The one question marketers must answer first (Review of Seth Godin’s This is Marketing)

This review first ran in the Jan. 19 edition of The Hamilton Spectator.

This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See

By Seth Godin

Portfolio / Penguin

$32

The question isn’t how much money you can make and how fast you can make it.

It’s not how big you can build your brand and how many real and fake followers you can find or buy online.

It’s not how to game the system by using the latest search engine optimization hacks.

Instead of all that, it’s only this -“who can you help?”.  Market nothing until you have a definitive answer.

Whether you’re looking for customers, clients, subscribers, students, audiences, donors, funders or voters, Seth Godin says this must be your first and foundational question.

Godin is the author of 18 bestsellers, a member of the Marketing Hall of Fame, tech company founder and former Yahoo VP.

“Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem.  Sharing your path to better is called marketing and you can do it. We all can.”

Godin uses a lock and key analogy. You could make a key and then run around hoping to find a lock. Or you could start by finding the problem – a lock that needs opening – and make the key.

“It’s easier to make products and services for the customers you seek to serve than it is to find customers for your products and services.”

You don’t use people to solve your problems. You’re in business to solve their problems.  Successful marketers “have the empathy to know that those they seek to serve don’t want what the marketer wants, don’t believe what they believe and don’t care about what they care about. They probably never will.”

Godin says there are five steps to marketing a product, service or idea:

1. Invent something work making, with a story worth telling and a contribution worth talking about.
2. Design and build it so a few people will benefit greatly and care deeply. Identify your smallest viable market. You can’t change everyone but you can change someone. “What’s the minimum number of people you would need to influence to make it worth the effort?”.
3. Tell a story that lines up with your customers’ hopes, dreams and desires. Say what people need to hear. This is how you earn attention, trust and action.
4. Start spreading the word, ideally by the people you’re serving. “What you say isn’t nearly as important as what others say about you.” Have a product or service that’s worth talking about and searching for beyond a generic search.
5. Show up regularly, consistently and generously year after year after year. Deliver on your promise.

You have a choice with your business, organization, non-profit or personal brand. You can be marketing-driven or market-driven.

Marketing-driven is a dead end, says Godin. “When you’re marketing-driven you’re focused on the latest Facebook data hacks, the design of your new logo and your Canadian pricing model.

“When you’re market-driven, you think a lot about the hopes and dreams of your customers and their friends. You listen to their frustrations and invest in changing the culture. Being market-driven lasts.”

Jay Robb serves as communications manager with McMaster University’s Faculty of Science, lives in Hamilton and has reviewed business books for the Hamilton Spectator since 1999.