This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See; Seth Godin 2018 book ISBN:0241370140 https://seths.blog/tim/

Excerpts

Intro

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Marketing is all around us. From your very first memories to the moment before you opened this book, you’ve been inundated by marketing

The answer to just about every question about work is really the question, “Who can you help?”

How tall is your sunflower?

This is a book about roots. About anchoring your work deeply in the dreams, desires, and communities of those you seek to serve

The market decides

Marketing is the act of making change happen. Making is insufficient. You haven’t made an impact until you’ve changed someone.

How to know if you have a marketing problem

The community around you isn’t what it could be. The people you care about aren’t achieving everything they hoped.*

Marketing your work is a complaint on the way to better

They say that the best way to complain is to make things better

Chapter One: Not Mass, Not Spam, Not Shameful . . .

The compass points toward trust

The true north, the method that works best, has flipped. Instead of selfish mass, effective marketing now relies on empathy and service

what I can promise you is a compass: a true north. A recursive method that will get better the more you use it.

Marketing is one of our greatest callings. It’s the work of positive change

Marketing is not a battle, and it’s not a war, or even a contest

Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem.

The magic of ads is a trap that keeps us from building a useful story

For a long time, the most efficient way for a commercial enterprise to make large-scale change was simple: buy ads. Ads worked. Ads were a bargain

For most of my lifetime, marketing was advertising. And then it wasn’t true anymore.* Which means you’ll need to become a marketer instead.* That means seeing what others see. Building tension. Aligning with tribes. Creating ideas that spread.*

That means seeing what others see. Building tension. Aligning with tribes. Creating ideas that spread

On getting the word out (precisely the wrong question)

But that’s not marketing, not anymore. And it doesn’t work, not anymore. We’re going to talk about how you’ll be discovered. But it’s the last part, not the first.*

Shameless marketers brought shame to the rest of us

This shameless pursuit of attention at the expense of the truth has driven many ethical and generous marketers to hide their best work, to feel shame about the prospect of being market-driven

The other kind of marketing, the effective kind, is about understanding our customers’ worldview and desires so we can connect with them

The lock and the key

It’s easier to make products and services for the customers you seek to serve than it is to find customers for your products and services

Marketing doesn’t have to be selfish

Marketing is the generous act of helping others become who they seek to become

Case Study: Penguin Magic

magic shop

Today, if you care about magic, you know about Penguin Magic. It’s not the Amazon of magic tricks (because being the Amazon of anything is difficult indeed). Instead, it has grown to significant size by being very different from Amazon and by understanding precisely what its audience wants, knows, and believes

has grown to significant size by being very different from Amazon and by understanding precisely what its audience wants, knows, and believes

the people who run the site realized that professional magicians rarely buy tricks, because they only need ten or twenty regular tricks in their bag

An amateur, on the other hand, always has the same audience (friends and family) and so he’s hooked on constantly changing the routine

There are more than eighty-two thousand product reviews on the site. As a result, the quality of stock on Penguin cycles very rapidly*

To date, they’ve carried more than sixteen thousand different items on their site

Penguin continues to invest in building connections not just with the community (they have an email list of tens of thousands of customers) but across it as well. They’ve hosted three hundred lectures, which have become the TED Talks of magic, as well as going into the field and running nearly a hundred live conventions. The more magicians learn from each other, the more likely that Penguin will do well.*

They’ve hosted three hundred lectures, which have become the TED Talks of magic, as well as going into the field and running nearly a hundred live conventions. The more magicians learn from each other, the more likely that Penguin will do well*

You’re not a cigar-smoking fat cat

Your emergency is not a license to steal my attention. Your insecurity is not a permit to hustle me or my friends. There’s a more effective way. You can do it. It’s not easy, but the steps are well lit*

It’s time

Time to get off the social media merry-go-round

Time to stop making average stuff for average people while hoping you can charge more than a commodity price

Chapter Two: The Marketer Learns to See

In 1983, I was a very young and inexperienced brand manager at Spinnaker, the startup software company I joined after business school. Suddenly, I had millions of dollars in my budget

I wasted all that ad money. The ads didn’t work because the ads were ignored. Somehow, though, the software sold.

Mostly, the journey has involved noticing what works and trying to understand what doesn’t

This approach is simple, but it’s not easy to embrace, because it involves patience, empathy, and respect

You can learn to see how human beings dream, decide, and act. And if you help them become better versions of themselves, the ones they seek to be, you’re a marketer.

Marketing in five steps

Marketing in five steps

The first step is to invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution worth talking about.

The second step is to design and build it in a way that a few people will particularly benefit from and care about

The third step is to tell a story that matches the built-in narrative and dreams of that tiny group of people, the smallest viable market.

The fourth step is the one everyone gets excited about: spread the word.

The last step is often overlooked: show up—regularly, consistently, and generously, for years and years—to organize and lead and build confidence in the change you seek to make

This Is Marketing: An executive summary

Ideas that spread, win. Marketers make change happen: for the smallest viable market, and by delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages that people actually want to get*

Marketers don’t use consumers to solve their company’s problem; they use marketing to solve other people’s problems

Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action.

If you want to make change, begin by making culture. Begin by organizing a tightly knit group. Begin by getting people in sync

Things marketers know

Committed, creative people can change the world

You cannot change everyone; therefore, asking, “Who’s it for?” can focus your actions

Chapter Three: Marketing Changes People Through Stories, Connections, and Experience

Case Study: VisionSpring—Selling glasses to people who need them

village in India

VisionSpring’s strategy is to produce attractive glasses in bulk at a very low cost, perhaps two dollars a pair. And then, working with local traveling salespeople, they bring the glasses to villages around the world, where they sell them for three dollars or so a pair

I was stunned that 65 percent of the people who needed glasses, who knew they needed glasses, and had money to buy glasses would just walk way.

So I changed just one thing about the process. One thing that doubled the percentage of glasses sold.* Here’s what I did: I took all the glasses off the table*

after they put on the sample glasses, we said, “Here are your new glasses. If they work and

Page 18* you like them, please pay us three dollars. If you don’t want them, please give them back.”*

to “Do you want us to take away what you have, or do you want to pay to keep the glasses that are already working for you?”

Desire for gain versus avoidance of loss

To go shopping is to take a risk.

Maybe the people we were trying to serve saw shopping for something new as a threat, not as a fun activity

The way we make things better is by caring enough about those we serve to imagine the story that they need to hear

Consider the SUV

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.

That riff about the quarter-inch drill bit

Theodore Levitt famously said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill bit. They want a quarter-inch hole.

But that doesn’t go nearly far enough. No one wants a hole. What people want is the shelf that will go on the wall once they drill the hole*

Actually, what they want is how they’ll feel once they see how uncluttered everything is, when they put their stuff on the shelf that went on the wall

They also want the satisfaction of knowing they did it themselves. Or perhaps the increase in status they’ll get when their spouse admires the work.*

People don’t want what you make

They want the way it will make them feel. And there aren’t that many feelings to choose from

If you can bring someone belonging, connection, peace of mind, status, or one of the other most desired emotions, you’ve done something worthwhile

Stories, connections, and experiences

We tell stories. Stories that resonate and hold up over time.

We make connections. Humans are lonely, and they want to be seen and known

We create experiences. Using a product, engaging with a service. Making a donation, going to a rally, calling customer service. Each of these actions is part of the story; each builds a little bit of our connection.

Market-driven: Who’s driving the bus?

Every organization—every project—is influenced by a primary driving force.

Some restaurants are chef-driven. Silicon Valley is often tech-driven

Often, organizations are marketing-driven. They’re slick, focused on the offer, the surface shine, the ability to squeeze out one more dollar. I’m not really interested in helping you become marketing-driven, because it’s a dead end.* The alternative is to be market-driven—to hear the market, to listen to it, and even more important, to influence it, to bend it, to make it better.*

The myth of rational choice

Microeconomics is based on a demonstrably false assertion: “The rational agent is assumed to take account of available information

choosing the self-determined best choice of action

In fact, the bet you’d be better off making is: “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.”

Chapter Four: The Smallest Viable Market

What change are you trying to make?

It’s a simple question, but a loaded one, because it implies that you’re responsible. You are an actor with intent, an agent of change, a human being working hard to change other human beings.

Regardless of what the specifics are, if you’re a marketer, you’re in the business of making change happen. Denying this is a form of hiding; it’s more productive to own it instead

Stumble 1: It’s tempting to pick a grandiose, nearly impossible change: “I want to change the face of music education and make it a top priority across the country.”

Perhaps it makes more sense to begin with a hurdle you can leap. Perhaps it makes sense to be very specific about the change you seek to make, and to make it happen

Stumble 2: You want to defend what you’re already doing, which is selling what you’ve already been charged with selling. So you reverse-engineer a “change” that matches that thing, and you load it up with buzzwords that mean nothing to anyone.

What promise are you making?

If you do X, you will get Y.” That promise is often hidden

The promise isn’t the same as a guarantee. It’s more like, “If this works for you, you’re going to discover . . .”

“They laughed when I sat down at the piano . . . but when I began to play . . .” is a promise about status. “Roll Tide!” is a promise about dominance.* “Choosy mothers choose Jif,” is a promise about status and respect.*

Your promise is directly connected to the change you seek to make

Who are you seeking to change?

it would be really helpful if you had some way to group them together. Do they share a belief? A geography? A demographic, or, more likely, a psychographic?

Throughout this book, we’ll return to this essential question: “Who’s it for?”

Starbucks didn’t try to sell coffee to people who bought from Dunkin’, and vice versa

the real distinction wasn’t external but internal. Starbucks set out to serve someone with a very precise set of beliefs about coffee, time, money, community, opportunity, and luxury—and by obsessing over this group of someones, Starbucks built a brand for the ages

Starbucks set out to serve someone with a very precise set of beliefs about coffee, time, money, community, opportunity, and luxury—and by obsessing over this group of someones, Starbucks built a brand for the ages

Worldviews and personas

If you have to choose a thousand people to become your true fans, who should you choose?

Begin by choosing people based on what they dream of, believe, and want, not based on what they look like. In other words, use psychographics instead of demographics

you can group them based on the stories they tell themselves. Cognitive linguist George Lakoff calls these clumps worldviews. A worldview is the shortcut, the lens each of us uses when we see the world*

When Ron Johnson was hired as CEO of JCPenney in 2011, one of his first acts was to end the constant stream of discounts and urgent sales that the store was always pitching to its customers. Johnson took that action based on his worldview

he tried to transform JCPenney into his kind of store. As a result, sales plummeted by more than 50 percent

he abandoned Penney’s true fans: people who loved the sport of bargain hunting. Or the urgency.

A convenient shortcut in this exercise is to identify the different personas we might encounter

Everyone has a problem, a desire, and a narrative. Who will you seek to serve?*

Forcing a focus

The relentless pursuit of mass will make you boring, because mass means average

Begin instead with the smallest viable market. What’s the minimum number of people you would need to influence to make it worth the effort?

If you can only delight six hundred people, the best way to begin is by choosing which six hundred people.

Specific is a kind of bravery

what if you committed to the smallest viable audience? What if you were specific about who you were seeking to serve and precisely what change you were trying to make?

Organize your project, your life, and your organization around the minimum. What’s the smallest market you can survive on?

Find a position on the map where you, and you alone, are the perfect answer

Lean entrepreneurship is built around the idea of the minimal viable product

What people miss about this idea is the word viable. No fair shipping junk

When we combine these ideas, we can think small and think quickly

Shun the nonbelievers!

Where does love lie?

Clay Shirky understood how community-driven software changes everything: “We have lived in this world where little things are done for love and big things for money. Now we have Wikipedia. Suddenly big things can be done for love.”

The goal of the smallest viable audience is to find people who will understand you and will fall in love with where you hope to take them.

“Winner take all” rarely is

I was talking with two congressional campaign organizers, and they kept talking about getting the message out to everyone

only twenty thousand people voted, which means that in a contested primary, getting five thousand people to the polls is the difference between winning and losing. The district has 724,000 residents; five thousand people is less than 1 percent of that.

A simple one-word transformation

let’s transform how you can describe those you’re changing. Perhaps instead of talking about prospects and customers, we could call them your “students” instead.*

This isn’t the student–teacher relationship of testing and compliance. And it’s not the power dynamic of sexism or racism. It’s the student–mentor relationship of enrollment and choice and care

Coloring the ocean purple

“It’s not for you”

“I made this for you. Not for the other folks, but for you.”

Two sides of the same coin

The comedian’s dilemma

It’s entirely possible that your work isn’t as good as it needs to be. But it’s also possible that you failed to be clear about who it was for in the first place

The simple marketing promise

template, a three-sentence marketing promise you can run with: 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 _________________*

Case Study: The Open Heart Project

Susan Piver was a respected teacher of meditation

she decided to build an online meditation center

A few years later, the sangha has more than twenty thousand members. Most of them get periodic updates and video lessons, and pay nothing for the interactions. Some, though, are more deeply connected. They pay a subscription fee and engage with their teacher (and with each other) as often as every day.

Instead of looking for members for your work, look for ways to do work for your members

Chapter Five: In Search of “Better”

Empathy is at the heart of marketing

Sonder is defined as that moment when you realize that everyone around you has an internal life as rich and as conflicted as yours.

As a marketer, then, we have little chance of doing marketing to others, in insisting that they get with our program, that they realize how hard we’ve worked, how loud the noise is in our heads, how important our cause is

A million-dollar bargain

Thinking about “better”

An Hermès bag is more expensive than a Louis Vuitton bag, which is more expensive than one from Coach. But that doesn’t mean that the Hermès bag is “better.”

What about more subjective categories like “stylish” or “fashionable” or “status”? Suddenly, it’s not linear. Not easy to measure. Not clear at all what better means

Better isn’t up to you

Your job as a marketer is to find a spot on the map with edges that (some) people want to find. Not a selfish, unique selling proposition, done to maximize your market share, but a generous beacon, a signal flare sent up so that people who are looking for you can easily find you. We’re this, not that*

The marketing of dog food

Dog food might be getting more delicious as it gets more expensive, but we actually have no idea. We have no clue whether dogs enjoy it more, because we’re not dogs. But we can be sure that dog owners like it more.* Because dog food is for dog owners.*

understand that there’s almost always a disconnect between performance and appeal

Early adopters are not adapters: They crave the new

Adapters figure out how to get along when the world changes. They’re not happy about it, but they figure it out

The early adopters are different. They are neophiliacs

The neophiliacs are very forgiving of missteps from those who seek to innovate with them, and incredibly unforgiving after the initial thrill of discovery wears off

In your work as a marketer, you’ll be torn between two poles.

An aside about the reptile people who are secretly running things

Roland Imhoff

studying a particular kind of outlier: the conspiracy theorist

Imhoff writes, “Adherence to conspiracy theory might not always be the result of some perceived lack of control, but rather a deep-seated need for uniqueness.”

Each member doesn’t have a unique theory, all alone in a field. Instead, they seek to be part of a small group

That’s not that big a leap from the countless micro-tribes that so many early adopters belong to.

Humility and curiosity

Case Study: Be More Chill—More than one way to make a hit

Two years after almost no one went to see this poorly reviewed musical debut in New Jersey, its soundtrack showed up on the Billboard Top 10

Except for Hamilton, this is the most beloved musical of its time

At a recent café performance and meet and greet in New York (the meet and greet lasted for several hours), fans came from all over the world to meet the creators. And, just as important, each other

What’s a car for?

More specifically, what’s a teenager’s first car for?

For the teenager, a car enables a change from dependent child to independent adult. That’s a shift in status, in perception, and in power*

Too many choices

Surrounded by this tsunami of choice, most of it offered by folks who are simply selfish, the consumer has made an obvious choice. Walk away

Positioning as a service

Marketers can choose to stand for something

The method: draw a simple XY grid. Every available alternative can be graphed on the grid*

For each axis, choose something that people care about

The magic of the XY positioning of extremes is that it clarifies that each option might be appropriate, depending on what you seek

Can you see how this chart would be totally different if the axes were changed to convenience, cost, environmental impact, or scalability?

as marketing pioneers Jack Trout and Al Ries pushed it further, challenging marketers to position the competition into a corner while you worked to keep a spot to yourself.

This is all fine, but it doesn’t hold up over time, not in a hyper-competitive world. Instead, we can think of the quest for the edges as: Claims that are true, that we continually double down on in all our actions.* Claims that are generous, that exist as a service to the customer.*

Choose your axes, choose your future

build your own quadrant. To find two axes that have been overlooked

So many choices

If you could only pick one brand to put next to each of the following emotions, one brand that you’d choose to help you feel a certain way, which brand would you pick?

People are waiting for you

Your freedom

The most frustrated marketers I know are the ones who take it as a given that because they are in industry x, they have no freedom

There are so many other ways to make an impact and earn trust.

The freedom of better

After the supermarket took off, it got harder to justify the work of the milkman

we can all take advantage of the huge shifts in what it takes to do what we used to do (it’s all at our fingertips now, right?) and use that leverage to redefine better. Because better is what our market is waiting for.*

better is what our market is waiting for

Consider the real estate broker

If the goal is to defend the status quo, to be a chokepoint, it’s going to require an exhausting sprint, one that tries to keep ahead of an ever-quickening technology and information flow. But what would better look like? Not for you, but for the customer?*

If the goal is to defend the status quo, to be a chokepoint, it’s going to require an exhausting sprint

But what would better look like? Not for you, but for the customer?

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

One last thing about sonder

We’re not faking it. Your customers aren’t faking it. Those who prefer your competition aren’t either

If we can accept that people have embraced who they have become, it gets a lot easier to dance with them.

If we can accept that people have embraced who they have become, it gets a lot easier to dance with them. Not transform them, not get them to admit that they were wrong. Simply to dance with them, to have a chance to connect with them, to add our story to what they see and add our beliefs to what they hear.

Chapter Six: Beyond Commodities

Problem first

Chapter Fifteen: Reaching the Right People

Goals, strategy, and tactics

Reaching the Right People

Goals, strategy, and tactics