Marketing
by Seth Godin
How do you sell without shouting?
Seth Godin spent decades watching businesses interrupt strangers with adverts. In This Is Marketing he describes another way. Marketing, he says, is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem, their problem. It starts with two questions. Who is it for, and what is it for?
Hear a sample · read by Laura
Instead of chasing everyone, Godin asks for the smallest group you could serve and still make the work worth doing. Pick them, learn what they want and delight them. Serve a small group so well that they tell others like them, and the idea spreads from there.
That's how Godin sums up culture. Most of us do what the people we identify with do, from the cars we drive to the causes we back. A marketer who wants a change to spread has to show how it fits a group's sense of who they are.
Change starts with tension, the feeling of being left behind or not there yet. Godin says marketers create tension on purpose, then offer a way forward that releases it. He is clear that this is only fair when it helps people get somewhere they already want to go.
Godin says people are always tracking status, in two ways. Some watch dominance, who's up and who's down. Others watch affiliation, who's with whom and who belongs. Work out which one your audience is watching, and you'll know what your product has to say to them.
Change
Marketing is the work of helping people become who they hope to be.
Smallest audience
Pick the smallest group you could truly serve, and make them love what you do.
The shelf
Someone buying a drill wants the shelf on the wall, and how it feels to have put it up.
Empathy
Your buyers see the world differently from you. Start from what they care about.
Status
A lot of buying comes down to status, where someone feels they stand next to others.
A story from the book
Godin quotes Theodore Levitt's old line that people who buy a quarter-inch drill bit really want a quarter-inch hole. Then he keeps going. They want the shelf the hole will hold up, and after that, the way a tidy room makes them feel. That feeling is what you're selling.
One thing to try
Godin offers a three-part marketing promise. My product is for people who believe… I will focus on people who want… I promise that what I make will help you get… Fill in the gaps for your own work before you write another advert.
Knotd has the key ideas from 250+ non-fiction books, each in a few minutes, in plain words. This Is Marketing comes with a Name That Idea round to make it stick.
Get the whole book on KnotdOpen in the appHow do you sell without shouting? Seth Godin spent decades watching businesses interrupt strangers with adverts. In This Is Marketing he describes another way. Marketing, he says, is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem, their problem. It starts with two questions. Who is it for, and what is it for?
The smallest viable audience; People like us do things like this; Tension moves people; Status, up and across.
Godin offers a three-part marketing promise. My product is for people who believe… I will focus on people who want… I promise that what I make will help you get… Fill in the gaps for your own work before you write another advert.
Yes. Knotd has the key ideas from This Is Marketing in a few minutes, in plain words, plus a Name That Idea round to test them. It's one of 250+ non-fiction books in the app.
