You're listening to Book Insights, brought to you by Memode, finding and simplifying the world's most powerful ideas to fit into your lifestyle. Each episode is a deep dive into a non-fiction bestseller that can change your life or make you think. In around 30 minutes, you'll learn all about a book that offers wisdom for your life, career, or business. So get ready to live and work smarter, better, and happier with Book Insights.
Death Goat is something of a legend in the marketing world. His blog has over a million readers, and he's written 19 bestselling titles on entrepreneurship and marketing, including the classics, permission marketing, tribes, and purple cow. When it was published in 1999, permission marketing became an antidote to the common practice of spam email. Insisting that people should only receive marketing material if they had requested it was, surprisingly, highly controversial for the marketing industry at the time. It got Goat and Throne out of the Direct Marketing Association. Only later did the industry realize its mistake. In 2013, Goat and was inducted into the Direct Marketing Hall of Fame, and in 2018 joined the American Marketing Association's Hall of Fame.
His latest book, This Is Marketing, is a rallying call to everyone who wants to make a bigger impact with a select audience. It's moved beyond the era of mass advertising and marketing to personal one-on-one communication, so the possibilities are infinite. Goat and says, We're all marketers now, and with the right approach, more can be achieved than we ever thought possible. The book's subtitle, You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn To See, reinforces the idea that marketing should be grounded in empathy. Leave all what marketers do is create change, and in this, Goat and says, Marketing is a noble calling.
This Is Marketing has a number of overlapping themes and techniques which weave their way throughout the text. In this book insight, we're going to cover four core ideas from the book. We're all marketers now. The old world of advertising is contrasted with the new opportunities for marketing. Your smallest viable market. This is about who your marketing is for, and the tribe of followers you can create. Ideas that spread. This is about understanding how and why people choose to talk to others about your product and service. Leading your tribe. This covers the importance of leadership and finding the strength and courage to share your ideas with the wider world.
《This Is Marketing》这本书中有许多重叠的主题和技巧贯穿其中。在本书的洞察中,我们将涵盖四个核心思想。首先是我们都是营销人员。旧时代的广告与新型营销的机遇形成对比。其次是你的最小可行市场。这是关于你的营销对象以及你可以创建的追随者部落的问题。再次是传播思想。这是关于了解人们为什么会选择谈论你的产品和服务的方式和原因。最后是引领你的部落。这涉及到领导的重要性,以及找到力量和勇气与更广大的世界分享你的想法。
We'll start by looking at where marketing is at today. Traditional marketing is about companies extracting bigger profits from a mass audience. Big companies care mainly about volume, market share, and how much hype they can generate. In short, marketing boils down to how much they can spend. Here's Goat & Talking on the online marketing made easy podcast. So I guess what we ought to be measuring is not clicks, more percentages, or any of that other stuff, unless we're fully a direct marketer. I think what we ought to be measuring is who would miss us if we didn't show up? And what is the value of the change we're making in the world?
Goat & Encourage is us to think of marketing as something that has far more value than mass corporate advertising. In fact, the true purpose of marketing is to provide solutions for people. He makes the case for moving from the old industrial advertising and marketing approach to a new one. He uses an analogy from nature. If you want to grow a tall sunflower, you'd expect it to have a deep and intricate ecosystem beneath the surface of the soil. The invisible process of growth only takes place when seeds have been sown. The ground is fertile, and the conditions are aligned with what it takes to grow a tall, strong sunflower. It's no different from marketing. It shouldn't be forced or bought, but be deeply rooted in the hopes, dreams, and desires of individuals. If we focus only on the bottom line, we're trying to get the end result without doing the natural growth and groundwork.
In the Golden Age of TV, Radio & Print Media Advertising, technology allowed big business to broadcast its messages to the masses without any real interaction with the consumer. It was an advertiser's dream.
Throughout the 20th century, the most effective and profitable way for corporations to sell their products and gain market share was to buy advertising. Brands became famous in millions of households, and marketing was simply advertising. For decades, nothing needed to change, until the arrival of the internet.
It was the first system of communication where the user had total control over their experience. It amounted to a billion tiny whispers based on people's personal interests. Previous generations would sit through the ad breaks in the way we still do at the cinema, but now when we go online, we're not engaging with the mass marketer's agenda.
We're free to skip, block, and pay to have our music and films streamed onto our screens without having to consume advertising. Yes, there are still monopolies and companies dominating the mainstream markets. Golden talks about big machine records. Taylor Swift is one of the labels artists with over 30 million records sold, and the company has over 200 number one singles. Firing model, right? Wrong.
The hit factories will always exist within mainstream music markets, and there will always be big companies spending millions to sell their stars and their products. But for most people, for you and me, this is not the path to emulate. It isn't where the opportunity lies.
Golden guides us down a different path which involves the work of connection, empathy, and changing minds. The audience or market we gain may be much smaller, but more sustainable and loyal. And we can no longer delegate marketing to an advertising firm. Today, marketing rests on authenticity, which means your story matters. We're all marketers now.
Golden 带领我们走上了一条不同的道路,需要我们通过有效地连接、共情和改变观念来实现。我们获得的受众或市场可能会更加小众,但更加可持续和忠诚。我们不能再将市场营销委托给广告公司了。今天的市场营销建立在真实性之上,这意味着您的故事至关重要。我们现在都是营销人员。
Let's break for now, but first, let's recap what we've gone over. In this marketing, we've learned that in our digital age, everybody can be a marketer, as long as they're capable of empathy and communication. The product should be a solution to the audience's problem. Next, we'll look at the smallest viable market. Then we'll explore ideas that spread and win.
Enjoying this episode of Book Insights? If so, keep listening and learning. Just a collection of over 100 titles you can read or listen to now at memodeapp.com slash insights. That's m-e-m-o-d-a-p-p.com slash insights.
We're continuing our look into this is Marketing, the latest bestseller by marketing Hall of Famer Seth Godin. Previously, we've gone over how we're all marketers in the internet age. Now we'll discuss who you should target and the kind of ideas that succeed.
Godin talks about the idea of the smallest viable market, which is simply the minimum number of people needed to make your message, product, or service worthwhile. The ideas derived from the minimum viable product made famous by Eric Rees in the Lean Startup. An MVP is simply the most useful first version of your product, which can be used to engage with your market, get feedback, improve, and then repeat the cycle.
Imagine your passionate about healthy eating for all the family. Some of your friends have encouraged you to share your recipes, maybe teach a cooking class, and even open up wholesome food cafe. Where would you start? Would you immediately start looking at expensive retail outlets in town, start raising finance, getting quotes from interior designers, engaging with suppliers and long-term business planning? Perhaps it would make more sense to take a less risky, more creative, experimental approach.
How about starting with a smaller number of people who support what you're doing and will give you honest feedback, encouragement, and reviews? You could turn the traditional retail model on its head and try a supper club for 20 friends in an interesting venue for one night only. Your task would be to find your little tribe of early adopters or super fans. This is your smallest viable market.
This is not about getting something out there that doesn't work or having to coerce people into trying your new thing. It's about finding the type of people who believe what you believe about healthy lifestyles, wholesome food, family, and community. In this way, you're not selling to a market you are giving to your tribe.
Goatens message here is simple. Don't try to make your offering or business stand for everything. Make it stand for something. This sometimes involves taking a product to its extremes and finding some kind of clear edge. He talks about how Tesla broke the mold in marketing electric cars. The company realized that its potential buyers already had very nice cars.
The only way it would get them to shift from their BMWs or Jaguars would be to offer something dramatically different. So Tesla's were marketed as the fastest, the safest, the most efficient, not one point of difference, but three, all in one package. Plus buyers would feel good about owning one, breathtaking acceleration and environmental kudos at the same time. Goatens point is that when you create something that is inherently better, marketing becomes a joy.
You are no longer selling stuff, but changing minds, leading people to something you believe will make their lives easier, better, more fun, or more beautiful. If your business is only about chasing market share or making marginal gains, you'll live in a world of scarcity. The alternative is to create something unique that comes with its own story and its own brand new market. All you have to do is tell that story.
This is the simplest and best kind of marketing. The scripts didn't come up with the Model T Ford, the smartphone, or rap music. Nearly every innovation is the end result of one person's vision of how they think things should be. Marketing often boils down to getting other people to see things the way you do. Goatens rights. Marketers make change. We change people from one emotional state to another.
We take people on a journey. We help them become the person they've dreamed of becoming a little bit at a time. Marketing isn't simply about selling things, but ideas. Marketing has the power to change lives. There's another way to think about your audience or customer base. Instead of thinking about them as prospects, think of them as students. What do they want to learn? What can you teach them? What can they tell others?
The secret to success, according to Seth Goden, can be summed up in four words. Ideas that spread, win. But what does it take to achieve this? First, you start with the beliefs, familiar stories, and the internal narratives already on repeat play in the minds of those you're seeking to connect with. It's impossible to make someone do something they don't want to.
Usually the required action or non-action is driven by the extent to which it supports or conflicts with their existing worldview. How it affects perceptions of their status or social standing. Anytime someone is presented with a new idea, service, or product, they naturally think, is this something someone like me would have, use, or buy? Or as Goden puts it, do people like me do things like this?
Here's Goden again on the online marketing-made Easy Podcast. How do you make a change happen? People used to do it by buying attention, really cheap, and then turning it into money so you could buy more attention. We call that advertising. But the world has shifted, and that doesn't work anymore. And what works instead is making things better by making better things. It's the way we're wired as human beings.
This is how special interest groups, devoted fan clubs, and loyal followings are formed. Remember, in marketing, we are not trying to change everyone. We start small and stay laser-focused on helping our early adopters and most passionate followers. Only later might we think about taking our ideas to a larger mainstream.
The outdoor clothing company Patagonia started with a mission to connect with a niche group of outdoor enthusiasts who care about the environment. By purchasing the company's product, the customers get to support a brand that shares their values and allows them to subtly express this through wearing Patagonia.
The company has a wider strategy to encourage more people to consider environmental issues, which provides a talking point for insiders and new converts. The further the idea spreads, the bigger the customer base becomes. More environmental awareness and impact is the result.
Another example, Golden Disguses, is the Band The Grateful Dead. The dead completely bucked industry norms. They weren't interested in making music in the pursuit of big hits or celebrity status. Because it happened, they eventually achieved this, but the road was long and mainly happened without music industry support.
The dead sold an astonishing $350 million worth of concert tickets before their leader, Jerry Garcia, died. They did this by staying true to their loyal fans who spread the message with devotion to the cause. In marketing terms, some key learning points from the dead story. They connected with a niche audience and aimed to give it what it was looking for. Rather than figuring out a strategy that would appeal to the masses, they directly interacted with their much smaller live audiences one show at a time. This created massive loyalty.
They relied on fans to spend their time enthusiastically sharing tour dates, stories, and creating a subculture rather than pursuing mainstream radio channels for airplay. The band's outlook, determination, and resilience gave fans something to believe in which they could build into their own life stories and world views. They did the opposite of how the music industry operated. They retained ownership of their work and control of ticket sales. They focused on long play records they produced themselves and didn't produce three minute radio-friendly singles.
In Goatins Mind, The Grateful Dead are an almost perfect example of how to spread ideas, something with the smallest viable market. Let's take a break. But before we go, let's recap what we've learned so far. Success depends on people sharing your message. People do this when the message resonates with how they see themselves and people like them. The marketer's job is to create change by connecting at first with a small and passionate group who are motivated to spread the word. You have to work hard to give people something to believe in.
We'll conclude our discussion on this is marketing next time. We'll go into leading and organizing the tribe. Then we'll end by reflecting on Goatins' overall message. Enjoying this episode of Book Insights? If so, keep listening and learning. There's a collection of over 100 titles you can read or listen to now at Memoedapt.com slash Insights. That's M-E-M-O-D-A-P-P.com slash Insights.
Now we're concluding our discussion on this is marketing. It's written by permission marketing author Seth Godin. Last time we went over how marketing succeeds through creating a message that matters. You connect with a small niche group who truly share your message and world view. Basically, you create a grateful dead type product this way, something homegrown and beloved. We'll conclude by learning how to manage the tribe you've established. Then we'll end on reflecting on what the book has taught us.
What does it take to lead a group of people towards something that you believe will be of benefit to them? Godin says it's not about authority being an expert or telling people what to do. Your tribe is not something you own and the members don't exist to meet your own ends. All you've done is earned their trust in some way and they chose to listen. They'll only continue to do so if you continue to understand their hopes, desires and needs. Here's Godin again on the online marketing MADZ podcast.
When a lifeguard approaches someone who's drowning and offers a life raft, they take it because they're enrolled in the journey of not drowning. So that's our goal as marketers is to find people who want to go where we are going, who want to experience what we are offering. Godin introduces us to Harvard professor Marshall Gans and his three stories framework for creating this kind of empathic leadership.
The first story, the story of self, gives you the opportunity to answer the question, why you? Here, you tell your story about what life used to be like for you and how you've been transformed. In telling it, you provide a group of people it could be 20 or 20,000 with the chance to identify with you. The second story, the story of us, is about the things that bring us together. These are our common problems, shared goals, dreams and aspirations.
Do I have the life experience and empathy to appreciate how other people may feel? What can we gain by coming together? Gans's third story, the story of now, represents the point at which you bring people along with you on the journey as part of the tribe. I used to struggle alone, perhaps like you. I got help from others. Together, this can improve for us. Here, Goeden reminds us to move beyond our fears and find a courage to lead.
Let's put this all together with an example. Imagine you're a family man who used to be overweight and now suffer from low self-esteem. Let's say you want to inspire a group of dads in your local community to take better care of themselves.
The story might go like this. I used to be 30 pounds overweight, constantly stressed by work and family commitments. My health and relationships were going downhill. I didn't feel that I had any time for myself. But eventually, my wife persuaded me to join a local running group once a week for 30 minutes.
At first, I lacked confidence and felt a bit embarrassed by how unfit I was compared with some of the others. The group was very supportive and I began to make friends and get fitter. This helped me manage my work stress better. For time, I lost weight and just about everything in my life improved.
The biggest impact for me was making new friends and feeling a sense of belonging to a community of people like me. Does that make sense to you? Taking the first steps is tough, but if you're ready, we're all here to support you. Are you free when we meet this Thursday at 7 pm?
A personal story creates resonance and connection and demonstrates that change doesn't have to happen alone. It can actually be a door into a community, but there must be a call to action for people to take the next step. We need empathy, courage, and leadership to get things moving. But without action, change doesn't happen.
Marketing starts with the story you're telling yourself, Godin says. Your internal dialogue. If something is important to you, the likelihood is it will be important for others. In this way, marketing is not something out there or the work of a marketing team. It's deeply personal and therefore super impactful.
Back to the plant analogy for a moment. If what you produce or provide is simply a commodity or an opportunistic response to obvious demand, then you don't have a business or enterprise with roots. Even if your tree grows, Godin says, it's unlikely to be seen as important, useful, or dominant. It will be crowded out by all the similar trees.
But if you're authentic and patient, your tree can become a beacon for the community. Because you stand for something in a world of competing voices, ideas, and products, people will naturally be drawn to you and stay loyal.
The way the internet works is that everyone can be famous to 1,500 people, Godin says, or 3,000. Mass marketing is for big players. For everyone else, it's about connecting deeply with a comparatively small but high-value audience. And with all the online tools available to us today, it's cheaper and easier to do this than ever before.
As we come to the end of this book insight, let's wrap up the key themes we've covered. In a nutshell, the purpose of marketing is to help people not to spam, coerce, or manipulate. Mass advertising served corporations, not people. We can do better.
Serve a smaller group of people who share a similar worldview, aim for making a difference to smaller group first, not everyone. Successful ideas are the ones that create emotional connections. Creative people who care are the ones who change the world. This is the opportunity for you.
For Seth Godin fans, this is marketing is not mold-breaking, and in fact, is a kind of synthesis of his work for over two decades since he released permission marketing in 1999. But if you've never read Godin before, it's a brilliant starting point to his thinking. It also provides step-by-step techniques that can take you from concept to actionable advice.
The book is derived from the marketing seminar, one of Godin's online courses with over 6,000 alumni. The course could be another worthwhile step to explore if you're ready to take action and make your ideas become a reality.
And if Godin's ideas hit home with you, other recommended reads would be The Long Tale by Chris Anderson, The tipping point by Malcolm Gladwell, and Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. In Godin's statements about making sure your offering or company is seen to stand for something, he is clearly influenced by Al Reese and Jack Trout.
He notes them in his acknowledgments along with many other great marketers. Reese and Trout are famous for their concept of positioning, meaning carving out a space in the consumer's mind and having your brand really stand for something. People think that logos are an all-important part of branding and marketing. Actually, Godin says they're not.
Logos can be anything, and a lot of them are rather plain or just not that good. It's the meaning they represent that matters. Or as he puts it, If people care, you've got a brand. Marketing is no longer about selling stuff. It's about changing the world. One person at a time.
Thank you for listening to Book Insights. Check out the rest of our content at MemoDap.com.
感谢您收听书籍洞见。请在MemoDap.com上查看我们的其余内容。
Please keep in mind that the information provided in or through our Book Insights episodes is for educational and informational purposes only.
请牢记,我们在《书籍洞察》节目中提供的信息仅供教育和信息用途。
Please not intend it to be a substitute for advice given by qualified professionals and should not be relied upon to disregard or delay seeking professional advice.