Seth Godin: A Walk on the Marketing Wild Side - Branding Personality

by jordan on September 27, 2012

?Cows, after you?ve seen the for a while, are boring. They may be perfect cows, attractive cows, cows with great personalities, cows lit by beautiful light, but they?re still boring. A?Purple Cow,?though. Now?that would be interesting. (For a while.)??-Seth Godin

Seth Godin, heralded by the masses as the leading Godfather of digital marketing, has taken the mundane out of online advertising. Gone are the eras of email spamming and ?cold calling for dollars.? Irrelevant are the?sheep-walking?days of following instructions, fitting in and and keeping your head down. It?s story-telling time, a sit-down, relax and watch the marketing beauty unfold type of experience as Seth teaches us the importance of listening, leading, interconnecting, and creating your purple cow in a brown cow world.

For Godin, marketing is more than numbers and flashy advertisements. While the internet was meant to homogenize the world, Godin argues that the web has spawned thousand of canals and ?silos of interest? that allow people to share their collective differences. As he points out, you can find ?Ukrainian Folk Dancers? on Facebook and chat with them. You can find hot-dog eating champions and tweet with them. The fringes of the world are now glued together by this new form of human communication. And why is this important? Because the world is reinventing the art of telling a story.

?If you do not have the business you want, it?s because you are not trusted enough,?

said Godin during his speech on Google Hangout this morning, which was broadcasted internationally. ?Your story is not resonating with the people you are trying to sell it to.?

Indeed, this concept of story-telling is a powerful marketing tool that many advertisers fail to employ. With the ever-increasing desire to become the next big thing, companies want to go viral without understanding what viral means. ?They take a pile of money and buy a pile of ads,? said Godin. However, it is more beneficial in the long run to build trust with your consumer base, which comes from your ability as a businessman to take the risk out of buying. It becomes, then, less of a sales pitch and more of an informational session, a way to get your point across and, more importantly, a way to get potential clients to see the same picture that you see. Or, better said, to imagine themselves as the hero in your marketing story.

What happens, then, if your story is not marinating in the advertorial minds of your consumers? Ditch them. Forget the people who are not buying in to what you are saying, and focus on the people who actively care, and proactively want to make a different.

?Shun the non-believer,? encourages Godin. ?There are so many other people you can be working with. At some point we will need to persuade the non-believers, but they are going to go out of business before that time comes.?

Godin has modeled this story-telling concept around the fundamental ideal that everyone wants to be heard. And it?s this art of listening that has separated successful marketers from the average herd.

?I?ve never met anyone who gets talker?s block?who wakes up in the morning and is unable to speak,? Godin says.

As a result, your strengths as a marketer should be to listen to the complaints of the world, and come up with a viable solution on how to fix them. Sounds easy, right? Of course, Godin does not underestimate the difficulties in connecting with your audience, but he also points out that the key in building a trustworthy consumer base is by sifting through layers and layers of public scrutiny until you can find that one person that actually?cares about making a difference. Once you find them, connect with them and start the process over until you have built a strong, organized community ready to trump the social norm.

Seth argues that the common misconception with business is that if you can get to the corporate big whigs, or untouchable CEO?s, and have them endorse you, then everything will fall into place.

?Leaders are often overrated,?

said Godin. ??[We think] if we can just get to the top? get mentioned by Oprah, then everything will be okay. Not true. There are pockets of influence in every tribe? true believers.?

After all, marketing is not about stealing precious minutes from executives and leaders who are too caught up in their own endeavors. It is about building trust with the true believers, authentic trust, the kind of trust that has your believers spreading your story to everyone they care about. The truth of the matter is that ?human beings like doing what other human beings are doing.? If you can prove the value of your product or service to one?genuine?person, then your story-telling gains momentum, adds a few marketing paragraphs here and there, and, when all is said and done, has become an internationally best selling novel.

?None of your clients wake up thinking ?I have an AdWords problem,?? argues Godin. ?They wake up thinking I have a shoulder problem or I need more business.?

While Seth?s comical statement seems simplistic by all accounts, the more deeply rooted message is that your story-telling must incorporate the day-t0-day inconsistencies plaguing the common man in his common life. Show your consumer how?you can help, how the information you provide them will invariably become the front line soldiers they need to make a dent in their war on advertising. Consumers don?t want to follow you, or like you, they want you to become a fan of them. They want you to show them how you can be a positive, beneficial influence in their personal and professional lives. And during this whole process, you must make them realize, always, how and why your innovative purple cow will provide them with the nutrients needed to cultivate their business.

Source: http://www.brandingpersonality.com/seth-godin-a-walk-on-the-marketing-wild-side/

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