This is our last post about Seth Godin for Seth Godin Week. This is a video of a presentation Seth made at Google. He talks a lot about how technology does not win, and that technology only gives you a shot at marketing. Viral marketing and word of mouth is the key to building an amazingly successful business. He shares some good examples and his observations about them. His presentation is 30 minutes long, then he takes questions.
This video is over a year old. Seth has a lot of new ideas and thoughts since then. If you want to learn about Seth Godin's latest ideas in person, come see him speak at the Inbound Marketing Summit. As a special bonus to friends of HubSpot, save $200 if you register with the code 8EHR2 by Friday, August 8.
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It's still Seth Godin week because he's speaking at the Inbound Marketing Summit.
"For the first 15 years after sliced bread was available, no one knew about it, no one bought it, no one cared about it. It took Wonder Bread to make sliced bread popular. This is true for almost every product. The success is less about the patent or your factory, it is about what you can do to make your idea spread. Companies who can spread ideas (with great marketing!) are the ones who will win." I don't really have much to add to the video. It is absolutely worth the 20 minutes to watch it.
This video is over a year old. Seth has a lot of new ideas and thoughts since then. If you want to learn about Seth Godin's latest ideas in person, come see him speak at the Inbound Marketing Summit.
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This is Seth Godin Week on the HubSpot Blog, to celebrate Seth speaking at the Inbound Marketing Summit marketing conference.
One of the major principles behind all of Seth's advice is that you need to create a "Purple Cow". He wrote a book by this title about the entire concept. But basically a "Purple Cow" is something remarkable, meaning that you remark about it to others. If you are driving down the road and see a cow, your reaction is "oh, a cow". But if you drove down the street and saw a purple cow... you would say, "WOW! A Purple Cow! Pull over! Grab the video camera, I'm gonna run out there and check this out, let's put it on YouTube!" Your job as a marketer is to build Purple Cows and get people to talk about your purple cows as often as possible. Got it?
Well, the next response I get from a lot of marketers is "My company builds [insert boring product here]. There is no way I can make that interesting or remarkable. I just have to put up a normal brochureware website, do print ads and hope for the best." My response... WRONG. It is possible for every single product out there to have something remarkable about it or the people that use it or how they use it. Someone, someplace, is passionate about using or building the product. And as a marketer, you need to tap into that passion and make a purple cow out of it. Even the lowly toilet, usually a quite boring product, can be a purple cow.
Even a Toilet Can be a Purple Cow - 2 Examples
This first example is a viral video by a Swedish toilet company that showcases a feature of their toilet that makes it a purple cow. Thanks to David Meerman Scottfor pointing me toward this example from his blog. (The video is safe for work.) PS - As of writing, this video is the first result on YouTube when you search for "toilet", and has over 1.9 million views. How cool is that?
The second example comes from a trip I took to Japan. It was my first time to Japan, and the hotel had a toilet that I thought was so cool that I actually took out my cell phone and filmed it and photographed it. Seriously! If you are used to the boring toilets that are in the rest of the world, this thing is pretty intense. I never ended up doing anything with my video, but that's OK, since there are a bunch of other videos on YouTube about the shower toilet, which further proves my point that they are remarkable. Here is an example of a video with almost 6,000 views that shows of some of the features of this remarkable toilet. (The video is safe for work.)
Can you think of example of a "boring" product that became a purple cow? How did it happen? Are you coming to the Inbound Marketing Summit on September 8? Leave a comment below and let's discuss.
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We have decided to declare this week "Seth Godin Week" on the HubSpot Internet Marketing Blog. We'll publish an article each day related to Seth, his books, his blog and/or his ideas.
Why are we doing a "Seth Godin Week"? Well, Seth Godin will be speaking at the Inbound Marketing Summit marketing conference in Boston/Cambridge on September 8.
I am very excited to meet Seth and see him speak!
But, today, let's talk about how Seth got his start. Permission Marketing. He wrote a book of this title back in 1999. What is Permission Marketing? Basically, it refers to all of the marketing techniques where you are gaining people's permission before you start to market to them. TV ads? Nope, they interrupt the show I am trying to watch. Telemarketing? No way! Rented email lists... nope! Getting found in things like search engines, providing useful information people actually want to consume, and using viral marketing techniques are some of the principles behind permission marketing. Over the years I think permission marketing has evolved into Inbound Marketing, now that things like blogging, social networks, SEO and other techniques have become more of a complete discipline. Seth Godin talks about 5 Levels of Permission in the book, and how marketers start at the lowest level (level 5, "situation" and work your way up - if you are good. Here is some info about each level, I borrow language extensively from the book here.
The Five Levels of Permission Marketing
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Intravenous. Your doctor has your permission to put whatever she wants into your arm, and then charge you for the treatment and expect you to pay. The marketer who has this level of permission can make buying decisions on behalf of the buyer. The only downside is if you mess it up, you'll lose the permission. Automatic replenishment of the spring water in your office or the oil in your home are examples of this. Why do people submit to this type of marketing? To save time, to save money, because some people don't like to make a choice, and to avoid stock outs.
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Points. Airline frequent flier miles and credit card points are examples of this level of permission marketing. People opt-in to these programs because of the benefits you give them. They give you permission to track their purchases and to send them special offers based on their purchase patterns.
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Personal relationships. This form of permission ranks behind "points" because it doesn't scale. [In 2008, I actually think that things like blogging and social networking might allow this to scale better, maybe making it #2. - Mike Volpe] This is the form of marketing used in very large transactions, like on Wall Street and on Madison Avenue. When you have a personal relationship, you have permission to ask questions, see if someone is interested in a new service, and recommend other products. Again, if you mess it up, you'll lose the permission, so be smart.
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Brand trust. This is the type of trust that outbound interruption marketers aspire to hold (it is scary that they only aspire to stage #2!). Brand trust is dramatically overrated. It's extraordinarily expensive to create, takes a very long time to develop, is hard to measure, and is harder still to manipulate. You can use brand trust to create brand extensions, or cross sell other products. But the first time you break the trust by not keeping the customer's best interest at heart, you'll damage the value of your brand greatly.
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Situation. This is the permission you get when a customer calls your 800 number or asks a store clerk for advice, etc. Compared to TV ads or other interruption marketing, this situation gives the average marketer a lot more options. Remember that your employees who deal with customers and prospects are the tool to use for situational permission. McDonald's has generated billions with the situational permission phrase of "Do you want fries with that?". The question later became "Do you want to Super Size that?", and maybe they ruined their brand value by not keeping their customer's health in mind, leading to the movie "Super Size Me".
How to you bring the concepts of Permission Marketing into your company? What level of permission have you attained? Have any of Seth Godin's books or ideas influenced your marketing? Leave a comment so we can discuss.
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Recently, MITX hosted a panel about using social media for lead generation recently, and someone asked a question about what a traditional print design firm could do to leverage inbound marketing (social media, blogs, search engines) for their business. I captured two of the answers on video, and the common theme was "passion".
Chris Brogan a blogger and social media guy talks about how the Smart Car is a great design, and people are passionate about it, and maybe the print firm could talk about the good and bad aspects of the Smart Car design to demonstrate their design expertise. "Good design encourages us to take an action."
Chris Penn, a podcaster and blogger, talks about how passion is important and knowing what's important to your audience. He starts his answer by mentioning how his passion for marketing led him to start a "Marketing Over Coffee" podcast series, and he continues with some ideas of what someone passionate about design might be able to talk about.
Passion is Essential to Inbound Marketing
I agree with Chris and Chris that the print design firm needs to think about what content it could create that would be interesting to marketing people (the people they sell to). Here are some other ideas for how a traditional design firm might use inbound marketing:
- Start a blog with images of good and bad design and how to evaluate design from a marketing perspective
- Blog about how to select the best print design vendor for you
- Create a series of videos about how to get the most out of your print design firm
- Create a group on Facebook dedicated to using print design in marketing
Notice anything? Each of these ideas require someone at your company to be passionate about what you do, and then share their passion with the world. Who is passionate at your company? How do you share that passion with the world?
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