This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See

TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
CONTENTS
AUTHOR'S NOTE
	This is marketing
	How tall is your sunflower?
	It’s not going to market itself
	Marketing isn’t just selling soap
	The market decides
	How to know if you have a marketing problem
	The answer to a movie
	Marketing your work is a complaint on the way to better
Chapter One: Not Mass, Not Spam, Not Shameful . . .
	The compass points toward trust
	Marketing is not a battle, and it’s not a war, or even a contest
	The magic of ads is a trap that keeps us from building a useful story
	On getting the word out (precisely the wrong question)
	Shameless marketers brought shame to the rest of us
	The lock and the key
	Marketing doesn’t have to be selfish
	Case Study: Penguin Magic
	You’re not a cigar-smoking fat cat
	It’s time
Chapter Two: The Marketer Learns to See
	Marketing in five steps
	This Is Marketing: An executive summary
	Things marketers know
Chapter Three: Marketing Changes People Through Stories, Connections, and Experience
	Case Study: VisionSpring—Selling glasses to people who need them
	Consider the SUV
	That riff about the quarter-inch drill bit
	People don’t want what you make
	Stories, connections, and experiences
	Market-driven: Who’s driving the bus?
	The myth of rational choice
Chapter Four: The Smallest Viable Market
	What change are you trying to make?
	What promise are you making?
	Who are you seeking to change?
	Worldviews and personas
	Forcing a focus
	Specific is a kind of bravery
	Shun the nonbelievers!
	Where does love lie?
	“Winner take all” rarely is
	A simple one-word transformation
	Coloring the ocean purple
	“It’s not for you”
	The comedian’s dilemma
	The simple marketing promise
	Case Study: The Open Heart Project
Chapter Five: In Search of “Better”
	Empathy is at the heart of marketing
	A million-dollar bargain
	Thinking about “better”
	Better isn’t up to you
	The marketing of dog food
	Early adopters are not adapters: They crave the new
	An aside about the reptile people who are secretly running things
	Humility and curiosity
	Case Study: Be More Chill—More than one way to make a hit
	What’s a car for?
	Too many choices
	Positioning as a service
	Choose your axes, choose your future
	So many choices
	People are waiting for you
	Your freedom
	The freedom of better
	One last thing about sonder
Chapter Six: Beyond Commodities
	Problem first
	Does it work?
	The commodity suckout
	“You can choose anyone, and we’re anyone”
	When you know what you stand for, you don’t need to compete
	But your story is a hook
	Case Study: Stack Overflow is better
	Better is up to the users, not up to you
	“And we serve coffee”
	The authentic, vulnerable hero
	Service
	Authenticity versus emotional labor
	Who’s talking?
Chapter Seven: The Canvas of Dreams and Desires
	What do people want?
	Innovative marketers invent new solutions that work with old emotions
	Nobody needs your product
	No one is happy to call a real estate broker
	Where’s the angry bear?
	What do you want?
	Always be testing
	Scrapbooking
	If you had to charge ten times as much
	Irresistible is rarely easy or rational
Chapter Eight: More of the Who: Seeking the Smallest Viable Market
	The virtuous cycle and network effects
	The most effective remarkability comes from design
	“And then a miracle happens”
	A thousand true fans
	But what about Hamilton?
	What would Jerry do?
	Taylor Swift is not your role model
	All critics are right (all critics are wrong)
	Why don’t people choose you?
Chapter Nine: People Like Us Do Things Like This
	Deep change is difficult, and worth it
	People like us (do things like this)
	Case Study: The Blue Ribbons
	The internal narrative
	Defining “us”
	Which us?
	It shouldn’t be called “the culture”
	Just enough art
	Case Study: Gay marriage in Ireland
	Elite and/or exclusive
	Case Study: Robin Hood Foundation
	The standing ovation
	Roots and shoots
Chapter Ten: Trust and Tension Create Forward Motion
	Pattern match/pattern interrupt
	Tension can change patterns
	What are you breaking?
	Tension is not the same as fear
	Marketers create tension, and forward motion relieves that tension
	Are you ready to create tension?
	How the status quo got that way
Chapter Eleven: Status, Dominance, and Affiliation
	Baxter hates Truman
	It’s not irrational; status makes it the right choice
	Status roles: The Godfather and the undertaker
	Status lets us
	Case Study: Lions and Maasai warriors
	The status dynamic is always at work
	Status is not the same as wealth
	Six things about status
	Frank Sinatra had more than a cold
	Learning to see status
	Different stories for different people
	Affiliation and dominion are different ways to measure status
	Learning from pro wrestling
	The alternative to dominion is affiliation
	Fashion is usually about affiliation
	Sending dominance signals
	Sending affiliation signals
	Affiliation or dominance is up to the customer, not you
Chapter Twelve: A Better Business Plan
	Where are you going? What’s holding you back?
	Perhaps you’ve seen the shift
	A glib reverse engineering of your mission statement isn’t helpful
Chapter Thirteen: Semiotics, Symbols, and Vernacular
	Can you hear me now?
	What does this remind you of?
	Hiring a professional
	Imagine that world . . .
	Why is Nigerian spam so sloppy?
	The flags on SUVs are called flares
	The flag is not for everyone
	The same and the different
	Case Study: Where’s Keith?
	We add the flags with intent
	Are brands for cattle?
	Does your logo matter?
Chapter Fourteen: Treat Different People Differently
	In search of the neophiliacs
	Enrollment
	What do people want?
	The superuser
	The truth about customer contribution
	What’s the purpose of this interaction?
Chapter Fifteen: Reaching the Right People
	Goals, strategy, and tactics
	Advertising is a special case, an optional engine for growth
	More than ever, but less than ever
	What does attention cost? What is it worth?
	Brand marketing makes magic; direct marketing makes the phone ring
	A simple guide to online direct marketing
	A simple guide to brand marketing
	Frequency
	Search engine optimization and the salt mines
Chapter Sixteen: Price Is a Story
	Pricing is a marketing tool, not simply a way to get money
	Different prices (different people)
	“Cheap” is another way to say “scared”
	And what about free?
	Trust and risk, trust and expense
	Be generous with change and brave with your business
	Case Study: No tipping at USHG
Chapter Seventeen: Permission and Remarkability in a Virtuous Cycle
	Permission is anticipated, personal, and relevant
	Earn your own permission and own it
	Tuma Basa and RapCaviar
	Showing up with generosity
	Transform your project by being remarkable
	Offensive/juvenile/urgent/selfish is not the same thing as purple
	Suspending Fight Club rules
	Designing for evangelism
Chapter Eighteen: Trust Is as Scarce as Attention
	What’s fake?
	What’s trusted, who’s trusted?
	The trust of action
	Famous to the tribe
	Public relations and publicity
Chapter Nineteen: The Funnel
	Trust isn’t static
	You can fix your funnel
	Funnel math: Casey Neistat
	The sustainable direct marketing funnel
	An aside on funnel math
	The truth about your funnel
	Life on the long tail
	The April Fools’ Passover Birthday Easter shirt
	There’s a way out
	Bridging the chasm
	Where’s your bridge?
	Surviving the chasm
	You might not find the bridge
	Case Study: Facebook and crossing the biggest chasm
	Crossing the local chasm
	Clean water in a local village
	An aside about B2B marketing
Chapter Twenty: Organizing and Leading a Tribe
	It’s not your tribe
	The power of now, not later
	Manipulation is the tribe killer
	Shared interests, shared goals, shared language
	It will fade if you let it
	Take a room in town
Chapter Twenty-One: Some Case Studies Using the Method
	“How do I get an agent?”
	Tesla broke the other cars first
	The NRA as a role model
	Getting the boss to say yes
Chapter Twenty-Two: Marketing Works, and Now It’s Your Turn
	The tyranny of perfect
	The possibility of better
	The magic of good enough
	Help!
Chapter Twenty-Three: Marketing to the Most Important Person
	What will you build now?
A MARKETING READING LIST
A SIMPLE MARKETING WORKSHEET
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY SETH GODIN