This Is Marketing

Seth Godin is a prolific blogger, entrepreneur and author. He is the founder of altMBA, Squidoo, Do You Zoom, Yoyodyne and formerly worked as vice-president of direct marketing at Yahoo! Seth Godin is the author of 18 books including the bestsellers Free Prize, Purple Cow, Linchpin and Permission Marketing. The consulting company he founded and runs, SethGodin Productions, has worked with major clients including AOL, Microsoft, Penguin, Random House, Simon & Schuster andothers. Seth Godin is a graduate of Tufts University and Stanford University

Marketing has fundamentally changed. The massapproach involving shouting, interrupting and spamming people no longer works all that well.Instead, the best way to market today has become to help the people in your tribe become betterversions of themselves first and foremost and then progressively ramp up what you're doing to targetmore and more people in the future. In short, ideas that spread win. Instead of using marketing to find more customers to solve your company's cashflow problems, use marketing tosolve your tribe's most challenging problems first and foremost. Tell stories about what your tribe isachieving with your help and your ideas will spread through your early adopters, leap the chasm andslog their way to the masses.

Marketing is not what you do once your product is designed, manufactured and ready to ship. Instead, you want to tell persistent stories to an alignedaudience in order to earn their attention, trust and ultimately their action. Make the culture of your tribebright and vibrant as you organize people and get them in sync and your marketing will take care ofitself. Remember, ideas that spread, win.