This Is Marketing — Seth Godin

Summary in 15 minutes. Marketing starts with people, not with your product. First decide who you want to help. People don’t buy things, they buy feelings and identity. Understand those desires and you see why some people move forward while others stay put. Once you know who it’s for and what it’s for, the question is how to reach them: with symbols, price, permission and patience. You have finished reading. Now choose your people, write them a promise and show up every day.

Key ideas of "This Is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See"

Learning to See

Marketing starts with people, not with your product. First decide who you want to help.

1. Help, Not Hype: What marketing really is
2. The Five Steps: From making something to showing up for years
3. The Smallest Viable Market: Made for everyone means made for no one
4. Who Decides What’s Better?: Seeing through their eyes, then choosing your spot

Why People Change

People don’t buy things, they buy feelings and identity. Understand those desires and you see why some people move forward while others stay put.

1. Dreams and Desires: Not the drill, not the hole, but the feeling
2. People Like Us Do Things Like This: Culture is the strongest force
3. Tension and Trust: What creates forward motion
4. Status: Who Stands Where: Dominance or affiliation

Reaching Your People

Once you know who it’s for and what it’s for, the question is how to reach them: with symbols, price, permission and patience.

1. Symbols, Brands and Ads: A logo is not a brand
2. Price Is a Story: Low price is the last resort
3. Permission, Remarkability and Trust: Earn attention instead of renting it
4. Crossing the Chasm, Leading a Tribe: Showing up for years

Put It to Work

You have finished reading. Now choose your people, write them a promise and show up every day.

1. Your 7-Day Plan: One task a day. Tick each one off.
2. One-Page Cheat Sheet: The whole book at a glance. Save it.
3. Final Word: Learn to See: Marketing works, so use it well

From the free first chapter

Seth Godin wrote *Permission Marketing*, *Purple Cow* and *Tribes*. In the 1990s Yahoo bought his company, Yoyodyne, and he became its vice president of direct marketing. In this 2018 book he pulls his thinking together in one place.

Most people hear “marketing” and think of ads, spam and pushy selling. Godin calls that a habit of the TV era. Back then everyone watched the same few channels, so you could buy attention in bulk. The internet broke that model.

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