Marketing has changed; so should you.
The true north of marketing has flipped. However, you can use this book as a compass to find it. Learn how to spread your ideas. Discover how to make the impact you seek.
Witness how to improve culture.
This is Marketing teaches readers how to promote products that are tailored for specific segments of society.
Through the book, Seth Godin shows the mistakes that many marketers and business owners are making.
To maintain a lasting business, you need to offer a genuinely useful product for a particular type of person.
Then, you must build relationships with those people who your product best suits.
To be a successful marketer, you need to not only sell goods or services to make a profit but also to help others improve their lives.
In This Is Marketing, Seth Godin repeatedly emphasizes two questions, “Who’s it for?” and “what problem does it solve.”
Asking these questions gives you a subtle power. As a marketer, you decide whom you serve and what story do you tell. Instead of being marketing-driven; be market-driven.
- Audible Audiobook
- Seth Godin (Author) – Seth Godin (Narrator)
- English (Publication Language)
- 11/13/2018 (Publication Date) – Penguin Audio (Publisher)
The three key lessons from This Is Marketing are:
- You need to identify the smallest viable audience for your business
- The best marketing speaks to the narratives your audience tells themselves about status and affiliation
- To create something worth buying, choose an underlying human desire and fulfill it
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Lesson One: Find your smallest viable audience
“When you seek to engage with everyone, you rarely delight anyone.” Seth Godin
You won’t create a product or service that will be a huge runaway success. Not yet, anyway. Even the massive companies of our time like Air B&B and Facebook started as niche sites that grew over time.
So, what change are you trying to make?
It can be a hard question to answer sometimes.
Rather than dumbing down your product or service to try and please everyone, focus on solving one specific problem for a particular type of person. Once you have that problem and that audience, double down and make that your business’ primary goal.
To do this, you need to find the smallest viable audience for your business.
Finding the smallest viable audience to market may seem counter-intuitive. However, if you can’t solve one smallest specific problem for the smallest viable audience, what makes you think you can solve a massive problem for millions of people?
Over time you’ll get better at solving these problems, word will spread, and over time you’ll be able to expand your products and services.
Lesson Two: The best marketing speaks to the narratives your audience tells themselves about status and affiliation
Contrary to popular belief, it isn’t the features of your product that’ll decide if it sells or not. It isn’t even the benefits that clients get.
It is the preconceived views of your client that dictate what they do, what they buy, and whom they buy it off.
Every single person has a worldview — kinda like a story someone tells themselves about how the world works. This comes from your past experience and the people you know.
To create a message that sells, you need to appeal to the story your audience is already telling themselves.
Because at the end of the day, people don’t believe what you tell them. Only occasionally will people understand what you show them. They’ll possibly believe what their friends tell them…
But people always believe what they tell themselves.
It is your job as a marketer to understand these views and intercept the internal conversation your audience is already having.
So when finding your smallest viable audience, you should be looking at breaking down psycho-graphics as well as demographics.
Lesson Three: To create something worth buying, choose an underlying human desire and fulfill it
Finding an underlying human passion is the key to creating (and marketing) something worth selling.
Break down Theodore Levitt’s famous example of people not wanting a quarter-inch drill bit, but wanting a quarter-inch hole. The quarter-inch hole is the benefit and the result, but let’s break that down even further.
Nobody actually wants a quarter-inch hole in their wall. That hole is a step in another process, maybe putting a shelf on their wall.
So they don’t want a quarter-inch drill, they want a shelf… but why do they want a shelf? It could be perhaps it makes their house look tidy. That tidy house can give your customers the feeling that they have control over your life and control over your surroundings?
But why drill the hole when you can have someone come in and make shelves?
Perhaps that feeling of accomplishment that comes from building something, or the respect that your partner will give you once they see the tidy room as a result of the new shelf.
As a marketer, you’re not selling a drill-bit, you are selling respect and feeling of accomplishment.
The drill bit is just a vessel to take your customers there.
So, dig deeper and find the underlying human desires that your product helps develop.
My Personal Takeaway
Honestly, there is so much value that I got from This Is Marketing. Without being hyperbolic, this is the best business or marketing book that I have ever read.
To get the full benefit, you do have to read the book. I guarantee you there will be at least one time where you have to stop reading (or pause, if you’re reading an audiobook), and think about your business.
The part that resonated with me is the promoting underlying human desires. With the copy that I write and the marketing I do, I focus a lot on results and benefits, but I don’t dig as deep as I should.
Put It Into Action
One thing you can do right now after reading this summary is to narrow down your minimum viable audience.
Who are they?
What are their underlying human desires?
How can you solve fulfill that desire?
By answering these questions and having a basic understanding of your minimum viable audience, you can look to make the ultimate impact.
This Is Marketing is a perfect book for any business owner. If you’re looking to start your own business or already have experience as a marketer, you’ll find value here.
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a Swedish university student, marketing professional, and life-long learner. Here at BookSummaryClub I summarize my favorite non-fiction books into easily digested posts. Hope you like what you’re reading!
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