Your world vs. the world
Jerry reminds me of a story from the launch of the Permission Marketing book.
I recall having a conversation with the marketing folks at Simon & Schuster. I complained that I had just returned from a road trip and didn’t see the book in a single airport book store. I insisted that business travelers were the ideal audience. They came back to me with a simple request: tell me where you or Seth were going to be flying and they would make sure that the book was in the bookstore in that airport…
So often, you are not the customer for your product. Yet you market it as if you were. Showing up in your world (or the board's world your staff's world) is not nearly as important as showing up in the world of the person you're actually trying to reach.
Creating a Potemkin Village (online or off) in which people who know you see your product pales in comparison with being present in the world where your customers live.