What Seth Godin Knows About Marketing

Internet Marketing No Comments

Originally written in 2005, this is an updated article by Seth Godin from his blog.

Seth gave permission to reprint it with credit, so I’m doing so here.

What Every Good Marketer Knows:

  • Anticipated, personal and relevant advertising always does better than unsolicited junk.
  • Making promises and keeping them is a great way to build a brand.
  • Your best customers are worth far more than your average customers.
  • Share of wallet is easier, more profitable and ultimately more effective a measure than share of market.
  • Marketing begins before the product is created.
  • Advertising is just a symptom, a tactic. Marketing is about far more than that.
  • Low price is a great way to sell a commodity. That’s not marketing, though, that’s efficiency.
  • Conversations among the members of your marketplace happen whether you like it or not. Good marketing encourages the right sort of conversations.
  • Products that are remarkable get talked about.
  • Marketing is the way your people answer the phone, the typesetting on your bills and your returns policy.
  • You can’t fool all the people, not even most of the time. And people, once unfooled, talk about the experience.
  • If you are marketing from a fairly static annual budget, you’re viewing marketing as an expense. Good marketers realize that it is an investment.
  • People don’t buy what they need. They buy what they want.
  • You’re not in charge. And your prospects don’t care about you.
  • What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
  • Business to business marketing is just marketing to consumers who happen to have a corporation to pay for what they buy.
  • Traditional ways of interrupting consumers (TV ads, trade show booths, junk mail) are losing their cost-effectiveness. At the same time, new ways of spreading ideas (blogs, permission-based RSS information, consumer fan clubs) are quickly proving how well they work.
  • People all over the world, and of every income level, respond to marketing that promises and delivers basic human wants.
  • Good marketers tell a story.
  • People are selfish, lazy, uninformed and impatient. Start with that and you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you find.
  • Marketing that works is marketing that people choose to notice.
  • Effective stories match the worldview of the people you are telling the story to.
  • Choose your customers. Fire the ones that hurt your ability to deliver the right story to the others.
  • A product for everyone rarely reaches much of anyone.
  • Living and breathing an authentic story is the best way to survive in an conversation-rich world.
  • Marketers are responsible for the side effects their products cause.
  • Reminding the consumer of a story they know and trust is a powerful shortcut.
  • Good marketers measure.
  • Marketing is not an emergency. It’s a planned, thoughtful exercise that started a long time ago and doesn’t end until you’re done.
  • One disappointed customer is worth ten delighted ones.
  • In the googleworld, the best in the world wins more often, and wins more.
  • Most marketers create good enough and then quit. Greatest beats good enough every time.
  • There are more rich people than ever before, and they demand to be treated differently.
  • Organizations that manage to deal directly with their end users have an asset for the future.
  • You can game the social media in the short run, but not for long.
  • You market when you hire and when you fire. You market when you call tech support and you market every time you send a memo.
  • Blogging makes you a better marketer because it teaches you humility in your writing.

Obviously, knowing what to do is very, very different than actually doing it.

Thanks to Seth Godin for permission to reprint this.

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Jason James Untold Secrets Tells All About Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing No Comments

Jason James Untold Secrets is out. Finally someone (other than me lol) is telling you about Internet Marketing like it really is, and showing you how it’s actually done.

If you just want a taste of Untold Secrets, I have 19 of them for you -

19 Untold Marketing Secrets

This free pdf ebook shows 19 untold secrets. There’s loads more at Jason’s Untold Marketing Secrets site. I can’t think of anyone who won’t learn something valuable from this.

I guarantee you that Jason has ticked off a few self-proclaimed Internet Marketing gurus with this. Jason’s Untold Secrets is the real deal, and I don’t say that about much in this crazy world of Internet marketing.

How Ewen Chia Makes Money From Something Free

Internet Marketing, Strategy 1 Comment

This is a great lesson in marketing.

NVu is a free full featured html editor. I’ll say that important phrase again. NVu is free.

Ewen Chia built a money making web site around NVu, even though it is free. How?

He added value by including some video instruction, a master resell rights product he probably bought as a special offer at the Warrior Forum, just like I did.

He made a primary upsell offer for web graphics, and a couple of secondary ones as well.

Even if you have no interest in any of this, you’ll learn something from the marketing process.

Remember all the fuss over Site Stealer? You can learn that on your own if you just analyze what the best other marketers are doing.

Ewen Chia is definitely one of the best. Here’s the link to see this process in action:

Ewen Chia’s My Free Website Builder.

Avoid Drop Shipping Scams

Internet Marketing, Recommendations No Comments

Ever since I started selling on eBay back in 1999, I’ve watched people get suckered into buying into drop shipping memberships. You know how it goes, you sign up with some “wholesale” service that promises to give you great prices on physical products that they keep in stock in their warehouse and ship to your customers for you.

The problems are many:

  • Wholesale prices turn out to be higher than other sellers sell the same items for retail
  • Items are shown as in stock but when you sell them the drop shipper is out of stock
  • Shipping fees are way too high because of the drop shippers handling charge

Of course there are other problems, but almost every service has the above shortcomings.

So what’s an aspiring physical product seller to do?

While I no longer sell physical products on eBay, if I still did there is only one place I would go for wholesale sources and real drop ship services. Chris Malta’s Real Wholesale Drop Shipper Resource is the only place to go.

You’ll find a wide world of wholesale and drop ship resources there. Whether you want to sell on ebay, open a Yahoo store, or try your luck with your own site, it’s one resource you really shouldn’t do without.

Avoid those drop ship scams and get hooked up with Chris Malta’s Real Wholesale Drop Shipper Resource