Being the best is overrated. Three times in my career I was on an engineering team that built an objectively best in class product. Three times it failed because the competition out marketed us and/or beat us in the customer service department. Despite them having inferior products.
Don't get me wrong. You need to have a good product. Your product can't be awful but it only needs to be about 80% as good as the competition before you can win in marketing and other ways.
How much of them beating you was marketing and how much was customer service?
World class customer service by itself can be a market beater, even when the product you are backing up is more expensive / lower quality for the same feature set. People like to know that when they have problems, they'll get answers quickly.
2/3 marketing, 2/3 customer service in my case. Which adds up to 4/3 because one of the products was both bad marketing and bad customer service (or rather nonexistent).
> Are you really sure it was that much better than the competition?
In user testing our tool was easier to use. Feature wise we had every feature they had. They were clearly copying us on features (and visa versa) though so I can't say we were "that much" better. We were a couple months ahead of them and, as I said, less buggy and easier to use.
The biggest indicator I have though is how the press handled it. The press coverage for our competition was much better. They would get a full TechChrunch article for a feature we launched months ago and they wouldn't even mention us in the article.
Product needs to be good enough to provide value/solve the customer's problems. Other products may be objectively "better" on some measures, but those measures may not be relevant for all users.
Absolutely true, the whole idea that there is one dominating factor in success is a dead end. Just looking at SaaS: bad marketing means no growth and wasted product, bad product means no retention and wasted marketing.
Having a technically superior product is useless. Having a "better" product (including design, usability, and yes marketing) is what I believe OP was talking about.
customer service is part of the product. Saying you had the better product but other companies beat you on customer service is denying that the customer is paying for capabilities, not software, and that customer service is part and parcel of providing the capability they desire.
Don't get me wrong. You need to have a good product. Your product can't be awful but it only needs to be about 80% as good as the competition before you can win in marketing and other ways.