By Seth Godin
Rating:
4 stars
Editors Foreword:
Seth Godin has taught and inspired millions of entrepreneurs, marketers, leaders, and fans from all walks of life, via his blog, online courses, lectures, and bestselling books. He is the inventor of countless ideas that have made their way into mainstream business language, from Permission Marketing to Purple Cow to Tribes to The Dip.
Now, for the first time, Godin offers the core of his marketing wisdom in one compact, accessible, timeless package. This is Marketing shows you how to do work you’re proud of, whether you’re a tech startup founder, a small business owner, or part of a large corporation.
Great marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problem; they use marketing to solve other people’s problems. Their tactics rely on empathy, connection, and emotional labor instead of attention-stealing ads and spammy email funnels.
No matter what your product or service, this book will help you reframe how it’s presented to the world, in order to meaningfully connect with people who want it. Seth employs his signature blend of insight, observation, and memorable examples to teach you:
* How to build trust and permission with your target market.
* The art of positioning–deciding not only who it’s for, but who it’s not for.
* Why the best way to achieve your goals is to help others become who they want to be.
* Why the old approaches to advertising and branding no longer work.
* The surprising role of tension in any decision to buy (or not).
* How marketing is at its core about the stories we tell ourselves about our social status.
You can do work that matters for people who care. This book shows you the way.
Quotes and Personal Highlights
“Why is Nigerian spam so sloppy? If you’ve gotten an email from a prince offering to split millions of dollars with you, you may have noticed all the misspellings and other telltale clues that it can’t possibly be real.”
“Low price is the last refuge of a marketer who has run out of generous ideas.”
“Sonder is defined as that moment when you realize that everyone around you has an internal life as rich and as conflicted as yours.”
“a generous beacon, a signal flare sent up so that people who are looking for you can easily find you.”
“Who’s it for?”
“Yes, the Internet is a discovery tool, but no, you’re not going to get discovered that way. Instead, you will make your impact by uniting those you seek to serve.”
“You do people a service when you make better things and make it easy to talk about them. The best reason someone talks about you is because they’re actually talking about themselves: “Look at how good my taste is.” Or perhaps, “Look at how good I am at spotting important ideas.”
“You’re not running around grabbing every conceivable lock to try out your key. Instead, you’re finding people (the lock), and since you are curious about their dreams and desires, you will create a key just for them, one they’ll happily trade attention for.”
“Your tactics can make a difference, but your strategy—your commitment to a way of being and a story to be told and a promise to be made—can change everything.”
“A lifeguard doesn’t have to spend much time pitching to the drowning person. When you show up with a life buoy, if the drowning person understands what’s at stake, you don’t have to run ads to get them to hold on to it.”
“All effective education creates tension, because just before you learn something, you’re aware you don’t know it (yet).”
“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. Help us to act in alignment and make value-based decisions. Encourage 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 work we’re proud of.”
“Deep change is difficult, and worth it”
“effective marketing now relies on empathy and service.”
“Everything gets easier when you walk away from the hubris of everyone. Your work is not for everyone. It’s only for those who signed up for the journey.”
“Find a position on the map where you, and you alone, are the perfect answer. Overwhelm this group’s wants and dreams and desires with your care, your attention, and your focus. Make change happen. Change that’s so profound,”
“Find a position on the map where you, and you alone, are the perfect answer. Overwhelm this group’s wants and dreams and desires with your care, your attention, and your focus. Make change happen. Change that’s so profound,”
“If you can bring someone belonging, connection, peace of mind, status, or one of the other most desired emotions, you’ve done something worthwhile. The thing you sell is simply a road to achieve those emotions, and we let everyone down when we focus on the tactics, not the outcomes. Who’s it for and what’s it for are the two questions that guide all of our decisions.”
“If you hesitate to market your offering properly, it’s not that you’re being shy. It’s not that you’re being circumspect. It’s that you’re stealing, because there’s some one who needs to learn from you, engage with you, or buy from you.
“it’s about being a driver of the market, not simply being market-driven.”
“It’s impossible to create work that both matters and pleases everyone.”
“Marketers make change happen: for the smallest viable market, and by delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages that people actually want to get.”
“Marketers make things better by making change happen.”
“Marketing is one of our greatest callings. It’s the work of positive change.”
“Marketing is our quest to make change on behalf of those we serve, and we do it by understanding the irrational forces that drive each of us.”
“Marketing is the act of making change happen. Making is insufficient. You haven’t made an impact until you’ve changed someone.”
“Marketing is the generous act of helping others become who they seek to become. It involves creating honest stories—stories that resonate and spread. Marketers offer solutions, opportunities for humans to solve their problems and move forward.”
“Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem.”
“Marketing, more than a lake or a forest, is the landscape of our modern lives.”
“Organize your project, your life, and your organization around the minimum. What’s the smallest market you can survive on?”
“People don’t remember what they read, what they hear, or even what they see. If they’re lucky, people remember what they do, but they’re not very good at that either.”
“People don’t want what you make They want what it will do for them.”
“Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action. Direct”
“Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action. Direct”
“Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action. Direct”
“Selling ice cream on the beach in the summer is easy. Raising people’s expectations, engaging in their hopes and dreams, helping them see further—that’s the difficult work we signed up for. From now on, your customers know more than you do about your competitors. And so your commodity work, no matter how much effort you put into it, is not enough.”
“Service to the change they seek to make. Willing to tell a story that resonates with a group that they care enough to serve. There could be an overlap. It’s possible that it’s the way you feel right this minute, but it might not be. The version of you on offer might run many layers deep, but it can’t possibly be all of you, all the time.”
“Sooner or later, each of us becomes (for a while) the kind of person who believes in the reptile people that control the earth. We’re seeking our own little pocket of uniqueness.”
“Sooner or later, each of us becomes (for a while) the kind of person who believes in the reptile people that control the earth. We’re seeking our own little pocket of uniqueness.”
“The best marketers are farmers, not hunters. Plant, tend, plow, fertilize, weed, repeat. Let someone else race around after shiny objects.”
“The entire organization works for and with the marketer, because marketing is all of it. What we make, how we make it, who we make it for. It is the effects and the side effects, the pricing and the profit, all at once.”
“The essence of political change is almost always cultural change, and the culture changes horizontally. Person to person. Us to us.”
“the magic was in the guts it took to carefully curate the customers. Choose the people you serve, choose your future.”
“the magic was in the guts it took to carefully curate the customers. Choose the people you serve, choose your future.”
“The relentless pursuit of mass will make you boring, because mass means average, it means the center of the curve, it requires you to offend no one and satisfy everyone.”
“The status quo doesn’t shift because you’re right. It shifts because the culture changes. And the engine of culture is status.”
“The status quo doesn’t shift because you’re right. It shifts because the culture changes. And the engine of culture is status.”
“They say the best way to complain is to make things better.”
“They want the way it will make them feel.”
“They want the way it will make them feel.”
“We made the “doing” easier, which is precisely why we need to outsource that part of our job and focus all our energy onto the hard work of making change happen.”
“We sell feelings, status, and connection, not tasks or stuff.”
“When in doubt, assume that people will act according to their current irrational urges, ignoring information that runs counter to their beliefs, trading long-term for short-term benefits and most of all, being influenced by the culture they identify with.”