Email marketing: what it is and how to implement it

This is marketing: the top 14 tips Seth Godin tells you

 Entrepreneur Seth Godin spends his career as a writer who inspires people how to develop and upgrade their skills, and in this, he has written many books such as The Purple Cow, Low, and Marketing by Permission, our book The topic of this article: This is marketing and other books that have been popular and described as one of the bestsellers on Amazon. In addition to his blog, where he first published the article in 2002, he continues to blog to the present day.

Seth Godin in his book This is Marketing tells us a summary of his practical experiences in marketing that he calls "the roots of marketing." He likened the marketing process to a sunflower flower so that to reach its high growth and length, its roots must be deep and branched. And so with marketing, you won't reach your goals, without nurturing the roots and making them deep. So what is the most important thing Seth shared with us in his book?

First, Don't Be a Traditional Marketer: Marketing Between Past and Present

Look around, and you'll find that marketing has changed a lot over time, but marketers' ideas haven't kept pace with this development yet, and you'll find them experimenting with ways that are obsolete and no longer valid or no longer have enough impact today. Our understanding of what we as marketers should do is still primitive and selfish, we scream and steal from our competitors and feel ashamed of what we do, and assume that everyone is like us but lacks knowledge.

1. Why are we fighting a marketing war?

Let's take a step back, and start with a simple question: What is marketing? The answer is simple and abbreviated by the American Marketing Association (AMA): It is a set of activities and processes to create valuable offers for customers and the community and to present them to them through communication and exchange

Seth Goodin doesn't oppose such definitions of marketing but finds them simple: He sees marketing as a deeper process full of generosity and generosity, helping customers solve their problems by telling stories and building connections.

Seth asks marketers a fundamental question: Why sharpen our swords and point them at each other if our business is primarily customer-centric, on our target segment that we can deliver the best value? Marketing is the opportunity to make a difference for the better, not by shouting, making noise, and coercing people, but by serving them and providing them with value. Free yourself from the idea of fierce competition between you and your industry colleagues, and focus on customers; they are your compass.

2. Does the marketing process boil down to advertising?

For many years, creating or buying ads has been the best marketing method for many companies, to reach the audience and make an impact on them, as every dollar you pay in ads was equal to the sales they will make, which caused confusion in concepts, marketers see ads as their main work, which Seth Godin went through until he was subjected to the fact that this is no longer true now. Nowadays, the job of a marketer is to look into the eyes of the audience and create ideas from their perspective, meaning that your compass is the target market.

3. Why should we be ashamed of marketing?

Today's marketers face a big dilemma of trust; due to the actions of some marketers from fraudulent methods of quick profit and deceiving people, as well as brazen ways of collecting customer data, all this was at the expense of what marketers could offer. True marketers, Seth argues, don't seek to trap as many customers as possible, but rather to build effective relationships to give them the best and help them make a positive difference in their lives, as well as earn their love.

Marketing involves creating honest marketing stories, which resonate continuously over the long term. When our ideas spread, we seek to change the culture, that is, we build something that people will miss if it no longer exists. The other type of marketing, based on hype, deception, and selfishness, has a short rope, no matter what small goals we achieve through it.

Second: Do not market for your product or service per se

When you shop you are introducing a new emotional state, a step closer to achieving the dreams and desires of your customers, not just offering them the product. – Seth Godin

People don't want your products, but the sensations and feelings you'll give them through the product or service. When someone wants to install a shelf in the wall of their house, and then go to buy a perforator, they don't buy it for a quarter-inch-diameter hole to put the screw in to hold the shelf, but rather buy comfort and safety when they see everything mounted on the wall.

Everyone has some vision of the world and lives a somehow different story, and we as marketers all strive to communicate certain feelings to our customers, regardless of our products or services and the strategies we follow. The product is the only way to achieve the desired feelings and results.

Don't underestimate your customers' feelings, their way of thinking, and their outlook on life or you. Once you've communicated a sense of belonging, peace of mind, self-esteem, or other emotions that your customers are striving to reach, you've actually delivered value to them. Seth points to two questions marketers must answer before making any marketing decision: Who is right for them to produce? Marketing is helping your audience become better people from their point of view.

Thirds: Don't overlook the top 3 tools in marketing

Working in marketing is easier if you understand its purpose well, we don't need the latest inventions and shortcuts to communicate the benefit and value to our customers. We have 3 timeless tools that are extremely accurate and achieve our goals:

• We tell stories: those that resonate and withstand the change of time, honest stories that express our actions, products, or services.

• We build connections: People want to be part of something, communicating to them specific feelings and values.

• We create experiences: through experiences using the product or interacting with the service in some way.

Some marketers may overlook one of these tools, and someone makes the mistake of thinking that people want the product they offer, have sufficient knowledge and the right ability to make the decision on their own, and they lose sight of telling stories. What's worse is for a marketer to think that people like him love what he likes and want what he wants, so he starts off completely wrong and misuses his tools.

Fourth: Respect and empathize with your customers and be patient with them

A good marketer has enough emotional intelligence to know that what he seeks, is not necessarily what his target audience seeks, they don't believe in what you believe in and they don't care what you care about. So, it's important to use marketing to solve the problems of the customers themselves, not the problems of the company you work for.

Marketing requires enough respect for customer needs, empathy for their outlook on life, and patience in continuing to send your targeted marketing messages, that's the essence of marketing as Seth Godin sees it.

Fifth: Do not make the key before you find a lock for it

Seth emphasizes in various places in his book that the marketer should look at the problem first before finding a solution, and advises you to ask yourself before launching any product or service: What problems are facing my target audience and seeking to solve, and what change are they looking for? Your answer will add clarity and increase the value of your efforts, thus achieving your goals.

There is no doubt that we all love the inspiring stories of people who have defied the odds and made a big difference in an industry. But as a marketer, this is a heavy burden and will be an unjustified excuse to use in times of despair. So, don't look for impossible change, and make what you're striving to achieve with your product or service a clear and achievable determinant, and you can do it again and again successfully with bigger challenges.

Sixth: Your marketing job doesn't mean you target the most customers

Targeting everyone means that you have a variety of different and large segments of human beings, and that's a very large number of people who won't care about you and what you offer. Customizing a target audience, and taking care of what you offer, is an essential step in your business. Until you start customizing the right segment targeting for you, ask yourself: What sets my customers apart from other humans? Know that the more you dedicate your answer, the more meaningful and valuable your efforts are, because not everyone has the same problem or desires.

Seth Godin here advises you to target your segment using psychological structure rather than demographics. Instead of identifying your target audience based on their level of education or race, you can identify them by their outlook on life. Each of us has our own basic principles and our own way of dividing the world and judging things, and each of us deserves to be treated with respect. In marketing, we look for a "point of view" and invite those who share the same point of view to join us.

To put it simply, if we look at Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks customers in their home country, and although they offer the same service as selling coffee, the difference in demographic qualities between them is crystal clear, but Seth did not focus on this difference so much as on the difference in deep psychological targeting between them.

Starbucks offers its services to a group that has a different perspective on coffee, time, money, society, opportunity, and well-being. As well as Dunkin' Donuts targeted a particular group with a different point of view as well. By focusing on this targeting, both have been able to build successful and strong brands over the years.

Seventh: Your courage as a marketer lies in targeting the "applicable" minimum

This is marketing: Top 14 tips Seth Godin tells you

What is wrong with the idea of targeting everyone is boredom, we make many concessions to satisfy all people and not offend a group, which will result in boring marketing ideas of medium quality, they need to suit them all in the end. If anything, this would indicate the loss of the marketer's ideas, dispersion, and weakness, as he does not know who his audience is.

Organizing your project around the concept of "minimalism" will lead you to grow consistently, however, marketers often make the mistake of forgetting what is "applicable" when targeting the "minimum" overall. It is useless to launch and market products if they do not actually have a market, and this brings us back to the fifth point (do not make the key before there is a lock). Here is the concept of agile leadership, to which Seth refers: Think in miniature and quick.

An agile approach to product launches, coupled with smart targeting, tailored to the customers we seek to serve and grow, is your path to success.

The ultimate goal of looking for minimalist customers is to find a segment that understands the change you're seeking and loves to apply it to you by sharing, interacting, and being loyal to you. And that's what we're striving for, and you won't be able to get it from everyone, and here, Seth puts in your hands this phrase to fill it up with the right one: "My product/service is for those who believe in ... And I'll focus on those who want to... I promise them that interacting with what I offer will help them get ...."

Eighth: Understand the motives of human beings and what is going on inside them

In a world full of multiple options and time constraints, how do your customers govern their choices? It's not that easy, humans are different from each other in what they believe, think and see as right, and they differ in their motivations to make things better and understand what they really want.

The marketer needs to understand that humans make their decisions irrationally most of the time (the decision is rational for the decision maker; because he made it to achieve some feelings). Seth gave us an interesting example here: animal food, dogs in particular. We don't know if the type they choose is really delicious for their animals and they enjoy it and worth its high price, and they won't be able to decide it either, but we're sure that the owner of the animal himself likes this particular type of food the most.

That is, animal food is not made for the animal itself, but for its owner to feel good about the way it cares for the animal, which in turn responds to this care by loyalty to its owner and courtship to it. Add to that the state that the owner feels when he buys a luxury commodity and is considered a luxury. Such feelings make some animal breeders want to pay more, in exchange for gluten-free food that contains high-value elements of the "illusion."

Target market options don't necessarily depend on the best price and best performance of our products, and that's not what we seek to market. Humans rely on different factors of input and feelings to make the same decision, and our target segment (the applicable minimum) is concerned with certain emotions and has several inputs in common among them.

Ninth: Start by drawing the y-x-axis and look for the maximum limits

Do you remember drawing axes of coordinates in math class? We'll also draw it in marketing, but don't worry, we're not going to use numbers here, but the traits that your target audience is looking for and interested in and creating emotions in them. Each axis will represent something of these things, it may be price, performance, level, effectiveness, health, and others.

This is marketing: Top 14 tips Seth Godin tells you

According to Seth's example, there are six ways to get diamonds across the city, dividing the two axes by speed of delivery and security. What made it clear to him was that an armored car and the postal service would achieve and ensure that a small diamond envelope would be delivered safely, but one of them would take a long time to deliver, and the other would take only a few hours.

What distinguishes this method, described by Seth Godin in his book This is Marketing, is the ease with which all possible options are clarified, depending on what feelings you seek to convey. Customers aren't as interested in features as they are in the emotions that these features evoke in them. Seth has suggested some axes that you can draw as you aim:

• Speed
• Price
• performance
• ingredients
• Purity level
• Sustainability
• Clarity
• Maintenance costs
• Security
• Distribution
• Modernity
• Network Effect
• Privacy Policy
• Difficulty
• hazard
• Experiment
• Limitations

After you choose a theme for the "X" axis, choose an attribute for the "Y" axis and then put all the possibilities that your customer has in the network, then you will get a map of possible alternatives through which any busy person can find a solution to his problem. Be aware, that this is not the primary goal of drawing them, we draw these axes to find a place for us and our products or services to be located at the extreme and stand out.

Marketers usually choose themes that are popular among people, so you find them crowded in a certain quarter. Unfortunately, this congestion baffles customers, and you may find them exposed to the experience of your product or other alternative products, because if there is a possibility that one product will succeed and the other does not, it is better not to choose from the beginning, as Seth expressed in his book on the matter.

Instead of choosing popular traits, chosen by other alternatives (competitors) for what you offer, build your own quarter by looking for two axes that many have overlooked, build your story on them; a true story that fulfills what you promise. This would put you in a place, where there is no better choice for customers other than you.

Tenth: Observe, test, and analyze permanently

What do your customers want? Don't expect to get an answer from them once asked. Our mission is to observe people, find out what they dream of, and then build what brings them these feelings. Seth Godin explains that while dealing with people, we face 3 basic problems:

People confuse needs with desires

But what we really need as human beings are air, water, health, and a roof over our heads. Anything other than this is a desire, but people decide for themselves certain desires as needs.

People think a lot about their desires

Those who think they are needs, but they are bad at finding new ways to satisfy these desires, and often prefer to use popular solutions, even if they do not work well with them so they remain stuck.

We think all people want the same thing.

In fact, they are not, so you find the first adopters looking for the new, and others looking for things that do not change. You find some people want chocolate ice cream and others with vanilla.

These misconceptions may create a barrier for you between your product or service and your customers, start by focusing all your efforts on the segment you think suits your product according to your observation of them, then tell marketing stories about the change you seek, then see and analyze how this segment interacted with you.

Eleventh: Ask for advice, not evaluation

An unhappy customer who doesn't like what you're offering may be right and may be completely wrong. That's why Seth Godin sees it as foolish to ask for a product rating because you're leaving people a chance to say that what you've made is useless. This is what is really noticeable in many products, such as Amazon's books, where 12% of the twenty-one thousand reviews of the novel "Harry Potter and the Magic Stone" gave the book one or two stars.

This shows that the novel has two types of audience, the pro who found that the novel fulfilled a certain desire and feeling within it, and the opponent who feels good by minimizing your work and encouraging you to hate it. Both types of clients are right as Seth sees it, but instead of asking them about the evaluation of what you're offering, he suggests asking them for advice. Like saying, "You've made this one that I like and I think you might like too, what advice can you give me to make this thing fit and closer to what you need?"

The advice question will help you understand the customers who have interacted with your product or service and see their desires, dreams, and what they are afraid of. It will give you a kind of clarity of vision of what you can improve in the future and whether the problem is with what you offer or not. By evaluating, a customer may give you a star because the delivery was late for what they had to attend, or because they were angry that they spent more than they planned, as opposed to your customer giving you useful and constructive advice.

Twelfth: Strive to achieve network impact It is a radical factor in your success

This is marketing: Top 14 tips Seth Godin tells you

The fax machine has been successful in spreading not because of the intelligence of the advertising campaigns built by marketers, but because the fax machine works perfectly if your colleague also has a fax machine. Your success in spreading depends not so much on your advertising campaigns but on the experience of your customers and beyond. Will, what you've provided be worth telling your customers about other people? You don't need to make an effort with customers who won't recommend you to those who share the same desires and dreams.

Thirteenth: Pay attention to the identity of your product

One way to communicate with humans is through symbols, shapes, and abbreviations, these letters (x-y-a-r-e) are not an image of the car per se, but we agreed that upon seeing this word, everyone who knows the language will think of the car as we all know it. In marketing, we use symbols, shapes, and sometimes abbreviations to communicate certain connotations to our target customers.

For example, the Nike brand spends millions of dollars to instill in the minds of its customers that the "Such" icon is a symbol of human potential, efficiency, and high performance.

This is marketing: Top 14 tips Seth Godin tells you

The marketer must first have a good understanding that symbols and abbreviations may not have the same meaning in all humans, secondly, sufficient awareness to know the right symbols for their customers, and then finally enough courage to build a new code if necessary. The logo design you use, the stories you tell, and how your different works appear to the public are all important aspects that solidify an image in your customers' minds of you.

Identity is not only the logo of your product, it is how you fulfill a promise to your customers. Nike doesn't own a hotel for its brand but if it decides to do so, its customers will have some guesses about what it will be. And this from Seth Godin's point of view is the meaning of business identity: emotional expectations towards you from your customers.

Fourteenth: Continue, the marketing process does not stop

What is repeated decides

It is normal for people to forget what they have read, what they have seen or heard, but we remember what is repeated to us. The more we appear to our target customers, the more familiar they become to us, and then little by little we build within them "trust." A marketer makes a mistake when he starts to get bored with the stories he tells and the change he wants to convey, continuity is a fundamental goal for which we must have sufficient awareness.

If you look at the entrepreneurs of this age, you will undoubtedly notice the characteristic of haste and urgency. They create projects, and then if they don't go as they planned in a certain period, they lose hope and give up on continuing the project. But what you don't realize is that the market associates repetition with trust, so it's no wonder you didn't get your chance to gain the trust of your customers when you lost hope halfway.

In conclusion, these were part of several ideas that Seth Godin explained in his book This is Marketing, and the book still contains many other ideas that a summary cannot include. If you're an entrepreneur, a marketing worker, or if you just want to make a difference in this world with a product, service, or idea, then you should have this book to adopt deep and branched roots.