"the glamour of paid advertising is a total illusion"<p>Not quite. What appeals about paid marketing is very simple: definable, scalable success.<p>"word of mouth generates more than twice the sales of paid advertising in categories as diverse as skincare and mobile phones."<p>While I cannot attest to this being true or false, I can say that word of paid marketing can have a very appealing success rate.<p>For example, after 5 years of marketing online with my own money I can say the following:<p>1. 73% of all campaigns failed<p>2. 22% of all campaigns that did <i>not</i> fail became a moderately profitable success (~50-100% ROI)<p>3. 5% of all campaigns became absolute smash hits, earning over their lifetimes well past many times the investment I made to find them.<p>(NOTE: ROI for this example means the amount invested to test & optimize the campaign at the start ($1k-$10k) as opposed to the actual ROI of earnings over time, which is entirely different)<p>With a 5% smash hit rate - and a 27% success rate, that is a pretty damn good risk factor. This isn't to say that word of mouth doesn't work - it most certainly does - but paid advertising definitely has its place.<p>If you've got your wits about you, use paid to jump start word of mouth, and capitalize on word of mouth with paid. There is a myriad of opportunity and I would not leave either one out of the mix.