Seth Godin Gems: What Every Good Marketer Knows

Here's a pretty good list by a pretty good marketer, Seth Godin.

• Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.

• Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.

• Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.

• Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.

• Marketing begins before the product is created.

• Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.

• Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That's not marketing, though, that's efficiency.

• Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.

• Products that are remarkable get talked about.

• Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.

• You can't fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.

• If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you're viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.

• People don't buy what they need. They buy what they want.

• You're not in charge. And your prospects don't care about you.

• What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.

• Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.

• Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.

• People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.

• Good marketers tell a story.

• People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you'll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.

• Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.

• Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.

• Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.

• A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.

• Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world.

• Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.

• Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.

• Good marketers measure.

• 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.

• One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.

• In the googleworld, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.

• Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.

• There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.

• Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.

• You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.

• You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.

• Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

  
  

  Eternal gratitude to Jeff James, Bridaluxe, for his astute advice and savvy presence.

  
  

  To your success,

  Caseyfern