How to Do Marketing: 5 Effective Tips from Seth Godin
If you are a solopreneur, entrepreneur, or a freelancer, not only do you want to become more productive at making things, you also want to be more effective at making people use your things or your service.
“Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action.” - Seth Godin, This is Marketing
The below are some of the best tips from Seth Godin’s book This is Marketing:
1. Find a small group of audience
In this startup era, making MVPs (most viable products) seems to be the right way to start a business. But Seth Godin suggests that finding the “minimum viable audience” is what you should start before making your product.
2. Understand the story that your group of audience already believe in
It’s way too hard to change your audience’s way of thinking. You should understand what they already believe in and match that believe with your products or service.
3. Make things that can make your audience feel good
Water and air are things your audience needs. Most other things are what your audience wants. Very often, your audience doesn’t even want the product itself, but instead, wants the feeling that the product can provide.
4. Let your audience know what the group of people your service or your products are best suited for
Be clear about who your products are best suited for. If you are a German language teacher who targets to teach students who want to learn things by reading short story books, be clear with that. If students reach you and say that they want to use textbooks, refer them to other teachers that use textbooks for teaching.
In his book This is Marketing, Seth Godin calls this way of operating “marketing as a service”. You can learn more about this from the short video Seth Godin’s Approach to Market Positioning Is Genius, which you can find on Marie Forleo’s Youtube channel.
5. Trial and error
Even if you understand the philosophy of marketing, you have no idea what people actually want and believe in. Do trial and error. Do it in a way that is relatively fast and cheap.
Final Thoughts
Making things is hard. So, if you try to make things, try to spend effort and time on creating things that people want. The above tips can be a game changer. If you want more tips and more details, go read This is Marketing by Seth Godin.
If what’s stopping you from reaching your goal is not about marketing, but is about actually doing things, you may want to read the article How to Overcome Laziness: 23 Practical Tips from Great Books.
