Even if you make the perfect product, you may well have to spend a lot on advertising.
In Fintech, it feels like the first $5 of advertising per customer just goes to persuading them that you're not a scam.
Charities, travel services and perfumes have value propositions often hard to express. Perhaps a perfect communicator could get it across in a short essay, but most rely expensive ads.
There are some domains where customers are well educated & motivated to seek out better products, like consumer electronics & cars, but those are the minority.
I can't disagree with you on charities, since their business is literally begging for money. They're never going to have a "customer" recommending them to friends and family.
Travel and Fintech are products that are for everyone, so there will always be people interested in your stuff and then recommend to their friends if your product is good. Especially for travel, people are always seeking out new "products".
I think it's interesting that you brought up cars. In the past 20 years I've only seen two types of car ads: One is the stylish young woman going on a date, the second type is with young urban adults doing street dance and then the car flashes quickly in the end of the ad. Because advertising is only directed at certain groups. To normal people, these car ads communicate "We hate you" from the car company to the consumer, and would be a net negative for the brand. But since normal people are going to compare price, gas economy and features when buying a car anyway, this brand negativity doesn't mean much.
An interesting feature of car marketing is that - in general - it only targets new car buyers. These people are a relatively small segment of the driving population.
I wonder whether those groups you describe disproportionately purchase mass market new cars.
Those groups can mostly amount to less than 10% of prospective new car buyers, if I'm allowed to speculate. I think that almost everybody who is in the market for a new car will know several persons to give them recommendations and advice. So the ads will only be targeting some people who have a lot of disposable money and few real friends to help them choose a car, and no understanding to compare cars themselves. Maybe the children of rich careerists?
Or it could be that the advertisement and media industry have their heads too far up their own asses to care what they're doing. It certainly seems like this sometimes, when huge brands can destroy themselves permanently in a matter of days with out of touch advertising.
In Fintech, it feels like the first $5 of advertising per customer just goes to persuading them that you're not a scam.
Charities, travel services and perfumes have value propositions often hard to express. Perhaps a perfect communicator could get it across in a short essay, but most rely expensive ads.
There are some domains where customers are well educated & motivated to seek out better products, like consumer electronics & cars, but those are the minority.