Well, the linked article points out that Excel's engineers came up with a new, better, and much faster way of doing recalculation than Visicalc and 1-2-3 had at that point -- and it was arguably the first spreadsheet program built for the GUI era. Both of those things were new features, and they really mattered. Excel didn't win just based on marketing alone.
the same people who designed and built Microsoft Multiplan (a dud if there ever was one) also went on to create Excel, an odyssey that started in 1983, and that version was created for an early version of Windows that didn't get any traction, and then Excel was rebuilt for the Mac, so that's v2 (3 if you count Multiplan), and then when recreated again it finally took off after many years with the success of Microsoft Windows 3.0 starting in 1990.
Excel only won from the years of longevity provided by a deep pockets company with a vested interest in extending its monopoly, with a little help from Lotus who really dropped the ball on the switchover to GUIs
