what do you identify with? And is it worth it? Like, why is it worth it for people? Like, why would you ever buy a hat from a company? Yeah. There's really like five reasons why you do it. Maybe two reasons, actually. It's a sports team, right? Or it's something that I you identify with on a personal, very personal level.

Trevor: Yeah.

Mark: That's it.

Trevor: It maybe maybe sometimes for a specific physical activity.

Mark: When I when I say hats, I'm speaking bait like baseball hats. Like you're not like I'm not talking like cowboy hats and like hunting.

Trevor: Well, I mean like golf.

Mark: Like sometimes you have a di a certain hat for golf, sometimes a certain hat for tennis, but even the ones you wear for golf, like you're wearing the brand that you identify with.

Trevor: I think that that's so many brands I think never get off the ground because they cannot go, they don't go through an exercise to understand how to differentiate themselves. They think that the product and the idea alone is gonna do it, and that's just not enough because everyone else is doing it. Unless you're a new inventor and you're coming up with something just crazy that's gonna blow people's mind, you're gonna come up with the right story, the right message to differentiate yourself, whether that's through the content or through the audience or through both.

Mark: And nine out of ten times you already have the story, you're just not saying it.

Trevor: Yeah, and and this girl's her reason why I'm like, why don't you do this? And she's like, Oh, I just thought people were sick of hearing it. And I'm like, What do you you know? I don't even see it. And she's like, Yeah, well, I've just told it over and over again. And I'm like, but but we get that way as founders, you know? People are sick of hearing from me. Well, and brands.

Mark: Yeah, totally. You know, they like we work with brands that are in the nine figures, and a lot of times you're like, Why are you like you guys have a story and like we don't even talk about it anymore.

Trevor: You want to know what's one of the craziest things as we've dealt with, so we've we've been we've been dealing with brands that have never made a penny to brands that are doing nine figures. We have not dealt with a ten figure brand yet. Ten figures a billion, right? No.

Mark: No, yeah. No, no, we haven't we have not dealt with billion dollar.

Trevor: But we've dealt with nine-figure brands. What will always what always surprises me is that when you go and talk and name drop one of those brands, and you're like, oh, have you ever heard of so-and-so? They do they're one of the biggest women's clothing lines, and they'll be like, no.

Mark: Most people don't know.

Trevor: And so we and then we're like, I'm so s everyone's heard my story. Everyone's already heard it. And we're talking, I'm you know, you're talking to a brand that's done a million dollars, but then the person who you know, the brand that's doing 600 million, no, you know, no one's heard of them. It's just it's just funny.

Mark: Most Yeah, it is funny. It is funny because even if you are big and successful, nobody knows who you are.

Trevor: Yeah. Unless you are a billion dollar company.

Mark: There's very few, and even then, there's a lot of billion dollar companies that people Don't know about.

Trevor: You are very much probably not a household name. Like you gotta think because even Dr. Squatch, I don't know, because didn't they sell to Unilever for like 1.4? It's not a household name.

Mark: There are people I still talk to who are I'll reference Dr.

Trevor: Squatch and they'll be like, what?

Mark: I think yeah, I think they're in like Walmart now.

Trevor: Same thing with Poppy. Poppy just sold for I want to say like 1.8 billion billion to Pepsi.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Who's Poppy?

Trevor: You know?

Mark: It's it it's interesting. Like, don't think you have if you've said a story until you're blue in the face, if you if you think that, you're still wrong. Yeah. You haven't said it enough. Who's that Simon?

Trevor: Is it Simon Sinek?

Mark: Yeah, start with why.

Trevor: Yeah. I hate that guy. Drives me bonkers.

Mark: But only because he's been repeated to you so many times. Yeah, but like he's got to be. But he's right.

Trevor: But he's been doing that. He's been doing that.

Mark: Start with why for 20 years. 15 years. He's still probably getting booked for Ted.

Trevor: Oh my gosh, yeah. Yeah. I'm sure he's grow I I bet he grows year over year. I bet he's not in down years. Like I still see him everywhere because he says the same four stories over and over and over again.

Mark: So well, if you want to get deep here, every great story is just a repeated theme.

Trevor: Yeah.

Mark: So if you think people have heard it, the answer is guess what? Yeah, they probably have. Yeah. But people like to hear the same stories over and over and over again.

Trevor: And they probably don't remember a certain part of it or you know, whatever. So yeah, I think I I think I don't have much more to say about it.

Mark: But I just think the idea is I think a lot of us Well, the action item is you've got to sit down and if you feel like you're not breaking through the noise, just talk to yourself and try to figure out what is it that makes you unique, your story, your brand unique.

Trevor: Write product, content, slash message, and audience.

Mark: And guess what? If there isn't anything, then think about liquid death.

Trevor: But liquid death did it on their content.

Mark: That's what I mean, though. Is like there was nothing unique about the product. There's nothing unique about those. I mean, I don't know those guys. I'm not this on an individual level. I'm not talking those guys aren't unique. Sure. I'm just saying there wasn't this like big story that everyone was talking about with them, other than just like, oh, they're crazy.

Trevor: Yeah, yeah. Like they're off the wall. Yeah.

Mark: That's such a good one. So if there's nothing unique about you, then you've you're gonna be you're cooked. Unless you look to a liquid death and think about Yeah, it's a water company that's a billion-dollar brand. How how do you do what they did with whatever you're selling? Like how do you just get attention?

Trevor: The most basic product ever.

Mark: And if you're too scared and uh to be a little shameless, yeah, it's probably not gonna work out for you. Yeah. I'm just we're just being honest.

Trevor: But go through the exercise product, content, slash messaging, audience. Start writing things down, see where you differentiate. And don't just do it with yourself, maybe start with yourself, but you eventually have to start asking the people that you're working with around it because you need other people to be like, no, that's not different, you know? So and then key in on that thing that makes you different. Good as table stakes, different is the hardest part about business.

Mark: It is.

Trevor: Okay. Guys, we probably won't see you for a month. The next four weeks. We love you. Thank you for listening. And if we're back sooner than that, that means life is easier for us.

Mark: July is just always crazy. July is crazy. Because we're always out of town, too. God bless July.

Trevor: Fourth of July coming up. By the time you listen to it, you'll be able to do that.

Mark: God bless our troops and gentlemen.

Trevor: Start your engines. Start your engines. Alright. See you guys. Bye. Thank you for listening to the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. If there's a brand campaign strategy or marketing tactic that you want us to review, please DM me at TrevorCrump on Instagram or TikTok or at the Unstoppable Marketer Podcast. And of course, if you got value from this episode or if you like it whatsoever, please make sure you're subscribing, you're liking, you're following, and for sure go leave us a review to let us know that we're doing a good job. We will see you guys next time.