Seth Godin’s “14 New Marketing Trends to Embrace”
Category: Tips and Advice
Bestselling author, “New Marketing” expert, and author of the self-described “most popular marketing blog in the world,” Seth Godin is a business blogger and guru dedicated to the idea of re-evaluating traditional business marketing practices.
He’s best known for modern marketing philosophies that, among many other things, work to discredit spam while promoting the idea that you shouldn’t have to use tricks to market your product — if it’s a quality product, tricks aren’t necessary. (Check out his website here, and his blog here.)
Yesterday, BNET blogger Lori Deschene offered an insightful interview with Mr. Godin, as well as a helpful rundown/review of his latest book, “Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Sync?” The summary included
14 trends marketers need to embrace to avoid eating meatball sundaes, which Godin explains as such:
“A meatball is a worthwhile commodity. They are things we need and sold to everyone. The sundae is the hot fudge and the peanuts, the tactics of social media and the MySpace profiles. These things work but they work best when they’re not on meatballs, but when they’re on an organization designed to work with them.”
Based on a reading of the book and special interview with Mr. Godin, Ms. Deschene’s BNET article described Godin’s 14 “New Marketing” techniques as such:
1. Direct Communication - there is a trend towards an increase in direct communication between producers and consumers. More feedback mechanisms are appearing.
2. Amplifying the Voice of Individuals - power to the people. Everyone has become a critic. This can be a good thing. Viral is all the rage.
3. The Idea of having an Authentic Story - Seth mentioned the fact that there are scraps of material out there and the need for having an authentic story to tell.
4. Lack of Attention Span - have we trained people to have shorter attention spans? Seth reminisced about the fact that in the 40’s commercials used to be 30 minutes long. Is the 30 second spot still an efficient way to educate potential prospects and consumers about your product and services? Just how successful are those Super Bowl commercials anyway? So long as the ads generate revenue, does it matter?
5. All About the Long-Tail- we’ve discussed the long-tail of SEO on numerous occasions. There is a definite trend towards long-tail and providing a choice for people.
6. Outsourcing - there is a definite trend towards outsourcing. Seth pointed out that “… it can be easier to change the manual than to change the people…â€
7. Google and the Other Search Engines are “atomizing†the World - Seth also touched on the fact that bundling (all of your services) may not and does not always work.
8. Infinite Channels of Information - a.k.a. creating noise. I like to call this “touch points†or interception points. This creates the elimination of a bottleneck as you should build and create your own channels (and no I’m not talking about Yahoo Pipes).
9. Consumers Can Talk Directly to other Consumers - power to the people part two.
10. Shift in Scarcity and Abundance - stuff that used to be abundant is now scarce and vice versa.
11. Big Idea can reach a large number of people - a big idea is something that changes the world or the big idea’s direct environment forever.
12. Shift of How Many to Who? - This is huge as “who†has become much more important than “How Manyâ€. Mass marketing is seeing a transformation.
13. Identification of who is wealthy and who is not - you cannot always predict who is who.
14. New Gatekeepers and No Gate Keepers - you’ll have to read the book for more on this.
Godin’s book is available for sale on December 27. The original BNET article can be viewed here.


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