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This is marketing by Seth Godin

This is marketing by Seth Godin

by Parker · 96 things on Twos

Who can you help?
Marketing is the act of making change happen. Making is insufficient. You haven’t made an impact until you’ve changed someone
You can create and the relieve tension by establishing cultural norms
How to know if you have a marketing problem
You aren’t busy enough
Your ideas aren’t spreading
The community around you isn’t what it could be
If you see a way to make things better, you now have a marketing problem
Your story has to resonate with the listener, to tell them something they’ve been waiting to hear, something they’re open to believing. It has to invite them on a journey where a change might happen. And then, if you’ve opened all those doors, it has to solve the problem, to deliver on the promise
Better isn’t only up to you. Better is the change we see when the market embraces what we’re offering
Sharing your path to better is called marketing, and you can do it. We all can
Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem
You can learn to see how human beings dream, decide, and act
Marketing in 5 steps
Invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution worth talking about
Design and build it in a way you get a few people will particularly benefit from and care about
Tell a story that matches the built-in narrative and dreams of that tiny group of people, the smallest viable market
Spread the word
Show up—regularly, consistently, and generously, for years and years—to organize and lead and build confidence in the change you seek to make
What you say isn’t nearly as important as what others say about you
The way we make things better is by caring enough about those we serve to imagine the story that they need to hear
People don’t want what you make. The want what it will do for them. They want the way it will make them feel
If you can bring someone belonging, connection, peace of mind, status, or one of the other most desires emotions, you’ve done something worthwhile
Humans are lonely, and they want to be seen and known. People want to be part of something
The promise isn’t the same as a guarantee. It’s more like, “if this works for you, you’re going to discover…”
Instead of talking about prospects and customers, we could call them your “students” instead. Where are they? What will they benefit from learning? Are they open to being taught? What will they tell others?
My product is for people who believe ___. I will focus on people who want ___. I promise that engaging with what I make will help you get ___
Start with empathy to see a real need. Not an invented one, not “How can I start a business?” But, “what would matter here?”
Focus on the smallest viable market: “How few people could find this indispensable and still make it worth doing?”
Match the worldview of the people being served. Show up in the world with a story that they want to hear, told in a language they’re eager to understand
Make it easy to spread. If every member brings in one more member, within a few years, you’ll have more members than you can count
Earn, and keep, the attention and trust of those you serve
Offer ways to go deeper. Instead of looking for members for your work, look for ways to do work for your members
At every step along the way, create and relieve tension as people progress in their journey toward their goals
Show up, often. Do it with humility, and focus on the parts that work
Singer is defined as that moment when you realize that everyone around you has an internal life as rich and as conflicted as yours
Who is it for? The people you seek to serve—what do they believe? What do they want?
Effective marketers don’t begin with a solution. We begin with a group we seek to serve, a problem they seek to solve, and a change they seek to make
Good stories:
Connect us to our purpose and vision for our career or business
Allow us to celebrate our strengths by remembering how we got from there to here
Deepen our understanding of our unique value and what differentiates us in the marketplace
Reinforce our core values
Helps us to act in alignment and make value-based decisions
Encourages us to respond to customers instead of react to the marketplace
Attract customers who want to support businesses that reflect or represent their values
Build brand loyalty and give customers a story to tell
Attract the kind of like-minded employees we want
Help us to stay motivated and continue to do the work we’re proud of
What people want is to be understood and to be served
We don’t do this work because we feel like it in the moment. We do this work, this draining emotional labor, because we’re professionals, and because we want to make change happen
When you’re marketing change, you’re offering a new emotional state, a step closer to the dreams and desires of your customers, not a widget. We sell feelings, status, and connection, not tasks or stuff
Innovative marketers invent new solutions that work with old emotions
Begin with dreams and fears, with emotional states, and with the change your customers seek
They’re buying a feeling. Identify the feeling before you spend time making a wallet
Marketers make change. We change people from one emotional state to another. We take people on a journey; we help them become the person they’ve dreamed of becoming, a little bit at a time
Outline a promise. Choose your extremes, find the people you seek to change, and show up with your offer
Always be seeking, connecting, solving, asserting, believing, seeing, and yes, testing. In other words: always be wrong. Well, not always. Sometimes you’ll be right. But most of the time, you’ll be wrong. That’s okay
Your work to change the culture thrives when the word spreads, and if you want the word to spread, you need to build something that works better when it gets spread
Give fans plenty to talk about and stand for, be patient, and be quirky
I made something that I like, that I thought you’d like. How’d I do? What advice do you have for how I could make it fit your worldview more closely?
Why are the people who don’t choose you correct in their decision to not choose you?
We want to do what other people like us are doing
Business plan
Truth
Describe the world as it is: The market you are entering, the needs that exist, the competitors in your space, technology standards, and how others have succeeded and failed in the past
Assertions
How are you going to change things: you will do X and Y will happen, we will build Z with this much money and in this much time
People
Who is on your team, who is going to join your team; attitudes, abilities, and track record in shipping
Who are the people you are serving? Who are the champions? What do they believe about status? What worldview do they have?
Money
How much do you need, how you will spend it, what cash flow looks like, profit and loss, balance sheets, margins, and exit strategies
What change do I seek to make?
We scan instead of study so they’re asking “what does this remind me of?” So the logo you use, the stories you tell, and the appearance of your work all matter
Your words resonate with us, not only because of what they mean, but because of how they sound and how you use them
Always be wondering, always be testing, always be willing to treat different people differently
Online advertising is the most ignored advertising ever created
The alternative to spam is delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to people who want to get them
Once you earn permission, you can educate. You can take your time and tell a story. Don’t just talk at them; communicate the information that they want
People spread the word because it is important to them. It furthers their goals and permits them to tell a story to themselves that they’re proud of
The best way to earn trust is through action. We remember what you did long after we forget what you said
What will I tell my friends? Why will I tell them?
The one question that every business buyer asks herself is, “what will I tell my boss?” You’re marking the answer to that question: “if you choose this, you can tell your board/investor/boss that you…”
A simple three step narrative for action: the story of self, the story of us, and the story of now
The story of self: when you talk about your transition—from who you used to be to who you became—you are being generous with us. Your actions led to a change, one we can hear and see and understand
The story of us is the kernel of a tribe. Why are we alike? Why should we care? It explains why your story of self is relevant to us, and how we will benefit when we’re part of people like us
The story of now is the critical pivot. It’s the peer pressure of the tribe that will provide the tension for all of us to move forward, together
I was like you. I was in the desert. Then I learned something and now I’m here
The method isn’t to go out and find an agent. The method is to do work so impossibly magical that agents and producers come looking for you
Better opens the door. Better challenges us to see what’s there and begs us to imagine how we could improve on that. Better invites us in and gives us a change to seek dramatic improvement on behalf of those we seek to serve
Good enough isn’t an excuse or a shortcut. Good enough leads to engagement. Engagement leads to trust. Trust gives us a change to see (if we choose to look). And seeing allows us to learn. Learning allows us to make a promise. A promise might earn enrollment
Ship your work. It’s good enough. Then make it better
If you don’t market the change you’d like to contribute, then you’re stealing
Someone will benefit from your better if you get out of your way and market it
This is marketing by Seth Godin Summary