To sell, you need to serve.

And Seth Godin, author of 21 international bestsellers including _Purple Cow, Tribes, Permission Marketing_ , _This is Marketing,_ and now _The Song of Significance,_ knows what drives behaviour in this modern, privileged world:

* Fear
  * Cognitive load $and the desire for habit and ease$
  * Greed $fueled by fear$
  * Curiosity
  * Generosity/connection

Seth says this is one of the questions marketers should be asking themselves when considering their customers.

_This is Marketing_ has two excellent tools to help you: **Marketing in 5 steps,** and a **simple worksheet/checklist** comprising 13 questions that all marketers and entrepreneurs should commit to memory.

"What are they afraid of?"

1. Invent a thing work making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution worth talking about. 
  2. Design and build it in way that a few people will particularly benefit from and care about.
  3. Tell a story that matches the built-in narrative and dreams of that tiny group of people, the smallest viable market. 
  4. Spread the word.
  5. Often overlooked: show up - regularly, consistently, and generously, for years and years - to organise and lead and build confidence in the change you seek to make. To earn permission to follow up and to earn enrolment to teach.

Marketing in 5 steps

The questions help you to do what Seth wants you to do: generous and insightful marketing that _finds the people its meant to serve._

The book fleshes these concepts out, but in their pure form, here they are:

1. Whos it for?
  2. Whats it for?
  3. What is the worldview of the audience youre seeking to reach?
  4. What are they afraid of?
  5. What story will you tell? Is it true?
  6. What change are you seeking to make?
  7. How will it change their status?
  8. How will you reach the early adopters and neophiliacs $strong affinity for novelty$?
  9. Why will they tell their friends?
  10. What will they tell their friends?
  11. Wheres the network effect that will propel this forward?
  12. What asset are you building?
  13. Are you proud of it?

Seth says that marketing has changed, but our understanding of what were supposed to do next hasnt kept up. He says we selfishly shout when we are in doubt.

_Marketing involves very little in the way of shouting, hustling, or coercion. Its a chance to serve, instead,_ he writes.

13 Questions Checklist

Marketing expert, entrepreneur and author Seth Godin got the worlds attention in 2001 by the unusual way he marketed his e-book _Unleashing the Ideavirus._

He gave it away for free at a time when nobody did such a thing, and its claimed to be the most downloaded book of all time.

Seth is a marketer with revolutionary ideas, and according to Networth.com, hes amassed in 2018 a $US34 million $$A48 million$ fortune in doing so.

More impressive, hes respected by his peers. In 2018 he was inducted into the AMA Marketing Hall of Fame.

The author of 19 books, Seth Godins latest book is _This is Marketing._

Who is Seth Godin?

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