Note: The following contains quotes from a talk Seth Godin delivered at ICON14 in Phoenix, AZ. Reader discretion advised; Your mind may be blown.
Just think: You could have been a gazillionaire by now if only you’d had enough rabid fans and an unlimited supply of stuff to sell them. 🙂
In the heyday of the “Television-Industrial Complex”, it must have seemed possible; millions of people watching one of just three or four channels, and all willing to settle for roughly the same corn flakes, roll-on deodorant or station wagon.
We live in a radically different world now, and the old way of selling products and services is dead. Clobbering a billion people with the same uniform message for an average product, just doesn’t cut it. Unfortunately, a lot of money still gets squandered on that way of thinking.
“We’re in a revolution and we need to figure out what to do about it.”
Just as there are millions, if not billions of television channels, you need tightly targeted marketing to go deep with a single audience if you want your business to survive, let alone prosper and grow.
Internet marketing targeted to a hyper narrow niche for instance, can happen within days if not hours with pay-per-click…
Look around – The most successful businesses go deep.
Try going 5 layers deep into your target market
Let’s see how this works. Let’s say you have a sporting goods catalog. Here’s how you might find a ravenous mob for your offerings by going deeper and deeper:
- Sports enthusiasts
- Who love the outdoors
- Live in Idaho
- Go fishing two or three times a year
- And will spend their last dime on a promising new lure
So is that the formula, the secret shortcut that works for everybody, every time?
Well, as it turns out, it ain’t quite that simple. The dirty little secret info-marketers don’t want you to know is, people always looking for a shortcut usually end up disappointed, frustrated and broke. There may be 10,000 ways to skin a cat, yet the only way to find your perfect marketing system is through trial and error.
“If failure is not an option, then neither is success”
The good news is, success is about failing a lot without giving up. And, in an age where you have to fight to get noticed, people love watching the struggle, the failures and the successes. The ones unwilling to jump into the ring and risk barked shins suffer in silent anonymity. When you take a chance, even if you belly flop, you get attention. And customers. And sales. At least in my world that seems to be true…
So, as Seth Godin says, “More hubris please.”
Want to get found and noticed by your ideal tribe? Go make a ruckus!
