Finding Your "Who" with Seth Godin

Marketers may fall into the trap that they think they want to sell to everyone. If Coke and Nike sell to everyone, they think they should sell to everyone.

But you cant. You don't have the time and enough money. So that is good news because now you can be specific. You can say it is for these people but not for those people.

• Who is it for? Who is it for psychographically? What do they believe? What do they dream of? What are their fears and desires?
• You get to pick the who. They have a problem they know they want to solve. They have the means to solve it, and you are able to keep your promise.

Be very sure you can name one person by name that will do business with you. Can you name ten or a hundred people by attribute?

If there aren't ten or a hundred people who will stop by and do business with you, you should probably make something else. 

We may know how to make things but making things are not the hard part. What is hard is figuring out what people want and how to earn trust and attention.

• People don't know what they want. It took someone to make an iPhone and show people, and then only did people want it.
• We need to find empathy to understand how people think before we can make a product people will want.

You don't get to decide what's important to other people. When you show up, you have to deal with their world views, their biases, their fears.

As marketers, we have to see what one type of person in a certain setting buying our product will be reminded of.

For example, if you're at a baseball game, someone can probably sell you a stale hot dog because it reminds you of going to the ballgame with your grandpa. But in a business setting, you would never buy it.

Marketing is about how we talk to other people in a way that earns their trust, get them excited and gain enrollment.

You have a marketing problem if you battle to serve the people you want to serve because they don't understand you or don't believe you, or don't talk about what you make.