That’s a quote from Seth Godin, one of the most influential marketing minds of the 21st century .. wow, that’ sort of creepy to write, I wonder if he has a phaser? Knowing Seth, he does and it’s a kick ass phaser that’s been optimized to do something cool. The quote comes from an amazing web site called ChurchCrunch, a cool little site that helps churches make sense of the Internet and technology for their congregations.

Some of you might recognize the name Seth Godin, which wouldn’t be at all surprising since he’s written amazing books like Permission Marketing : Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers , The Dip  and Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable as well as a couple of killer blogs such as my personal favorite, All Marketers are Liars. Still can’t place where you know him from? Possibly the coolest WordPress plugin on the Internet today … What would Seth Godin do? Needless to say, if you want to market yourself online, Seth is one of those people you should read.

How to market online

One of the things Seth preaches and smart people listen to is the simple concept that people don’t really care about marketers, they care about themselves. I see bloggers forget about this all the time and brag about how much money they earn, hand out horrible advice (trust me, the post is worth reading) and forget that the trick with marketing (if you can call it a trick) is to honestly deliver what people are looking for and in return, they’ll come back if they like what you offer.

Back when I was the Director of Communications for the US Beer Drinking Team, I came up with a marketing theory called Me Marketing, it’s was all about convincing companies that marketing had nothing to do with them and everything to do with the people on the receiving end of the campaign. 

Simple concept right? Actually it’s a really hard idea to get through people’s heads, especially when they’re entrepreneurs instead of business people. Entrepreneurs are notoriously arrogant, which helps them build successful businesses but only if they truly understand people buy their products because people want to buy their products, not because people are being told to buy them. 

My theory went like this, people are too busy, too set in their ways and too comfortable in their existing processes to care what you’re trying to sell them unless what you’re offering them will solve their pain. See, everybody has pain, so if you can figure out what that is and how to resolve their pain, you’ll be their hero and now that they know you (and trust you), they’ll buy from you.

Extra Credit Work

If you’d like to really see this theory in action, take a look at yourself and your own trends.

1. Why do you buy (or avoid buying from) Walmart? There prices are low, does saving money solve your pain?
2. Are you on Facebook? Why? What does Facebook offer you and how does it make your world better? If it doesn’t why are you there?
3. Ditto for Twitter … why are you there? How does it make your life easier? What pain does it take away?

The trick, I believe is simple … if you find a service or product that makes people’s life easier and the cost is reasonable, they’ll use it and do the marketing for you by recommending it to friends. My answers btw? 1) because I don’t have a lot of money, 2) because it helps me keep in touch with my family and 3) I’ve yet to work this one out.

What about you? 

Simply put, give people something that makes their lives easier … and they’ll respect your marketing efforts.