How to Get Better at Marketing, With Seth Godin
Why is marketing so hard for what seems pretty simple? How can we do this more efficiently? This week, we’ll learn how to improve our marketing skills with the help of entrepreneur and marketing expert Seth Godin. Hear Seth’s insightful advice on the mentality we should have when it comes to our marketing strategy, reaching our audience, and common mistakes to avoid when launching your business to market. Seth is the author of 20 bestselling books, including Deep , The Tribes , The Practice, and It’s Marketing . He is also the host of the Akimbo podcast and the author of his popular blog of the same name .
Listen to The Upgrade above, or find us in all the usual podcast locations including Apple Podcasts , Google Play , Spotify , iHeartRadio, and NPR One.
Highlights from this week’s series
From an interview with Seth Godin:
On the basics of marketing:
[Y] You have to matter to some people, not ignore everything. And for some people, it’s important, like if you’re an Etsy seller, not to make the same cake toppers as any other Etsy seller and hope that you somehow get lucky with your search. It is to do what only you can do, and to do it for the least number of people who can support you.
Getting started:
[Y] You must fail. You need to shift work. You have to appear in front of people with a proposal and say that I did it, and then see what they say in response. I did a hundred blog posts, two hundred blog posts, before I had more than ten readers. And if I waited until I had the first blog post that worked for me, I would still wait, because you only get to the first after you do a hundred or two hundred, which are not entirely correct. And it’s cheaper today, a lot cheaper than it ever was before when Ford launched the Edsel, it cost them a billion dollars to go wrong with a new car model, whereas now you can put the mock up on the car. Videos on YouTube and see what the world has to say.
On planning when to abandon a strategy:
You should plan before spending a dollar when you are about to give up. So if I was building a brand that was selling, I don’t know, sweatshirts or microphones, I would say okay, I’ll run these ads for six months and I’m not going to change my plan for six months. I’m going to appear, appear, and appear because people need to see a message twenty-seven times before they even start registering for it on the Internet. It’s even more because there is so much noise here. So, if you are going to spend this money, it should start with a commitment. You don’t want to spend money on one ad and then decide.
For more of Seth’s wise marketing advice, we recommend listening to the entire episode.
Any feedback or ideas for future episodes? Do you want to participate in the show? Leave us a voicemail at 347-687-8109 or send a voicemail to [email protected].