Seth Godin's 5 Steps to Marketing: Creating Ideas That Spread Without Being Pushy
Being original and creative is overrated. People say, "I have to come up with this new business structure that's never happened before." No. You should copy it.
I know people have gotten forty million views and sold two hundred dollars worth of stuff. But if you need forty million views every time you want to make two hundred bucks, you're in big trouble.
My blog has a million readers. I don't use TikTok. I don't use Facebook. I don't use Instagram. Other people talk about me on those platforms. How? I'm not even playing the game of algorithms. I'm not showing up in places where, for me as a person, it doesn't make sense.
Stop Making Average Products
Stop making average stuff. There are people who open a tiny pizza shop, and there's a line around the block. There isn't a line because they're good at using TikTok. There's a line because they made a pizza that was worth other people putting on TikTok.
There's too much noise. There's too much hustle. There's too much mediocre stuff from people who think they have a coaching program or some shortcut or want to sell you something they got from a drop shipper.
That's not what marketing is. That's just noise.
What Marketing Really Is
I carved out a new definition for marketing that sets me apart from all the people who want to sell you a system or a hustle or spam or ways to interrupt people.
Marketing is creating the conditions for an idea to spread. It doesn't spread because you're trying hard to push it out there. It spreads because the people you are serving benefit from telling their friends.
If you are set on selling average stuff to average people and bringing more mediocre junk to the world, I can't help you.
Step 1: Invent Something Worth Making
Marketing got off track years ago. Back in the days of The Flintstones—a TV show from about 60-65 years ago—you could run an ad during the show and make enough money to run more ads. The cycle kept going. You could make a fortune pushing mediocre products to average people.
Then came cable TV. Anyone who built a channel that got followers, like MTV, had a gold mine. When the internet arrived, advertisers thought, "I can run ads that only cost me a penny!"
The business model became clear: hunt people down, steal their attention, steal their privacy, manipulate them, and get them to buy stuff. That's how we built today's system.
Breaking Free From the System
There's a better way. Take jazz musicians like Christian McBride or Patricia Barber. These artists don't want to be in your face. They just want to make music. Yet people travel from all over the world to hear Patricia play in Chicago. Christian's albums sell well even though he doesn't run ads on social media.
We're surrounded by systems that try to be invisible. But if we look closely, we can see them. Think about weddings—how much should one cost? Usually what your best friend spent plus a little more. When else do you need matchbooks with your name on them or hire a band? The system makes these things seem normal.
Stop Making Average Products
The first step to better marketing is simple: stop making average stuff. Stop thinking people need what you're making—they probably don't.
To be remarkable means to be worth making a remark about. Some pizza shops have lines around the block not because they're good at TikTok, but because they make pizza worth talking about. In New York City, there are over 5,000 pizza places, but only a few make truly extraordinary pizza.
Choose to do work that's hard, that might not succeed, that exposes you. That's measuring the right thing. Don't fall into the trap of counting social media followers. Some people get 40 million views on TikTok but only sell $200 worth of products. If you need that many views to make $200, you're in big trouble.
Success Without Ads
The most successful companies of the last twenty years didn't rely on ads:
- Google didn't run ads for years
- Facebook didn't need advertising to grow
- The iPhone took off because people wanted to know what made that unique ringtone
Even small companies like By The Way Bakery succeed this way. They make gluten-free, dairy-free baked goods that people naturally talk about when serving friends with dietary restrictions.
We don't have a shortage of cookies, phones, or search engines. What we have is a shortage of things worth talking about—things that connect us to other people. This connection isn't a side effect of success—it's the cause.
Step 2: Design for a Specific Audience
The first step was to make something worth talking about. Now we need to figure out who it's for.
Find Your Smallest Viable Market
Stop trying to reach everyone. This is one of the biggest mistakes in marketing. Instead, find the smallest group of people you're willing to serve. This small group becomes your focus - the people you're on the hook to help.
When you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. Being specific about who your work is for creates more impact than trying to appeal to the masses.
Your Business Model Doesn't Need to Be Original
Being original and creative is overrated when it comes to business structure. You don't need to invent a new way of doing business. Look at what works for others and copy the model.
If someone opens a franchise, they don't invent franchising - they use a model that worked for McDonald's and Subway. Find a business structure that makes sense for what you're doing and use it.
People Buy Stories, Not Just Products
Everyone who buys clothes at a store is already wearing clothes. Everyone who goes to a restaurant already has food at home. So what are they really buying?
Once our basic needs are met, we buy stories. We buy status. We buy a sense of belonging. We buy things that tell the world who we are.
Think about the Birkin bag. It used to cost $15,000 and now costs more than $30,000. Every person who buys one already has a purse. They're buying the ability to wear it outdoors where friends will see it and talk about it. They're not discussing how much it can hold - they're talking about what it means to own this thing.
Create Tension That Drives Action
Good marketing weaves together possibility, status, and community into a story that creates tension. Without tension, people don't take action.
Questions create tension:
- What's going to happen next?
- Can I do it?
- Will I be left out?
- Will they sell out?
This tension causes forward motion and focuses behavior.
We Don't Need Another Kardashian
Many people think the quick path to success is becoming the next big social media star. But we don't need another Kardashian - we already have them.
The world doesn't need more average products for average people. What we need are things made for specific people who will miss them if they're gone.
You Already Know How to Tell Stories
Almost everyone is good at telling stories in their daily life. If you've ever invited friends to dinner and they all came, it's because the story of that dinner was compelling. Who else was coming? Who was hosting? Where and when?
This podcast started with about ten listeners. It grew to millions not through social media hustle, but because those first listeners found it valuable enough to tell others about it.
The Right Question to Ask
Instead of asking "How do I get the word out?" ask "How do I create conditions for the smallest viable audience to find something they would miss if it were gone - something they can tell their friends about?"
This shift in thinking changes everything. Stop making average stuff for average people. Start creating remarkable things for specific people who will naturally spread the word.
Step 3: Tell a Story That Matches Existing Narratives
Many people struggle to tell stories. They find it hard to share what they're feeling with their spouse. They get nervous when they need to be seen or when they feel judged. What makes storytelling so hard? It's scary to be seen. It's scary to feel like a fraud. It's scary to talk about a future that isn't here yet.
This fear is normal. When you try to sell something, you need what I call "radical empathy." You might think, "I would never buy this," which makes you feel like a fraud. But here's the truth: you don't need to be your own customer.
You can work at a pantyhose company without wearing pantyhose. You can be an oncologist without having had cancer. You can make toys for three-year-olds when you're an adult. What matters is that you understand the people you're trying to help.
Tell Stories That Connect With Existing Worldviews
When you market something, you need to tell a story that fits what people already believe. Changing minds is much harder than confirming what people already think.
Think about tools. A basic electric jigsaw on Amazon costs about $25. If you want to sell a lot of jigsaws, you could make them as cheap as possible and sell them for a dollar less than everyone else. That's a race to the bottom.
But Festool took a different path. They made a $220 jigsaw that costs ten times more than others. Why would anyone buy it? Because it's not just a jigsaw – it's the feel in your hand, how long the battery lasts, the packaging, the case, and how it makes you feel around other woodworkers. For the right people, it's worth $1,000, so $220 feels like a bargain.
If someone says, "My $25 jigsaw works fine," they're right! The cheaper tool is fine for them. Festool isn't talking to those people. They're talking to people with a different need.
Being Popular Isn't the Same as Being Great
More people have Android phones than iPhones. But many iPhone users won't give them up. Being popular is different from being great. Being popular is different from being profitable.
The key is finding the smallest group of people you're willing to serve. If you run a nonprofit, you could stand on a street corner with a boot collecting $5 donations from everyone who passes. Or you could focus on donors who give $50,000 each. These approaches need completely different stories.
Focus Creates Confidence
Many business owners lack confidence, so they try to appeal to everyone. They think, "Someone will take it." This approach rarely works well.
Instead of trying to serve everyone, get specific. If you started an agency today, you might focus only on pediatric orthodontists. Once you have four clients and prove you're effective, you'll have a line out the door. Why? Because pediatric orthodontists don't want to be innovators – they want to hire the best person to grow their practice.
With twenty clients, you'd never need to look for work again. That's very different from being just another agency that works with anyone.
Good Decisions Don't Always Lead to Good Outcomes
When making decisions about your focus, remember that good decisions don't always lead to good outcomes. If you buy a lottery ticket and win, it was still a bad decision mathematically. If you make a smart choice to fly (the safest way to travel) and the plane crashes, it was still a good decision with a terrible outcome.
You probably won't feel completely confident when choosing your focus. That's normal. But all the data shows that making something great requires making it for specific people. Your target should be big enough to support you if it works, but not "everyone."
Find Your Focus Through Practical Empathy
How do you discover your specific focus? Through practical empathy and experimentation.
You don't need to raise millions to start a company. Just show up and pay attention. If you want to work in food service, get a job as a barista first. Watch what kind of customer service works with different people.
Stand-up comics get good by doing open mic nights. They learn what pleases that specific audience. If that's not the right fit, they try something else, like performing at weddings.
This is how you build practical empathy – by showing up, watching carefully, and adjusting based on what you see. The more specific you get, the more powerful your marketing becomes.
Step 4: Create Conditions for Word to Spread
You're probably excited about this step. Everyone is. This is where you think I'll tell you how to spread the word about your product or service.
But here's the truth: You don't spread the word. Your customers do.
Let Your Customers Do the Talking
My job as a marketer isn't to teach you how to push your message out. It's to help you create the right conditions so your customers will naturally tell others about what you've made.
Think about this real example: Animal shelters used to kill about four million dogs and cats every year in the United States. They could have tried to fix this by setting up phone banks, sending spam texts, and begging people to adopt pets. That approach would fail.
Instead, smart shelters invited local high school students to take photos of the animals and post them on PetFinder. Why did this work? Because:
- The students felt special
- They felt like leaders
- They made a real contribution
- Some even adopted pets themselves
When these students took a dog home and friends asked, "Where did you get such a beautiful dog?" they naturally said, "From that shelter down the street." The customers spread the word without being asked.
The Psychology Behind Sharing
How did you find out about Google or Facebook? Not from ads. Someone told you because they got value from sharing.
This isn't about finding a marketing shortcut. It's about understanding culture, systems, and human needs.
Take TOMS Shoes as an example. Blake, the founder, created $85 shoes made in Portugal. For each pair sold, he gave a similar pair to someone in need. How did this grow into a half-billion dollar company?
First, he put a big logo on the back of the shoe, unusual at that time. Then he targeted a specific group: women who wanted to do good while trying new fashion. Perhaps a hundred people bought those first shoes.
Then something powerful happened:
- When a woman wore these shoes to visit friends, social norms kicked in
- Friends had to say, "Those are cute! Where did you get them?"
- The woman could say, "I bought these shoes, and now someone in need gets shoes too"
- This gave her status - she looked like a caring person
- Now her friend faced a choice: either buy the shoes too or feel selfish
- When the friend bought the shoes, she wanted her other friends to notice
- The cycle continued
Why Some Products Naturally Create Conversations
Interestingly, when TOMS tried to apply the same model to coffee ("buy a pound, we'll donate money"), it failed. Why? Because coffee doesn't create the same conversations:
- We often make coffee just for ourselves
- When we serve coffee to others, they don't see the label
- There's no natural moment to talk about the brand
The system wasn't designed to lead to conversations.
Building Products That People Want to Talk About
To create conditions for your idea to spread, you need to understand:
- Fundamental human needs and desires
- The culture your product exists in
- The social systems at work
When you design your product or service with these elements in mind, you create something that people will naturally want to tell others about.
The best marketing happens when your customers do the marketing for you. Your job is to create the conditions that make this possible.
Step 5: Show Up Consistently
The last step is often overlooked but might be the most vital: show up. Not just once, but regularly, consistently, and generously for years to build confidence in the change you seek to make.
The Power of Showing Up
My late writing partner Jay Levinson used to say, "You don't change your work when you get bored with it, and you don't change it when your spouse gets bored with it. You don't change it when your employees get bored with it. You change it when your accountant gets bored with it."
In our fast-moving world, showing up day after day is deeply underrated. I wrote my blog every single day for five years before I had a lot of people reading it.
Value Creation vs. Value Capture
Look at Apple Computer since 1980. Their success has mostly been about value creation – opening stores, building more of the ecosystem, and sticking with just four products instead of fifty. Only now are they shifting to value capture, where they're losing some imagination and just making everything a bit more costly and a bit less great.
But they lasted a long time showing up for us, not doing things at us. When we're in value creation mode, we know we are here to serve. And if we do it with consistency and generosity, we get to do it again.
Getting Through the Dip
Most people quit too late, not too soon. In fact, most people shouldn't even start certain projects. If you want to run a marathon but you're only good at the 400-yard dash and have just a couple hours to spend, don't start running a marathon. You'll quit around mile twelve because you weren't ready, didn't train, and didn't have the resources.
The first key is to know where the dip is before you start. The dip is that moment when success feels so hard and so unlikely that you want to quit – because that's when everyone quits.
At the Boston Marathon, many people quit at mile twenty-two. What's the difference between someone who quits then and someone who finishes? They're all tired at mile twenty-two. The difference is that the people who finish figure out where to put the tired.
Start Small to Go Big
To build something that will change culture, you need to know before you start that there's a dip ahead. The few overnight success stories from Silicon Valley are the exceptions. For everyone else, we're showing up knowing that things get a lot harder before they get easier.
If you're not ready for that, there's nothing wrong with keeping your day job or being a freelancer. But the entrepreneurs who get to the other side picked projects small enough that they could make it through.
You probably won't build an AI engine that changes the world if you don't have forty billion dollars. So do something you can actually do:
- Find a small problem
- Make a promise
- Do it for the people in that audience
- Keep the promise
- Then do it again
It's ironic that some of the biggest businesses we all use daily started in the smallest ways. Look at Airbnb – now a multi-billion dollar business that began with the tiniest market.
While we're dreamers who want to think as big as possible and take over whole markets, the truth is that the biggest businesses often start with the smallest markets.
