Sure, you can buy one of them 'SEO for dummies' type of books, downloaded SEO cheat sheets and followed them to the letter, avail of Google's SEO tool kit, even pay a third-party to do your SEO for you, yet your ranking is still crap.
If so, you might want to look at your brand, your product, take a second look at it, it may not have been the 'the next big thing...' you thought it to be.
How you position your product/app/whatever is also key, you may not be first to market but a with a killer campaign you could outshine your biggest competitors.
If you're just starting out, it would be more tactical to go regional rather than global from the get go, not unless whatever you're selling is unique or at least niche.
If you 'just want a piece of the action' and ride on someone else's unique idea that became a hit, you probably wont rank high either, you are sadly mistaken if you think you're the only one who thought of it.
SEO can only do so much, in the end its about what your selling and how effectively you market it.
