Big Ideas

Seth Godin's "This is Marketing" is not really a book about marketing. It's a deep study of human culture, organizational behavior and human psychology. All of which are critical to understanding marketing. While the book is a loosely strung together collection of ideas thematically united  under the banner of "Marketing" there are some core themes which stood out to me.

Creating Change

Much of the book centers around the idea that what a marketer really does is try to create a change in the world that diverges from the status quo. In order for this change to occur it must be meaningful to the people that it seeks to affect and those people must be willing to engage in that change for it to occur.

The Smallest Viable Market and the Tribe

The way to create a change is to unite and connect people on the basis of a common worldview and thus a willingness to become participants and advocates for the change you seek. This always starts on a small scale and he uses the concept of a tribe to describe this union of people aligned behind a vision for a change. The phrase he uses is, "People like us to do things like this because we believe in X." A marketer is a steward of this tribe and thus must serve it generously and with compassion and humility.

Human Nature Cannot be Ignored

Godin observes that all change must occur within the context of human culture which is an outgrowth of human psychology. People have beliefs about how they can trust other people and organizations in society and they come with existing biases and viewpoints about status and quality. It is a waste of time to try and argue or to be dismissive of these tendencies but instead we should acknowledge them and work with them.

This is a very dense work with a lot of complexity and nuance. Every time I revisit it I discover something new and while the notes below hopefully capture some of the ideas in broad strokes there is still a lot more to be found.

Notes

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

1. Not Mass, Not Spam, Not Shameful

• "Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem."
• "Marketing, the effective kind, is about understanding our customers' worldview and desires so we can connect with them. It's focused on being missed when you're gone, on bringing more than people expect to those who trust us. It seeks volunteers, not victims."
• "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 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."

2. The Marketer Learns to See

• "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."
• Five Steps
• ~"Invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution worth talking about."
• ~"Design and build it in a way that 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."
• "At the heart of our culture is our belief in status, in our self-perceived understanding of our role in any interaction, in where we're going next. We use status roles and our decisions about affiliation and dominion to decide where to go and how to get there"
• "Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust and action."
• "'People like us do things like this' is how each of us understands culture, and marketers engage with this idea every day."
• "If you want to make change, begin by making culture. Begin by organizing a tightly knit group. Begin by getting people in sync."

3. Marketing Changes People Through Stories, Connections, and Experience

• "If you can bring someone belonging, connection, peace of mind, status, or one of the other most desired emotions, you've done something worthwhile."
• Who's it for and what's for are the two questions that guide all our decisions."
• Marketers
• ~"Tell stories - that resonate and hold up over time. Stories that are true, because we made them true with our actions and our products and our services."
• ~"We make connections - humans are lonely, and they want to be seen and known. People want to be part of something."
• ~"We create experiences - we offer experiences with intent, doing them on purpose."
• Marketing Mistakes
• ~Assuming people are well-informed, rational, independent, long-term choice makers
• ~Assuming everyone is like you, knows what you know, wants what you want

4. The Smallest Viable Market

"What change are you trying to make?"

• Stumble 1 - Picking a grandiose, nearly impossible change
• Stumble 2 - You reverse engineer a "change" that matches the thing you're already selling

"What Promise are you Making?"

• "Your promise is directly connected to the change you seek to make, and it's addressed to the people you seek to change."

"Who are you seeking to change?"

• Group people based on a worldview
• This is a common lens through which people perceive the world
• "What's the minimum number of people you would need to influence to make it worth the effort?"
• "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. Loving you is a way of expressing themselves. Becoming part of your movement is an expression of who they are."

"It's not for you"

• "'It's not for you' shows the ability to respect someone enough that you're not going to waste their time, pander to them, or insist that they change their beliefs."
• "I made this for you. Not for the other folks, but for you."

Marketing Promise

• "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 _______."

5. In Search of "Better"

• Better doesn't exist but better for me does.
• Taste matters.
• "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."
• Early adopters like your thing because its new and they don't care it's broken. They like what it says about them that they use something that's new.
• "We're not so much interested in features as we are in the emotions that those features evoke."
• Positioning as mapping yourself on an X,Y axis where you "choose to stand for something"
• ~On each axis choose something that people care about
• ~Put yourself on the extremes of the two axis in any quadrant to firmly define who you serve based on what they care about most
• ~If you find yourself in a crowded quadrant, build a new one using new axis

6. Beyond Commodities

• "Effective marketers don't begin with a solution ... Instead, we begin with a group we seek to serve, a problem they seek to solve, and a change they seek to make."
• In a sea of undifferentiated commodities you take yourself out of a price war by building and earning your story, "the arc of the change you seek to produce."
• Bernadette Jiwa says that good stories ...
• ~"Connect us to your 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 business 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 stay motivated and continue to do work we're proud of."
• "When a human being extends emotional labor to take responsibility - Here I made this - then the door is open to connection and growth."

7. The Canvas of Dreams and Desires

• "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."
• Three things about people:
• ~"People confuse wants and needs."
• ~"They are absolutely terrible at inventing new ways to address those wants."
• ~Marketers "mistakenly believe that everyone wants the same thing."
• Nobody needs your product
• Always be testing - choose your extremes and see if that resonates
• Scrapbooking - don't be afraid to reuse elements of failed projects on new ones
• If you had to charge ten times as much - what would you say to justify that price increase, why would your product/service be worth it

8. More the Who: Seeking the Smallest Viable Market

• "Every very good customer gets you another one."
• "Your best customers become your new salespeople."
• "If you can't succeed in the small, why do you believe will succeed in the large?"
• The people who don't want your stuff are right. It is not for them. "Based on who they are what they want and what they know, everyone is right. Every time."
• "When we find the empathy to say, "I'm sorry, this isn't for your, here's the phone number of my competitor," then we also find the freedom to do work that matters."

9. People Like Us Do Things Like This

• "Everyone always acts in accordance with their internal narratives."
• "You can't get someone to do something that they don't want to do, and most of the time, what people want to do is take action (or not take action) that reinforces their internal narratives."
• "For most of us, though, changing our behavior is driven by our desire to fit in (people like us do things like this) and our perception of our status (affiliation and dominance).
• "The smallest viable market makes sense because it maximizes your change of changing a culture."
• When people make decisions they ask themselves "Do people like me do things like this?"
• "The more specific, the more connected, the tighter the "us", the better."
• "What the marketer, leader, and the organizer must do as their first job is simple: define "us"."
• The work:
• ~"Map and understand the worldview of the culture we seek to change."
• ~"Focus all our energy on this group. Ignore every-one else. Instead, focus on building and living a story that will resonate with the culture we are seeking to change."
• Elite and/or Exclusive
• ~"It's exclusive institutions that change things. We have no control over our elite status, and it can be taken away in an instant."
• ~"Every member is like us. "Sign up for that and you gain status. Walk away and you lost it."
• ~"Work that matters for people who are is the shortest, most direct route to making a difference."

10. Trust and Tension Create Forward Motion

• When offering something you're either playing into a pattern of behavior or breaking a pattern of behavior
• "If you're going to market a pattern interrupt, it will require you to provide the kind of tension that can only be released by being willing to change an ingrained pattern."
• "Launch a new project and, in addition to serving your audience, you'll be breaking something. The very existence of an alternative causes something else to no longer be true."
• "Tension is not the same as fear."
• "Marketers create tension, and forward motion relieves tension."
• Examples of tension:
• ~You're missing out on ...
• ~Times running out for ...
• ~Don't settle for ...

11. Status, Dominance, and Affiliation

• "It's not irrational; status makes it the right choice."
• Status lets us
• ~Status is our position in the social hierarchy
• ~It is perception of that position
• ~Status helps us get what we want
• ~Status gives us the leverage to make change happen
• ~Status is a place to hide
• ~Status can be a gift or a burden
• ~Status creates a narrative that changes our perceived options, alters our choices and undermines (or supports) our future
• ~And the desire to change our status, or to protect it, drives almost everything we do
• Status is:
• ~Always relative
• ~Is in the eye of the beholder
• ~Status attended to is the status that matters
• ~Status has inertia
• ~Status is learned
• ~Shame is the status killer
• Cultural Schism
• ~"The populations that default, in certain settings, to dominion"
• ~"Those that seek affiliation."
• Affiliation and dominion are different ways to measure status
• ~Affiliation is about your social connection
• ~Dominion is about power, control and ownership

12. A Better Business Plan

• Five sections
• ~Truth - "describes the world as it is'
• ~Assertions - "describe how your'e going to change things."
• ~Alternatives
• ~People - "who is the team"
• ~Money
• "a better business plan takes that universal need and makes it specific - describing who and what it's for. It outlines the tension you seek to create, the status roles you're engaging with, and the story you're bringing that will make change happen."

13. Semiotics, Symbols, and Vernacular

• "We scan instead of study"
• "And when we scan, we're asking, 'What does this remind me of?'"
• "We don't care about you, or how hard you worked on it. We want to know if it's for us, and if your'e the real deal."
• "It doesn't matter what you, the marketer who created it, is reminded of. Semiotics doesn't care who made the symbol. The symbol is in the mind of the person looking at it."
• "Send a signal that feels like a sign we already trust, then change it enough to let us know that it's new, and that's yours."
• "We're judging everything, and people are judging us in return. Often, those judgements are biased, incorrect, and inefficient. But denying them doesn't make them disappear."

14. Treat Different People Differently

• "If someone is satisfied with what they have, you're unlikely to have the time or the money to reach out them directly and cause them to become dissatisfied -- that is, interested enough and open enough to changing and become a customer."
• "It's neophiliacs, the folks with a problem that you can solve right now (novelty and tension and the endless search for better), that you can begin with."
• "The best marketers earn enrollment by seeking people who want the change being offered. And they do it by connecting people to others who want the change as well."
• Different people want different things therefore ... "Always be wondering, always be testing, always be willing to treat different people differently. If you don't they'll find someone who will.
• Empower your customers to market for you:
• ~"When you find someone who is adopting your cause, adopt them back. When you find someone who is eager to talk about what you do, give him something to talk about. When you find someone who is itching to become a generous leader, give her the resources to lead."
• Your customers are not all equal, some are worth a lot more than others. You should track this and treat them accordingly.

15. Reaching the Right People

• Benefits to online advertising:
• ~"You can reach people more precisely"
• ~"You can reach people instantly"
• ~"You can measure everything."
• "Online advertising is also the most ignored advertising ever created."
• "Advertising is unearned media"
• Direct vs Brand Marketing
• ~"Direct marketing is action oriented. And it is measured."
• ~"Brand marketing is culturally oriented. And it can't be measured."
• ~"The danger is in being confused" about which is which
• "If you're buying direct marketing ads, measure everything. Compute how much it costs you to earn attention, to get a click, to turn that attention into an order. Direct marketing is action marketing, and if you're not able to measure it, it doesn't count."
• "If you're buying brand marketing ads, be patient. Refuse to measure. Engage with the culture. Focus, by all means, but mostly be consistent and patient. If you can't afford to be consistent and patient, don't pay for brand marketing ads."
• Direct Marketing Guide:
• ~Ad exists to get a click
• ~Click exists to make a sale or earn permission (email signup, etc.)
• ~The sale exists to lead to another sale, or to a word of mouth
• ~Permission exists to lead to education and to a sale.
• ~"Assign values to each step. If you can't don't run any direct-response ads until you can."
• Brand Marketing Guide
• ~"The most important lesson I can share about brand marketing is this: you definitely, certainly, and surely don't have enough time and money to build a brand for everyone. You can't. Don't try. Be specific. Very specific. And then, with this knowledge, overdo your brand marketing."
• "The market has been trained to associate frequency with trust (there, I just said it again). If you quit right in the middle of building that frequency, it's no wonder you never got a chance to earn the trust."
• SEO
• ~"Step one is to make a product or service that people care enough to search for specifically. You cannot win in a generic search, but you'll always win if the search is specific enough."
• ~"Step two is easy to understand: to be the one they want to find when they go looking."

16. Price is a Story

• "Because people form assumptions and associations based on your pricing, and your pricing shapes what people believe about your service, it's important to be clear about how you position yourself. Your price should be aligned with the extremes you claimed as part of your positioning."
• "Price is more than a signal. It's also the engine for your project's growth, because price determines what we stand for, who we're designing for, and the story we tell."
• "Low price is the last refuge of a marketer who has run out of generous ideas."
• "When you're the cheapest, you're not promising change. You're promising the same, but cheaper."
• Free?
• ~"Free ideas that spread."
• ~"Expensive expressions of those ideas that are worth paying for."
• "When people are already heavily invested (cash or reputation or effort), they often make up a story to justify their commitment. And that story carries trust."
• "We invent a feeling of trust precisely because we are spending a lot."
• "Lowering your price doesn't make you more trusted. It does the opposite."

17. Permission and Remarkability in a Virtuous Cycle

• Permission is anticipated, personal, and relevant
• "Real permission is different from presumed or legalistic permission. Just because you somehow get my email address doesn't mean you have permission to use it. Just because I don't complain doesn't mean you have permission."
• "Every publisher, media company, every author of ideas needs to own a permission asset, the privilege of contacting people without a middleman."
• "It's almost impossible to spread your word directly. Too expensive, too slow. To find individuals, interrupt them, and enroll them, one by one ... it's a daunting task. The alternative is to intentionally create a product or service that people decide is worth talking about. I call this a Purple Cow."
• "You must do it with intent, building it deep into the product or service."
• "People aren't going to spread the word because it's important to you. They'll only do it because it's important to them." Because it furthers their goals, because it permits them to tell a story to themselves that they're proud of."

18. Trust is as Scarce as Attention

• The internet has created an environment where "more people are connected and fewer are trusted".
• "The best way to earn trust is through action." - essentially, working hard to make good on the marketing promise, delivering above and beyond.
• "Fame breeds trust, at least in our culture."
• "The goal isn't to maximize your social media numbers. The goal is to be known to the smallest viable audience."
• Be famous at a small scale to a group that matters to your business.

19. The Funnel

• Fix your funnel:
• ~"Make sure the right people are attracted to it"
• ~"Make sure that the promise that bought them in aligns with where you hope they will go."
• ~"You can remove steps so that fewer decisions are required."
• ~"You can support those you're engaging with, reinforcing their dreams and ameliorating their fears as you go."
• ~"You can use tension to create forward motion."
• ~"You can, most of all, hand those who have successfully engaged in the funnel a megaphone, a tool they can use to tell the others. People like us do things like this."
• Funnel math
• ~"The most important thing to figure out is the lifetime value of a customer."
• ~"If you can't see the funnel, don't buy the ads."
• The long tail
• ~"If you can aggregate a chunk of the long tail, you can make a go of it ... but you can't possibly sell just one obscure [whatever] and have a shot. This is the false promise of the internet. That you can be happy with a tiny slice of the long tail.
• ~This is the wrong approach, instead the strategy is "by dividing the market into many curves, not just one, we wind up with many short heads and many long tails."
• ~In each mini market segment there must be a leader.
• ~Living on the long tail requires that you
• ~~"Creates the definitive, the most essential, the extraordinary contribution to the field."
• ~~"Connects the market you've designed it for, and helps them see that you belong in the short head. That this his is the glue that holds them together."
• ~"It's the hit that unites us. The one that makes it clear that you are people like us ... you will make your impact by uniting those you seek to serve."
• Crossing the chasm
• ~"Connected tribes are more powerful than disconnected ones."
• ~The bridge between the mavens/early adopters and the mainstream is accomplished by network effects because the mainstream only wants what is already tested and validated. Therefore one strategy is to make your product better for the early adopters if they get more people involved.
• ~~What will a tell my friends?
• ~~Why will I tell them?

20. Organizing and Leading a Tribe

• "The tribe doesn't belong to you, so you don't get to tell the members what to do or to use them for your own aims."
• "If you invest in them, they'll show you what they want and what they need. You can gain empathy for them, understand their narrative, and serve them again."
• Marshall Ganz's three step narrative for cultivating action in a tribe:
• ~"Story of the self: gives you standing, a platform from which to speak"
• ~"Story of us: is the kernel of a tribe. Why are we alike, why should we care."
• ~"Story of now: is the critical pivot. The story of now enlists the tribe on your journey. It's the peer opportunity/peer pressure of the tribe that will provide the tension for all of us to move forward, together."
• "A tribe doesn't have to have a leader, but it often is populated with people who share interests, goals, and language. Your opportunity as a marketer is the chance to connect the members of the tribe. They're lonely and disconnected, they fear being unseen, and you, as the agent of change, can make connection happen."

21. Some Case Studies the Method

[ see original text ]

22. Marketing Works, and Now It's Your Turn

• "Perfect closes the door. It asserts that we're done, that this is the best we can do. Worse, perfect forbids us to try. To seek perfection and not reach it is a failure."
• "Better opens the door. Better challenges us to see what's there and begs us to imagine how we could improve on that."
• "Good enough isn't an excuse or a shortcut. Good enough leads to engagement. Engagement leads to trust."
• "Help, when we offer it, we're being generous."

23. Marketing to the Most Important Person

• "Marketing is beautiful when it persuades people to get a polio vaccine or to wash their hands before performing surgery."
• "If you're having trouble making your contribution, realize your challenge is a story you are marketing to yourself. It is the marketing we do for yourselves, to ourselves, by ourselves, the story we tell ourselves, that can change everything. It's what's going to enable you to create value, to be missed if you were gone."