When you are creating brand awareness, invest in marketing.
But remember that the service promises you market must be backed up by a great service experience. Some say nothing is worse than marketing, creating demand, and then not delivering a great product. But you can fix that by releasing a better product.
Worse is to market, provide a good product, but deliver bad service. It’s much harder to recover from the memories that creates which cannot be solved by merely releasing “Product 2.0”.
When your service is broken and needs to be fixed, invest to fix the service. And only then invest in so that marketing can tell the story.
When you already have a strong brand, then invest in continued brand presence, and back it up with great service.
The Apple Genius Bar is a terrific example. Watch this video to see how Apple’s marketing and service quality combine to deliver a highly successful brand and highly satisfied customers.
