User blog comment:Serza5/English Vocaloids - Their Boom?/@comment-5665682-20140717184825/@comment-53539-20140717191305

While I often see "marketing" brought up, Miku never had much marketing to be frank at first. She sold over 40,000 copies in her first year, and it took at a year for most of the marketing to happen that we know on the sclae its at right now. She had 3,000 before any meme took off, and at this point, nothing had really happened except CFM had done what it had always done to promote a vocaloid.

They basically didn't expect Miku to take off as she did. Hence why, "marketing" is something that keeps a item popular, but the reality was Miku got popular originally without most of the marketing that goes on right now. If anything, the Engloids had "better" marketing then she did prior to her release, which brings this whole issue to the root of the problem with saying "market more".

How?

The reason why Miku is popular was the internet memes did all the marketing for CFM, so they only had to come in later to market to make sure she stays popular.

Yes, I understand marketing is a good thing, but my point I made earlier about the cycle of producer leading to more people buying is how Vocaloid established its popularity, pretty much nothing more then that. You can market all you want, but if the thing doesnt take off because no one uses it, how can it become popular. And Big Al was popular for a Engloid among many fans (even though it was still a small fandom) when Sweet Ann had more marketing.

It all falls down to "the best marketing the companies can do is to get people to use their software in the first place". Its sold the My Little Pony; Friendship is Magic series, it sold Minecraft... It also sold Vocaloid and other fandoms like Shantae's have degrees of it going on (proof of Shantae was in her kickstarter which aimed to gather $400,000+ funding, and ended up gathering $800,000+ at the end, basically, her fandom had the task of making or breaking her and they more then made her)... Heck, Bee and Puppycat relied on this as well, though there wasn't so much to this one as others.