26 of The Best Marketing Ideas From Seth Godin

Seth Godin is an American entrepreneur, author and public speaker. Godin popularized the topic of permission marketing. Godin’s blog, is ranked in the AdAge Power 150 as the #1 marketing blog out of 976 tracked. Some of his popular books are : Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, Small Is the New Big,The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick), Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?,Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? and Poke the Box. Portfolio Hardcover. Seth Godin, by many is considered to be one of the greatest marketers alive.

These are some of Seth Godins’s thoughts on marketing.

1. Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
2. People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
3. You won’t get it right the first time. Your campaign will need to be reinvented, adjusted or scrapped. Count on it.
4. The future belongs to people who can invent, implement, and sell the ideas–the free prizes–that become purple cows.
5. Companies must create remarkable products and services and let consumers do the marketing themselves to generate a buzz.
6. Tap into those ‘listeners,’ as they will always be interested in what you have to say.
7. Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
8. I think ideas are cheap and pretty easy, actually. What’s difficult is finding someone to champion an idea.
9. People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
10. Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
11. At some point, you’re either going to have to stick to your convictions or do what the market tells you. It’s hard to do both.
12. Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
13. Anything that’s worth being talked about is ‘a remarkable idea,’ and remarkable ideas spread
14. One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.
15. Companies can no longer rely on mass-media advertising to sell average products to average consumers.
16. Instead of ‘selling’ to a ‘hit and miss’ type of market, tapping into innovators and adapters would always be the right approach.
17. Advertisements on television and radio are classified as ‘interruption marketing’ which interrupt the customer while they are doing something of their preference.
18. Godin introduced the concept of “permission marketing” where the business provides something “anticipated, personal, and relevant”
19. Pay attention is a key phrase here, because permission marketers understand that when someone chooses to pay attention they are actually paying you with something precious.
20. Be topical… write posts that need to be read right now.
21. Don’t promote yourself and your business or your books or your projects at the expense of the reader’s attention.
22. Permission is like dating. You don’t start by asking for the sale at first impression. You earn the right, over time, bit by bit.
23. Great brands represent something bigger than themselves. You can create this accidentally if you’re lucky, but you can create it on purpose if you try.
24. Instead of speed dating your way to interruption, instead of yelling at strangers all day trying to make a living, coordinating a tribe of 1,000 requires patience, consistency and a focus on long-term relationships and life time value.
25. The customers you fire and those you pay attention to all send signals to the rest of the group.
26. Google never forgets.