That's a pretty hard question to answer. the point to the fact is that ICO is not the tool for any business.
Like everything else in the crypto industry, ICO is a tool for quickly raising money.
From my point of view, the most important factor contributed to an ICO's success must be timing and good communication. It can be done by setting up effective marketing strategy on social media like FB, twitter, even bitcointalk forum and so on
Agree with you, marketing genius is required. For example, Luna Used a telegram channel to tremendous effect with more than 10k telegram users, while Dateat has advertised their project on Facebook and twitter.
However, scams every corner and coins blowing up daily.