This Is Marketing

The other kind of marketing, the effective kind, is about understanding our customers’ worldview and desires so we can connect with them. It’s focused on being missed when you’re gone, on bringing more than people expect to those who trust us. It seeks volunteers, not victims. (Location 202)

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. (Location 207)

You can learn to see how human beings dream, decide, and act. And if you help them become better versions of themselves, the ones they seek to be, you’re a marketer. (Location 260)

Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action. (Location 276)

you want to make change, begin by making culture. Begin by organizing a tightly knit group. Begin by getting people in sync. Culture beats strategy—so much that culture is strategy. (Location 284)

Here’s what I did: I took all the glasses off the table. For the rest of the people in line, after they put on the sample glasses, we said, “Here are your new glasses. If they work and you like them, please pay us three dollars. If you don’t want them, please give them back.” That’s it. We changed the story from “Here’s an opportunity to shop, to look good, to regain your sight, to enjoy the process, to feel ownership from beginning to end” to “Do you want us to take away what you have, or do you want to pay to keep the glasses that are already working for you?” (Location 326)

Why put a three thousand-dollar stereo in your car if you only listen to a thirty-dollar clock radio at home? (Location 346)

People don’t want what you make They want what it will do for them. They want the way it will make them feel. And there aren’t that many feelings to choose from. (Location 360)

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. On the other hand, 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. (Location 381)

Begin by choosing people based on what they dream of, believe, and want, not based on what they look like. In other words, use psychographics instead of demographics. (Location 443)

“I made this” is a very different statement than, “What do you want?” (Location 449)

Coming from his previous position as senior vice president of retail operations at Apple, Johnson saw the world of retail through a lens of elegance, of quiet, mutual respect. He was a luxury goods buyer, and he liked selling luxury goods as well. As a result of his worldview, he abandoned Penney’s true fans: people who loved the sport of bargain hunting. Or the urgency. People whose worldviews differed from his. Penney’s customers were playing a game, one that made them feel like they were winning. (Location 455)

My product is for people who believe _________________. I will focus on people who want _________________. I promise that engaging with what I make will help you get _________________. And you thought that all you were here to do was sell soap. (Location 544)

They don’t know what you know. They don’t want what you want. It’s true, but we’d rather not accept this. Sonder is defined as that moment when you realize that everyone around you has an internal life as rich and as conflicted as yours. Everyone has noise (Location 575)

in their heads. (Location 577)

Everyone thinks that they are right, and that they have suffered affronts and disrespect at the hands of others. Everyone is afraid. And everyone realizes that they are also lucky. Everyone has an impulse to make things better, to connect and to contribute. Everyone wants something that they can’t possibly have. And if they could have it, they’d discover that they didn’t really want it all along. Everyone is lonely, insecure, and a bit of a fraud. And everyone cares about something. (Location 577)

Dog food must be getting better. More nutritious and of course, delicious. Americans spent more than twenty-four billion dollars on dog food last year. The average price has skyrocketed, and so has the gourmet nature of ingredients, like sweet potatoes, elk, and free-range bison. And yet, I’ve never seen a dog buy dog food. Have you? Dog food might be getting more delicious as it gets more expensive, but we actually have no idea. We have no clue whether dogs enjoy it more, because we’re not dogs. But we can be sure that dog owners like it more. Because dog food is for dog owners. It’s for the way it makes them feel, the satisfaction of taking care of an animal that responds with loyalty and affection, the status of buying a luxury good, and the generosity of sharing it. (Location 613)

The facts aren’t at issue here; they can’t be. What’s happening is that these theorists are taking comfort in their standing as outliers and they’re searching for a feeling, not a logical truth. Imhoff writes, “Adherence to conspiracy theory might not always be the result of some perceived lack of control, but rather a deep-seated need for uniqueness.” (Location 646)

This is all fine, but it doesn’t hold up over time, not in a hyper-competitive world. Instead, we can think of the quest for the edges as: Claims that are true, that we continually double down on in all our actions. Claims that are generous, that exist as a service to the customer. (Location 741)

And so we get on the Facebook merry-go-round, boosting our posts, counting our followers, and creating ever more content in the hope of being noticed. There are so many other ways to make an impact and earn trust. Much of what we take for granted in our marketing toolbox was considered a risky innovation just a few generations ago. It’s worth discarding the cruft that we built and replacing it with more generous tools. (Location 781)

We assume that someone can’t possibly believe that they can’t do math. Or they can’t possibly support that insane policy. Or eat food like that on purpose. We’re not faking it. Your customers aren’t faking it. Those who prefer your competition aren’t either. If we can accept that people have embraced who they have become, it gets a lot easier to dance with them. Not transform them, not get them to admit that they were wrong. Simply to dance with them, to have a chance to connect with them, to add our story to what they see and add our beliefs to what they hear. (Location 802)

But there’s a lot of hiding involved as well—hiding from the important work of making change happen. If all you do is follow your (make-believe) muse, you may discover that the muse is a chicken, and it’s steering you away from the important work. And if the authentic you is a selfish jerk, please leave him at home. If you need to be authentic to do your best work, you’re not a professional, you’re a fortunate amateur. Fortunate, because you have a gig where being the person you feel like being in the moment actually helps you move forward. (Location 923)

While the seven billion people on this planet are each unique, each a different collection of wants, needs, pain, and joy, in many ways we’re all the same. We share a basket of dreams and desires, all in different proportions, but with a ton of overlap. Here’s the list, the foundational list, a shared vocabulary that each of us chooses from when expressing our dreams and fears: Adventure Affection Avoiding new things Belonging Community Control Creativity Delight Freedom of expression Freedom of movement Friendship Good looks Health Learning new things Luxury Nostalgia Obedience Participation Peace of mind Physical activity Power Reassurance Reliability Respect Revenge Romance Safety Security Sex Strength Sympathy Tension You could probably add ten more. But it’s unlikely you could add fifty more. This core basket of dreams and desires means that marketers, like artists, don’t need many colors to paint an original masterpiece. And this is where we begin: with assertions. (Location 964)

Twelve percent of the twenty-one thousand reviews for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone gave it one or two stars. To visualize that: out of one hundred readers, twelve said it was one of the worst books they’d ever read. What this bimodal distribution teaches us is that there are at least two audiences that interact with every bestselling book. There’s the desired audience, the one that has a set of dreams and beliefs and wants that perfectly integrates with this work. And there’s the accidental audience, the one that gets more satisfaction out of not liking the work, out of hating it, and sharing that thought with others. They’re both right. But neither is particularly useful. When we seek feedback, we’re doing something brave and foolish. We’re asking to be proven wrong. To have people say “You thought you made something great, but you didn’t.” (Location 1158)

The approach here is as simple as it is difficult: If you’re buying direct marketing ads, measure everything. Compute how much it costs you to earn attention, to get a click, to turn that attention into an order. Direct marketing is action marketing, and if you’re not able to measure it, it doesn’t count. If you’re buying brand marketing ads, be patient. Refuse to measure. Engage with the culture. Focus, by all means, but mostly, be consistent and patient. If you can’t afford to be consistent and patient, don’t pay for brand marketing ads. (Location 1910)

Permission, attention, and enrollment drive commerce. Showing up (Location 2138)

The peer-to-peer movement of ideas is how we cross the chasm—by giving people a network effect that makes the awkwardness of pitching change worth the effort. The bridge is built on two simple questions: 1. What will I tell my friends? 2. Why will I tell them? (Location 2385)

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” “Never go outside the expertise of your people.” “Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.” “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” “A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” “A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” “Keep the pressure on.” “The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” “The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” “If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside.” “The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize (Location 2522)

The magic of good enough Good enough isn’t an excuse or a shortcut. Good enough leads to engagement. Engagement leads to trust. Trust gives us a chance to see (if we choose to look). And seeing allows us to learn. Learning allows us to make a promise. And a promise might earn enrollment. And enrollment is precisely what we need to achieve better. Ship your work. It’s good enough. Then make it better. (Location 2650)

think it’s evil to persuade kids to start smoking, to cynically manipulate the electoral or political process, to lie to people in ways that cause disastrous side effects. I think it’s evil to sell an ineffective potion when an effective medicine is available. I think it’s evil to come up with new ways to make smoking acceptable so you can make a few more bucks. Marketing is beautiful when it persuades people to get a polio vaccine or to wash their hands before performing surgery. Marketing is powerful when it sells a product to someone who discovers more joy or more productivity because he bought it. Marketing is magic when it elects someone who changes the community for the better. Ever since Josiah Wedgwood invented marketing a few centuries ago, it has been used to increase productivity and wealth. (Location 2667)

Your boss wants more sales. That nonprofit you care about, an important one, needs to raise money. Your candidate is polling poorly. You want the boss to approve your project … Why isn’t it working? If creating is the point, if writing and painting and building are so fun, why do we even care if we’re found, recognized, published, broadcast, or otherwise commercialized? Marketing is the act of making change happen. Making is insufficient. You haven’t made an impact until you’ve changed someone. Changed the boss’s mind. Changed the school system. (Location 2756)

A Simple Marketing Worksheet Who’s it for? What’s it for? What is the worldview of the audience you’re seeking to reach? What are they afraid of? What story will you tell? Is it true? What change are you seeking to make? How will it change their status? How will you reach the early adopters and neophiliacs? Why will they tell their friends? What will they tell their friends? Where’s the network effect that will propel this forward? What asset are you building? Are you proud of it? (Location 2824)