This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See

by Seth Godin

They say that the best way to complain is to make things better.

The first step on the path to make things better is to make better things.

Marketing is the generous act of helping others become who they seek to become. It involves creating honest stories—stories that resonate and spread. Marketers offer solutions, opportunities for humans to solve their problems and move forward. And when our ideas spread, we change the culture. We build something that people would miss if it were gone, something that gives them meaning, connection, and possibility.

The way we make things better is by caring enough about those we serve to imagine the story that they need to hear.

Marketing is our quest to make change on behalf of those we serve, and we do it by understanding the irrational forces that drive each of us.

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.

Regardless of what the specifics are, if you’re a marketer, you’re in the business of making change happen. Denying this is a form of hiding; it’s more productive to own it instead.

The relentless pursuit of mass will make you boring, because mass means average, it means the center of the curve, it requires you to offend no one and satisfy everyone. It will lead to compromises and generalizations. Begin instead with the smallest viable market.

Choose the people you serve, choose your future. The smallest viable market is the focus that, ironically and delightfully, leads to your growth.

Once you’ve identified the scale, then find a corner of the market that can’t wait for your attention. Go to their extremes. Find a position on the map where you, and you alone, are the perfect answer. Overwhelm this group’s wants and dreams and desires with your care, your attention, and your focus. Make change happen. Change that’s so profound, people can’t help but talk about

Lean entrepreneurship is built around the idea of the minimal viable product. Figure out the simplest useful version of your product, engage with the market, and then improve and repeat.

Always be seeking, connecting, solving, asserting, believing, seeing, and yes, testing.

“I made something that I like, that I thought you’d like. How’d I do? What advice do you have for how I could make it fit your worldview more closely?”

When you’re the cheapest, you’re not promising change. You’re promising the same, but cheaper.

What your customers want from you is for you to care enough to change them. To create tension that leads to forward motion. To exert emotional labor that will open them up to what’s possible.

And if you invest in them, they’ll show you what they want and what they need. You can gain empathy for them, understand their narrative, and serve them again.