Seth Godin writes and teaches a revolutionary approach to marketing. I subscribe to his blog, and recently read his most recent book, “This is Marketing: You Can’t be Seen Until You Learn to See.” It’s more than a blueprint for marketing your product or service – he offers an empathetic, client-based approach that turns conventional marketing upside down. This is perhaps the most thought-provoking business book I have read – even more so than the bestselling “Good to Great,” by Jim Collins.

Mr. Godin equates marketing with service – with helping others. Customers and clients don’t solve your company’s problems – you solve theirs. This resonates at high-frequency with me – I look at the work my team and I do as helping other people – solving their problems, helping them toward healthy, robust, achieving futures. Starting with the question, “Whom can I help, and how can I help them?”

This is Marketing:

• It suggests that you look for less – what is the smallest viable market you can serve?

• It is driven by better – offering better service, creating a better community, and providing better outcomes.

• It creates a dynamic culture – by suggesting that you affiliate with like-minded people.

• It is change – it suggests that we are responsible for making positive change, thereby making the world a better place.

• Look at marketing the same way you look at your work – market in ways that make you proud.

Seth Godin offers another way – marketing as community and culture building, with your team and your customers – “doing work that matters for and with people who care.”

Whether you are looking for a better way to connect with your existing customers or trying to acquire new customers, first ground your work around the needs and the dreams of those you seek to help.

What are your thoughts on marketing as a mechanism to helping others get what they want?

Please click here to email me directly – I would love to know your thoughts.

Until next Wednesday –

Peace,

Eric