Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem. (Location 175)
marketing was advertising. And then it wasnât true anymore. Which means youâll need to become a marketer instead. (Location 187)
The other kind of marketing, the effective kind, is about understanding our customersâ worldview and desires so we can connect with them. Itâs focused on being missed when youâre gone, on bringing more than people expect to those who trust us. It seeks volunteers, not victims. (Location 202)
Itâs easier to make products and services for the customers you seek to serve than it is to find customers for your products and services. (Location 207)
Marketing is the generous act of helping others become who they seek to become. (Location 210)
You can learn to see how human beings dream, decide, and act. And if you help them become better versions of themselves, the ones they seek to be, youâre a marketer. (Location 260)
Marketers donât use consumers to solve their companyâs problem; they use marketing to solve other peopleâs problems. (Location 271)
Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action. (Location 276)
Most of all, marketing begins (and often ends) with what we do and how we do it, not in all the stuff that comes after the thing is designed and shipped. (Location 281)
If you want to make change, begin by making culture. Begin by organizing a tightly knit group. Begin by getting people in sync. Culture beats strategyâso much that culture is strategy. (Location 284)
People donât want what you make They want what it will do for them. They want the way it will make them feel. And there arenât that many feelings to choose from. (Location 360)
Begin by choosing people based on what they dream of, believe, and want, not based on what they look like. In other words, use psychographics instead of demographics. (Location 443)
The relentless pursuit of mass will make you boring, because mass means average, it means the center of the curve, it requires you to offend no (Location 465)
one and satisfy everyone. It will lead to compromises and generalizations. Begin instead with the smallest viable market. (Location 466)
Customer development is the act of gaining traction with customers, of finding a fit between what you make and what they want. This traction is worth far more than fancy technology or expensive marketing. That, and only that, separates successful projects from unsuccessful ones. (Location 488)
Everything gets easier when you walk away from the hubris of everyone. Your work is not for everyone. Itâs only for those who signed up for the journey. (Location 491)
In a world of choice, where we have too little time, too little space, and too many options, how do we choose? (Location 698)
easier for those we seek to serve simply to shut down and not even try to solve their problems. (Location 699)
begin with their needs and wants and dreams, and then build something for that audience. (Location 702)
You, on the other hand, have gone out on a limb, one that belongs to you, and maybe, just maybe, there are underserved customers out there who canât wait to find you, connect with you, and spread the word. (Location 761)
Connect us to our purpose and vision for our career or business.   2. Allow us to celebrate our strengths by remembering how we got from there to here.   3. Deepen our understanding of our unique value and what differentiates us in the marketplace.   4. Reinforce our core values.   5. Help us to act in alignment and make value-based decisions.   6. Encourage us to respond to customers instead of react to the marketplace.   7. Attract customers who want to support businesses that reflect or represent their values.   8. Build brand loyalty and give customers a story to tell.   9. Attract the kind of like-minded employees we want. 10. Help us to stay motivated and continue to do work weâre proud of. (Location 853)
The goal isnât to personalize the work. Itâs to make it personal. (Location 935)
Assertions about what our audience, the folks we need to serve, want and need. (Location 990)
Donât begin with your machines, your inventory, or your tactics. Donât begin with what you know how to do or some sort of distraction about your mission. Instead, begin with dreams and fears, with emotional states, and with the change your customers seek. (Location 994)
We donât pay ten times extra for more words, a bigger order of French fries, or a louder stereo. Instead, itâs a different extreme, a different story, a different sort of scarcity. (Location 1052)
But without a doubt, the heart and soul of a thriving enterprise is the irrational pursuit of becoming irresistible. (Location 1068)
For most of us, though, changing our behavior is driven by our desire to fit in (people like us do things like this) and our perception of our status (affiliation and dominance). Since both these forces often push us to stay as we are, it takes tension to change them. (Location 1206)
In order to change a culture, we begin with an exclusive cohort. Thatâs where we can offer the most tension and create the most useful connections. (Location 1291)
Or you can be an agent of change, someone who creates tension and then relieves it. (Location 1402)
The status quo doesnât shift because youâre right. It shifts because the culture changes. And the engine of culture is status. (Location 1412)
Iâd divide the modern business plan into five sections: Truth Assertions Alternatives People Money (Location 1595)
The most important lesson I can share about brand marketing is this: you definitely, certainly, and surely donât have enough time and money to build a brand for everyone. You canât. Donât try. Be specific. Be very specific. And then, with this knowledge, overdo your brand marketing. Every slice of every interaction ought to reflect the whole. Every time we see any of you, we ought to be able to make a smart guess about all of you. (Location 1939)
People donât remember what they read, what they hear, or even what they see. If theyâre lucky, people remember what they do, but theyâre not very good at that either. We remember what we rehearse. We remember the things that we see again and again. That we do over and over. (Location 1943)
The familiar is normal and the normal is trusted. (Location 1950)
The path isnât to be found when someone types in a generic term. The path is to have someone care enough about you and what you create that theyâll type in your name. That theyâll be looking for you, not a generic alternative. (Location 1966)
Marketing changes your pricing. Pricing changes your marketing. (Location 1981)
Consider the baker. If the ingredients and overhead associated with a loaf of bread cost $1.95 a loaf at a reasonable quantity, we can examine three extremes: At a retail price of two dollars a loaf, the profit per loaf is a nickel. At a price of $2.50 a loaf, the profit per loaf is fifty-five cents. Thatâs an eleven-fold increase, more than 1,000 percent more profit per loaf. And at three dollars a loaf, weâre making more than a dollar a loaf, more than twenty times what we made in the first example. The baker who charges two dollars a loaf has to sell twenty-one loaves for every loaf the luxury baker sells at three dollars. Twenty-one times as many is the difference between a few customers an hour or a line out the door. âBut,â we say, âour customers would prefer to pay the lower price.â Perhaps. But how do they value the sparkling clean shop, with plenty of well-paid and helpful staff, a new sign in the window, and a local baseball team with new jerseys with your logo on them? How do they value the handsome shopping bag that comes with every loaf, not to mention the free samples of the little butter cookies you call punitions? How does it make them feel to tell their friends that theyâre eating the same bread thatâs served at the fancy restaurant down the street? Better to apologize for the price once than to have to excuse a hundred small slights again and again. Price is a signal. (Location 1991)
The road out of this paradox is to combine two offerings, married to each other: 1. Free ideas that spread. 2. Expensive expressions of those ideas that are worth paying for. (Location 2029)
There are countless ways for you to share your vision, your ideas, your digital expressions, your ability to connectâfor free. And each of them builds awareness, permission, and trust, which gives you a platform to sell the thing thatâs worth paying for. (Location 2035)
Lowering your price doesnât make you more trusted. It does the opposite. (Location 2047)
The result is a moment in time when more people are connected and fewer are trusted. (Location 2187)
As people work their way through the funnelâfrom stranger to friend, friend to customer, customer to loyal customerâthe status of their trust changes. Perhaps they become more trusting, the result of cognitive dissonance and experience. Or, more likely, they become more distracted, more fearful, more eager to run away, because saying yes is more stressful than simply walking away. (Location 2230)
You can fix your funnel 1. You can make sure that the right people are attracted to it. 2. You can make sure that the promise that brought them in aligns with where you hope they will go. 3. You can remove steps so that fewer decisions are required. 4. You can support those youâre engaging with, reinforcing their dreams and ameliorating their fears as you go. 5. You can use tension to create forward motion. 6. You can, most of all, hand those who have successfully engaged in the funnel a megaphone, a tool they can use to tell the others. People like us do things like this. (Location 2233)
The most important thing to figure out is the lifetime value of a customer. (Location 2273)
Thatâs because the lifetime value of a new customer rarely exceeds the cost of running the ads necessary to get a new customer. (Location 2304)
The truth is that most brands that matter, and most organizations that thrive, are primed by advertising but built by good marketing. They grow because users evangelize to their friends. They grow because they are living entities, offering ever more value to the communities they serve. They grow because they find tribes that coalesce around the cultural change theyâre able to produce. (Location 2306)
The peer-to-peer movement of ideas is how we cross the chasmâby giving people a network effect that makes the awkwardness of pitching change worth the effort. The bridge is built on two simple questions: 1. What will I tell my friends? 2. Why will I tell them? It is never the case that people will tell their friends because you want them to, or because you ask them to, or because you worked hard. Give them a why. And that usually involves changing what you offer. Make things better by making better thingsâthings that have a network effect, a ratchet, a reason for sharing. (Location 2385)
simple three-step narrative for action: the story of self, the story of us, and the story of now. (Location 2499)
The story of self gives you standing, a platform from which to speak. When you talk about your transitionâfrom who you used to be to who you becameâyou are being generous with us. (Location 2500)
story of self is your chance to explain that you are people like us. (Location 2502)
The story of us is the kernel of a tribe. Why are we alike? Why should we care? Can I find the empathy to imagine that I might be in your shoes? The story of us is about together, not apart. It explains why your story of self is relevant to us, and how we will benefit when weâre part of people like us. (Location 2504)
the story of now is the critical pivot. The story of now enlists the tribe on your journey. Itâs the peer opportunity/peer pressure of the tribe that will provide the tension for all of us to move forward, together. I was like you. I was in the desert. Then I learned something and now Iâm here. Of course, I am not alone. I did not do this alone and I see in you the very pain I saw in myself. Together, we can make this better. But if we hesitate, or if we leave the others behind, it wonât work. The urgency of now requires that we do it together, without delay, without remorse, without giving in to our fear. Story of self. Story of us. Story of now. (Location 2506)
Worse, perfect forbids us to try. To seek perfection and not reach it is a failure. (Location 2647)
Better invites us in and gives us a chance to seek dramatic improvement on behalf of those we seek to serve. (Location 2649)
Ship your work. Itâs good enough. Then make it better. (Location 2654)
Marketing can cause people to buy something that they wouldnât have bought without marketing, vote for someone they might not have considered, and support an organization that would have been invisible otherwise. (Location 2662)
Just like every powerful tool, the impact comes from the craftsman, not the tool. (Location 2676)
realize that marketing is a process and a craft. (Location 2701)
The thing is, tall sunflowers have deep and complex root systems. Without them, theyâd never get very high. This is a book about roots. About anchoring your work deeply in the dreams, desires, and communities of those you seek to serve. Itâs about changing people for the better, creating work you can be proud of. And itâs about being a driver of the market, not simply being market-driven. (Location 2741)
