24 takeaways from this video:
193. How to Grow Your Business: Turning Strangers Into Friends & Friends Into Customers
Published in 1999, Seth Godin’s book Permission Marketing explains how to grow your business by turning “strangers into friends, and friends into customers.” Continue reading “193. How to Grow Your Business: Turning Strangers Into Friends & Friends Into Customers”
Cheap is one of the only remarkable items that never seems to run out of appeal. For just about any repeatedly purchased item, all other things being equal, the cheap one will gain market share. The problem with cheap is that once you start, your competitor will likely play the same game. In an incremental price war, how will one player beat the other and still win economically?
IKEA can do it.
Wal-mart can do it.
Can you?
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Every time we talked to our customers, they wanted us to follow the path that turned out to be the hardest possible path we could follow. And every time, that path was the right path.
Purple Cow by Seth Godin quoting Brad Anderson, CEO of Best Buy
Launching ten products for $10 million each is a lot smarter than investing $100 million in TV to launch just one product. It means that if all ten products fail, you’ve just learned ten ways that aren’t going to work.
You’re still ahead of where you’d be if the one TV launch had failed.
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
If you are a marketer who doesn’t know how to invent, design, influence, adapt, and ultimately discard products, then you are no longer a marketer. You’re deadwood.
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Marketers and designers who do it can put themselves into other people’s shoes and imagine what they’d want. In the long run, learning this knack is actually much more profitable than being able to make stuff only for yourself. Learning this knack gives you flexibility.
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Go take a design course. Send your designers to a marketing course. And both of you should spend a week in the factory.
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. Not slapping on marketing as a last-minute add-on, but understanding that if your offering isn’t itself remarkable, it’s invisible.
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
The people that are doing work that matters aren’t doing work thats popular. They’re just doing work that changes some people.
There are only four kinds of people (prospects, customers, loyal customers, and former customers) and loyal customers are often happy to spend more money with you.
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Among the people who might buy your product, most will never hear about it. There are so many alternatives now that people can no longer be easily reached by mass media. Busy consumers ignore unwanted messages, while your competition (which already has market share to defend) is willing to overspend to maintain that market share.
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Today, there are more than five hundred books on yoga. Nobody, no matter how motivated, takes the time to review all five hundred before buying a book on yoga.
If you’ve just written a book on yoga, you’ve got a challenge ahead of you.
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Junk e-mail is the king of spam because it doesn’t cost anything to send. Literally, a spam marketer online can send five million unsolicited commercial e-mail messages for about $50.
Given the superlow cost, any marketer with the guts to withstand the hatred of millions can make money with virtually no investment.
Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
Explore the limits. What if you’re the cheapest, the fastest, the slowest, the hottest, the coldest, the easiest, the most effecient, the loudest, teh most hated…
If there’s a limit, you should (must) test it!
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
You have to go where the competition is not. The farther the better.
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Something personalized can make one feel special.
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
Consumers care very little about you, your company, your products, your career, or your family. They’re not likely to spend time trying to discover how you can help them solve their problems.
Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
Permission is nontransferrable. Permission is selfish. Permission is a process, not a moment. Permission can be canceled at any time.
Permission Marketing by Seth Godin