Seth Godin: Marketing Maven

Seth is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker.  He has written 19 best-selling books, publishes one of the most popular marketing blogs, and speaks to audiences around the world. He also founded two companies, Squidoo and Yoyodyne which was acquired by Yahoo.  Seth has been inducted into both the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame and the Marketing Hall of Fame. His latest book is called This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See. 

 

Some interesting insights from this episode: 

• In the old days, money bought you attention and you could use that attention to grow your business. Today attention is too precious for you to buy at any cost.  

• Being an effective marketer in this day and age means having the empathy to see what the other person dreams of and what they fear. 

• Since 1997 not one significant brand has been built with consumer advertising. 

• There’s no longer any advantage to being a mass marketer. There’s only an advantage to being a very specific marketer.  

• If you build a network effect, if you understand people’s status roles, if you engage with people where they need to be, with a product or service that helps them get to where they want to go, that is marketing. 

• Marketing is about how human beings are going to interact with what you make and whether or not they will talk about it and miss you if you’re gone. 

• The mistake most marketers make is to sell average stuff for average people in an attempt to appease everyone. But what’s most important for brand building today is to find a “minimal viable market”. The idea is to pick the smallest possible group of people that can sustain you and delight them so they will then tell their friends and spread the word. 

• A brand is not a logo. Rather, a brand is a promise, an expectation of what you’re going to get. 

• People don’t generally know what they want. It’s our job to watch people, figure out what they dream of, and then create a transaction that can deliver that feeling.