This is Marketing is an odd sized book, using bright colors, and featuring the funny looking marketing guru peering through the “O” in his last name on the cover. The book’s presentation is catchy.
There is no doubt Seth Godin is a great marketer, but there is equally little doubt he understands marketing is about deception. Here, his guilty conscious shines as brightly as the orange jacket cover of the book.
But, after stripping away all the virtue signaling and evangelizing about the nobility of his profession, there are some worthy marketing ideas in the pages. Let’s explore them.
Overarching Themes
From the start, Godin identifies the central tenants of his thinking: “Marketing means seeing what others see. Building tension. Aligning with tribes. Creating ideas that spread. It means doing the hard work of becoming driven by the market and working with that market.”
The way Godin outlines his marketing philosophy revolves around five steps:
1) “Invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution worth talking about.”
2) “Design and build it in a way that a few people will particularly benefit from and care about.”
3) “Tell a story that matches the built-in narrative and dreams of that tiny group.”
4) “Spread the word.”
5) “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 pattern is the spine of his approach. All else follows this scheme.
Takeaways
In addition to the steps mentioned above, Godin emphasizes a bunch of ideas over twenty-three chapters. Among these ideas are five that stand as marketing pillars in today’s world.
1. Marketing Changes People Through Stories, Connections, and Experiences
People want something because of the way it makes them feel. If someone is going to the store to purchase a drill bit, they don’t actually want the drill bit, they what the drill bit will help them build – a shelf on the wall or a crib in the nursery or a flag hanging on their house. Here, you see Godin pushing the audience to think deeper about what client’s want.
To do this, Godin believes you must deliver a feeling – a sense of belonging, connection, peace of mind, or status. Tell a story so they elect to follow that path. As part of that story, tell the audience who is the product or service for and make it connect to those people. It’s a shared experience.
How do you determine how to connect? First, recognize the difference between market driven and marketing driven products. If you want to win at marketing, you must be market driven. The way to be market driven is by listening to customers.
2. The Smallest Viable Market
You have to start with the smallest viable market. If you set modest goals, you can grow from there. As Godin writes, you have to conquer the pool before you take on the ocean.
Find a group based on their dreams, wants, and “world view” then you might be able to give them what they want. You will never be able to serve everyone. Once you find the group, overwhelm them with how you can make their dreams come true. Pat Flynn is also big on this. “The riches are in the niches,” he says.
As part of the process, you have to to communicate: “This is for you, and it’s not for you.” You have to respect both groups by being transparent and telling the people you want this is specifically designed for you, then telling everyone else this is not for you. To dial in your niche group, use this template:
- My product is for people who believe ___________.
- I will focus on people who want ____________.
- I promise I’ll help you _______________.
3. Beyond Commodities
Don’t begin with a solution, begin with a group to serve, a problem to solve, a change to make. Once you know the problem and the group with the problem, you can focus on making a great product.
Part of the process is building a story that lets the audience participate in spreading the word.
Good stories do the following:
- “Connect us to our 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 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 businesses 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 to stay motivated and continue to do work we’re proud of.”
There is an element of professionalism involved, according to Godin. By professional, he means you need to figure out what your audience wants and then then deliver. To some degree, it’s an act, but you must be what your audience wants.
4. People Like Us Do Things Like This
Moralize the behavior by showing your audience that people like you listen to this or buy this. You must understand the target culture and normalize what you’re doing so everyone believes people like us follow this guy’s advice.
Godin employs two tactics to advance the goal: 1) Be exclusive, and 2) use peer pressure.
5. Trust and Tension Create Forward Motion
In This is Marketing, Godin advances the ball by explaining that you must create trust and then introduce an element of tension. What is tension and where does that tension come from?
Tension is not fear. It’s a promise that we can get through fear and uncertainty together. An interruption can create tension, a missed opportunity can create tension, or pressure to act now. There are any number of ways to build tension, depending on the good or service you are providing.
So, Is Godin Really a Phony?
There is value in This is Marketing, but it’s undermined by all the virtue signaling and a sense of moral superiority. Between the lines of these pages is an uncomfortable question: How do liberal elites convince the masses to buy their goods and services. That seems to be Godin’s primary target.
What Godin promotes is what is described in Woke, Inc by Vivek Ramaswamy. This is Marketing seems to be saying all the “politically correct” things so Godin will not be canceled and can keep appearing as an expert on the legacy media stations. Throughout the book, Godin insists on doing morally right, but it’s his subjective moral code – and that’s the problem with “experts” who insist on all the rest of us doing as they say.
The catch is that Godin actually has good insight.
For these reasons, Godin is not really a phony, but he is annoying. The above highlights capture the value in the book. If you want to read an authentic account of how to sell goods and services, read How to Win Friends and Influence People. It is a much more helpful classic – less the gimmicks and tricks. Authenticity sells.
