The ultimate measure of success is whether people voluntarily recommend you. Marketing can buy attention, but it cannot buy trust. When customers tell friends, when employees persuade peers to join, when partners advocate for you without incentive, you have created something that spreads on its own. This is the difference between pushing a message and pulling people in. Organic advocacy signals that the value delivered exceeds expectation so dramatically that silence feels selfish.

Chasing recommendations forces a discipline that advertising budgets obscure. Every pound spent on polish must be justified by a better experience, not a louder announcement. Investment in product, service, and culture compounds: each interaction either strengthens or erodes the likelihood of a recommendation. Marketing spend, by contrast, is a recurring cost that stops the moment you stop paying. When value is truly above fantastic, distribution becomes a consequence rather than a campaign. The product becomes the marketing.

Links: Visibility precedes recommendation, Commodity markets reward brand, not just quality, Meaning drives innovation beyond tech and business models