Seth Godin’s Marketing Ideas to Save Your Business and Do Real Marketing

In this busy age of marketing, when a person like Seth Godin stands up with the statement ‘This is Marketing‘, you should definitely stop moving for a while and make a final review on your ongoing strategies- are you on the right track?

Today, everything is changing faster than ever, as well as marketing strategies and practices. If you rely on the common-old day's marketing strategies, you will just fall behind. There are high chances of failing in your projects and slowing down your growth.

In this post, we have described 10+ Seth Godin marketing ideas that would certainly help you save your business and do real marketing.

Who is Seth Godin?… Learn Some of His Remarkable Works

Seth Godin is a prominent writer, entrepreneur, and blogger. He thinks and works on marketing ideas, teaches and helps people to get their desired success. He was recognized as the ultimate entrepreneur for this information age by BusinessWeek back over a decade!

Seth introduces himself as a teacher and project creator. He is well known for his outstanding ideas on leveling up people both in their careers and business projects. Here's what he says about himself-

Hi. I’m Seth Godin. I’m a teacher, and I do projects. For more than thirty years, I’ve been trying to turn on lights, inspire people and teach them how to level up –Seth Godin

Seth is the author of 20 bestselling books in 37 languages. The last two were ‘This is Marketing‘ in 2018 and ‘The Practice: Ship creative work‘ in 2021 and both are marked bestsellers by New York Times! Seth published his latest book named ‘The Song of Significance‘ in just a few days ago at the last on May 2023.

Seth is running a blog for over 10 years and it's one of the most popular blogs around the world even to this day. His blog posts are too short just like social media posts but useful and experience-based that attract marketers and entrepreneurs. You will just wonder discovering that how is it possible to maintain the same popularity over the years by providing these short and simple posts!

Startup School is a specialized podcast show designed and hosted by Seth Godin and was on the top list of podcasts for a long period of time. In this podcast, Seth actually guides entrepreneurs on how to start, grow and shine in their dream businesses. Now he is hosting a new cultural podcast ‘Akimbo‘ for the last few years.

Seth's journey is to spreading new thoughts and actionable ideas for this advanced-changing era of science and technology. Over time, Seth Godin is becoming more and more obvious and inevitable for digital marketers and business owners.

12 of Seth Godin Marketing Ideas to Help You Grow

Through his books, blogs, lectures, podcast shows, and more; Seth is actually working to spread out his ideas to teach and encourage people to do something remarkable in their lives and level up their skills.

Check out 12 of Seth Godin's marketing ideas to ensure a quantum leap over your competitors and win in your business-

1. Marketing Is about The Stories You Tell
2. Do Permission Marketing
3. Invent, Implement and Sell the Ideas
4. Sell What People Want, Not What They Need
5. Keep Your Customers Happy
6. Deliver Basic Human Wants
7. Don't Only Rely on Mass Media Marketing
8. Send ME-mail, Not E-mail
9. Google Never Forgets
10. Believe Yourself First, Out Loud Publicly
11. Your Goal Is Creating Trust Not a Crowd
12. Don't Play Promise Games

Now let's explain each of his points in details-

1- Marketing Is about The Stories You Tell

Since the main purpose behind marketing is to connect and communicate with your audience, you should focus on telling stories. Seth believes, story-telling is the best way to create an emotional attachment with the customers.

Traditional marketing campaigns help you get a lot of attention but that wouldn't help you much to create a great base of loyal customers and lifelong brand value.

On the other hand, a story can help you both grab attention and make sales through a more intimate relationship. That is why Seth says-

‘Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but the stories you tell'.

2- Do Permission Marketing

One of the amazing thoughts of Seth Godin on which he is working and trying to spread out for years. The journey began in 1999 and it's now a popular theory that is broadly applied across the world.

The basic concept of this strategy is turning strangers into friends and friends into customers.

Permission Marketing recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.

It's like dating your customers. In traditional marketing, marketers try to intrude new thoughts and ideas on their customers.

But what you should do is earn the right first. When you earn their trust and get right permission to tell your stories, you should move forward. This is the best way to grab people's attention and make your job done with ease.

You can take social media platforms' activities as examples of permission marketing- sending requests, being friends and partners, and then starting to tell and listen to the stories and updates.

Social media, SEO, e-mails, etc. are the channels of doing permission marketing.

3- Invent, Implement & Sell The Ideas

If you look around, there are lots of examples that marketers try to follow others and duplicate ideas instead of inventing and implementing a new one.

A unique idea can give you a quantum leap over your competitors in a way you can just imagine. It's true that you can't invent a new idea all the time but you can surely differentiate and customize that as your needs.

Another big thing is to keep trying to sell ideas. People just love to get familiar with new ideas and thoughts. A new idea doesn't require developing a new theory all the time, a slogan, a good line of your add copy, or a smart design of your campaign can easily reflect and represent a new thought and perspective.

4- Sell What People Want, Not What They Need

A common marketing strategy is to deliver what people need but according to Seth's idea, you should focus on what people want.

People's wants are more specific than their needs. We have unlimited needs in our lives but do we want to fulfill all of them? Or what we want to get, are these always the things that we need?

The answer is a big ‘No'.

You can take Singapore as a great example of this idea. Having the highest-density population, Singapore isn't ready to allow more cars. So, they charge too much tax on new cars. But Singapore is still in the top list of countries who buy expensive brands like Ferrari. Why?

They buy the expensive cars because they want to buy them.

So, when you design your marketing plan and prepare your strategy, try to focus on what people want. You will definitely get success and be able to attract the right customers.

5- Keep Your Customers Happy

It's always challenging to make and keep your customers happy. Seth suggests business owners and marketers a few things to do.

The first thing you should do is to define your customers. Who are your customers? People could have different choices being their needs the same. So, you should be well informed about your targeted customers and their preferences.

The second thing you should consider is to treat different customers in a different way. It's a worse mistake that marketers make than treating all the customers in the same way. Like market segmentation, it's also important to divide your customers into different groups to ensure a better user experience.

And the third important thing is to set a prioritized customer group. Why and how?… Check out some examples.

Nike– a famous shoe manufacturer around the world, focuses only on athletes and doesn't care very much about the other people who buy their shoes.

Columbia Records has no idea who buys its products and even never has! Many manufacturers considered retailers as their customers- if Walmart is happy, they're happy!

So, you should also define and set a prioritized customer group.

The core benefit of this segmenting is to easily keep focusing on them and treat them in a way they just love. And others would follow them, it's a surprising fact for marketers and business owners.

6- Deliver Basic Human Wants

When you're going to enter the market with a new product or service, try to offer and deliver something that people really want. Discover and find out their priorities and provide a smart solution at a cost that they can easily effort.

Things are changing, similar to people's priorities. Today, there is a huge list of things that people consider as their basic needs. And it's increasing day by day.

So, as a business owner, you should keep your eyes open and try to pick an idea from the top of the people's basic needs.

7- Don't Only Rely on Mass Media Marketing

Advertisements on Radio and Television these days are recognized as ‘Interrupted Marketing‘ which interrupt people when they are doing something of their preference and love. Seth wants to inform the business owners and marketers who rely only on mass media marketing to be aware and make a reconsideration.

As we mentioned earlier that your main purpose is to touch people's thoughts and hearts, not only reach to them and of course not interrupt and disturb them. So, try to find and use channels that can help you to reach them in a way they just love. See the world through the large window of digital marketing.

8- Send ME-mail, Not E-mail

Another big-deep idea of Seth Godin is that you should send ‘ME-mail' instead of Emails while doing e-mail marketing.

The concept is- people prefer what they want. They don't usually want or like what you want. So, when you write a copy of your marketing e-mail or design a template, you should focus on what they want.

People don’t want Email; people want ME-mail

ME-mail refers to a more personalized mail, providing something extra and special for your customers. According to Seth's idea- you should offer a purple cow, not a common one. Because people have lots of options and they usually do ignoring stuff these days. So, when you send a mail, you should make it specialized for them so that they just love it.

If you don't have something to send and share with people, just wait. Irrelevant emails harm businesses in many ways. You can lose many of your potential customers forever. It's too another example of ‘interrupted marketing‘.

Another significant fact is the opening and click-through rates of e-mail marketing are decreasing day by day. So, if you send the same irrelevant and unnecessary emails again and again, you could lose even your potential customers.

That's why Seth says- ‘People don’t want email; people want ME-mail.'

9- Google Never Forgets

In the era we are living in, it's true that we are always under a ‘Candid' camera. All are being recorded what we're doing day or night, in the house or outside.

With some issues, it's actually a great opportunity, especially for marketers. You need to just ensure the right entries in the right way and avoid wrong SEO tactics.

Once you make an entry, It's now Google's responsibility to spread it out. So, don't forget Google. Because Google never forgets; anything, anyone.

10- Believe Yourself First, Out Loud Publicly

To make people believe you, you need to believe in yourself first. If there is any confusion-hesitation or weakness in your talks, advertisements, or blog posts, that would decrease the appeal, and people would lose their attention.

You are more powerful than you think – Seth Godin

And another significant fact is to loud out publicly. Seth always encourages and says that when it's a matter of marketing, you should surely raise your voice among people and marketers.

To get success and lead a team, you need to be a leader. And two of the essential qualities of leadership are believing in yourself and out loud publicly. You can do that because according to Seth- ‘ You are more powerful than you think!

11- Your Goal Is Creating Trust Not a Crowd

When you do marketing, you should focus on creating trust, not a crowd. The actual purpose of marketing is to increase sales and profits, not only awareness. So, give preferences to create a relationship of trust rather than grabbing only attention.

If your customers believe you, if they have faith in you; they wouldn't let you down anyway.

12- Don't Play Promise Games

It's a dangerous act that many marketers do practice even these days. If you want to survive and get lifelong success, you shouldn't even think of playing promise games.

Sometimes it happens that you can't keep your word even after your best efforts, but the result is always the same. Seth says-

Some organizations work very hard to weasel in the promises they make. They imply great customer service or amazing results or spectacular quality, but don’t deliver. No, they didn’t actually lie, but they came awfully close. The result: angry customers and negative word of mouth.

So, try to avoid promise games to keep your customers happy and ensure better output all the time.

A Few of Seth Godin Quotes Related to Business and Marketing

Get 10+ popular Quotes by Seth Godin with references-

• Great work is the result of seeking out tension, not avoiding it. Great work doesn’t require reassurance, in fact, it avoids it. (What to do When it's Your Turn (and it's Always Your Turn)– a book by Seth Godin)
• We sell feelings, status, and connection, not tasks or stuff. (This is Marketing– a book by Seth Godin)
• Build trust and earn attention. The entity that gets the most trust will get the most customers. (Seth Godin quote this in his ‘Live in London‘ event in 2015)

• The organizations that succeed realize that offering a remarkable product with a great story is more important and more profitable than doing what everyone else is doing just a bit better. (Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable by Seth Godin)
• Stop advertising and start innovating. (Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable– a book by Seth Godin)

Don’t find customers for your product; find products for your customers. – Seth Godin

• Selling ice cream on the beach in the summer is easy. Raising people’s expectations, engaging in their hopes and dreams, helping them see further—that’s the difficult work we signed up for. (This is Marketing– a book by Seth Godin)
• Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you make, but about the stories you tell.” (All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World by Seth Godin)
• “In a crowded marketplace, fitting in is a failure. In a busy marketplace, not standing out is the same as being invisible.” (No specific reference available)
• Permission marketing is the privilege (not the right) of delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to people who actually want to get them. (Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers by Seth Godin)
• Focus on a small audience you can possibly live with and make a difference. If you can change 10 lives you can get the next 50. (Seth Godin quote this in his ‘Live in London‘ event in 2015)

Final Words on Seth Godin Marketing Ideas and Quotes

It's surprising that you wouldn't find the same reason behind the success of two similar types of businesses. You couldn't also get the same result by applying the theory that your competitor is already applying.

You should find your own feeds and differentiate the way or change the model to give your customers a perfect nudge!

That's the way of getting success and touching the milestone with ease.

Seth Godin is one of the most experienced people who can help you to apply the same idea in a different way. To level up in your life, to get a unique way of thinking, and finally to meet your goals, you should follow Seth Godin and get familiar with his ideas.

We have covered 12 of Seth's popular ideas that would help you get a go in 2023 and beyond.