How To Spread Your Ideas Successfully - Seth Godin

How do you get your message to spread? How do make sure your voice and idea does not get lost into the raising noise all around you?

Photo credit: Dangerouslyawesome

How do you market your brand now that the TV industrial complex advertising mechanism costs more but delivers increasingly less?

Seth Godin is an entrepreneur and prolific business-book author who specializes in marketing in the digital age, one of the most respected and interesting marketing experts in the world, Seth has clear ideas about how any company, large or small should behave today to make its marketing message successful.

Starting with the story of sliced bread and its incredible marketing flop

Can you get your ideas to spread or not? He asks.

With people having less and less time available while products, services and choices keep increasing in number, the typical choice is to ignore ordinary stuff.

People want something special. Something that stands out. Something unique.

But even more important to understand is the fact that you can't target your potential customers by making one size fits all type of product. You need to address and talk directly to those very individuals that are actively listening for exactly what you have to offer and go after them like a laser beam. But not by bombarding them but rather by lighting up the road they were seeking to find.

Here's the original Seth Godin's talk, Sliced bread and other marketing delights, delivered a few years back at great talking conference, TED.

People who can spread ideas, regardless of what their ideas are.... win.

 

 

Seth Godin at Ted Talks: Sliced bread and other marketing delights

Duration: 17':03"

"In a world of too many options and too little time, our obvious choice is to ignore the ordinary stuff.

Marketing guru Seth Godin spells out why, when it comes getting our attention, bad or bizarre ideas are more successful than boring ones. And early adopters, not the mainstream's bell curve, are the new sweet spot of the market."

The Seth Godin parable:

You are driving down the road and you see a cow... you keep driving because you have seen cows before...

Cows are invisible. Cows are boring.

As a matter of fact, who in his right mind, would stop and say: "Hey, look... a cow!".

Nobody!

...but if the cow was purple... you'd notice it!

This is why the thing that is going to decide whether something gets talked about, gets attention, and gets purchased, is really all about this one question:

Is it remarkable?

(remarkable = worth making a remark about.)

This is the essence of where the future is going.

About Seth Godin

"Seth Godin may be the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age," Mary Kuntz wrote in Business Week nearly a decade ago. "Instead of widgets or car parts, he specializes in ideas -- usually, but not always, his own." In fact, he's as focused on spreading ideas as he is on the ideas themselves.

After working as a software brand manager in the mid-1980s, Godin started Yoyodyne, one of the first Internet-based direct-marketing firms, with the notion that companies needed to rethink how they reached customers. His efforts caught the attention of Yahoo!, which bought the company in 1998 and kept Godin on as a vice president of permission marketing.

Seth Godin has produced several critically acclaimed and attention-grabbing books, including Permission Marketing, All Marketers Are Liars, and Purple Cow (which was distributed in a milk carton).

In 2005, Godin founded Squidoo.com, a Web site where users can share links and information about an idea or topic important to them.

"[Godin] is a demigod on the Web, a best-selling author, highly sought-after lecturer, successful entrepreneur, respected pundit and high-profile blogger. He is uniquely respected for his understanding of the Internet."

Source: Forbes.com