This great video, I decided to share with you, is about perhaps the most important aspect of a new idea/product/service, namely its distribution. No matter how brilliant it may be or how much it would help all customers it is aimed at, it will be nothing if you don’t have the right mechanism to spread it.
Let’s take the sliced bread as an example (it is in the video as well). It took 15 years after the invention of sliced bread for people to actually embrace the idea and start buying it. It is hard to assimilate as this is the most widely spread way of selling bread today!
According to Seth Godin, it is “people who can spread ideas, regardless of what those ideas are” that win. Do you want to be one of them? Here are some tips that might help you:
- The TV-based marketing model no longer works – the reason for this is that “in a world where we have too many choices and too little time, the obvious thing to do is just ignore stuff”. And we, as customers, have learnt to ignore adds, commercials, and other mass media based marketing tricks.
- Don’t “make average products for average people” – in a world where mass marketing is (almost) dead, you should focus on the right niche.
- “The riskiest thing you can do now is be safe” – making average products for average people doesn’t have the power to make your product successful anymore. Try remarkable products instead and never be afraid to try something new (otherwise you would never know what would work).
- Find out who cares – the new marketing rules make it clear that you have to find your fans and then show them the great product you’ve created (they will either get obsessed with it and you win or they won’t be impressed and you learn your lesson).
Here’s the original video in which you will find all of these ideas explained plus a lot more food for thought:
