The way we serve our tribe of early-stage founders is by understanding what makes up great marketing and curating the best strategies. This Is Marketing often tops the list of best marketing books and I highly recommend consuming it yourself. I listened to the audiobook and am sharing the key takeaways with you here.

About Seth Godin

Seth Godin is a prolific writer and genius marketer with 18 bestselling books, including This Is Marketing, Permission Marketing, and Tribes. His daily blog is read by millions.

He believes that marketers don’t just make noise; they make the world better and that truly powerful marketing is grounded in generosity, empathy, and emotional labor.

Key takeaways from This is Marketing—You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See

1 What marketers do

Marketers make change happen for the smallest viable market and by delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages that people actually want to get.

2 People like us do things like this

Everyone always acts in accordance with their internal narrative. Changing our behavior is driven by a desire to fit in (people like us do things like this) and our perception of status (affiliation and dominance).

3 Marketing in 5 steps:

Invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution worth talking about
Design and build it in a way that a few people will particularly benefit from and care about
Tell a story that matches the built in narrative and dreams of that tiny group of people—the smallest viable market
Spread the word
Show up, regularly, consistently, and generously for years and years to organize and lead and build confidence in the change you to seek to make. To earn permission to follow up and to earn enrollment to get to teach.

4 Marketing Driven vs. Market Driven

A marketing-driven organization is run by the Marketing department. It revolves around what marketers do.

A market-driven organization is driven by what the market wants, regardless of what the marketing department feels like doing.

5 You must begin with a world view and invite people who share that world view to join you.

Example: Former CEO Ron Johnson of JC Penney's came from Apple in 2011. Johnson liked luxury goods and had a world view that retail shopping at a quality retailed should be high end. So he cut discounts and flash sales. JC Penny’s sales plummeted more than 50%. Ron Johnson failed to understand that JC Penny’s tribe did not share his world view and the JC Penney's board failed to appoint a leader that shared the same world view as their customers. The moral of the story is that hiring people who have been successful in the past means nothing if their worldview isn’t aligned.

6 The three-sentence marketing promise template

My product is for people who believe ______.

I will focus on people who want ______.

I promise that using my product will help you get ______.

7 Ten things your story needs to do

Connect us to our purpose and vision for career and biz
Allow us to celebrate our strengths by remembering how we got here
A deeper understanding of our unique value and what differentiates us
Reinforce our core values
Help us to act in alignment and make value-based decisions
Encourage us to respond to customers instead of reacting to the marketplace
Attract customers who want to support businesses that reflect or represent their values
Build brand loyalty and give customers a story to tell
Attract the kind of like-minded employees we want
Help us to stay motivated and cont to do work we're proud of

But your story is a hook, and now you're on the hook to deliver, which is a high-risk path. Great marketing is the generous and audacious work of saying, I see a better alternative, come with me.

8 Simple three-step narrative for action

Marshall Ganz, a Harvard professor who has worked with both Cesar Chavez and Barack Obama, has articulated a simple three-step narrative for action: the story of self, the story of us, and the story of now.

Story of self gives you a platform to speak.
Story of us is the kernel of the tribe—why are we alike and why is your story relevant to the tribe?
Story of now is the critical pivot—it enlists your tribe on your journey.

9 The tyranny of perfect and the possibility of better

Perfect closes the door. It asserts we're done and that it’s the best we can do. Perfect forbids us to try. But the possibility of better opens the door. Better challenges us to try and gives us a chance to improve the lives of the people we seek to serve.