Learn Marketing or Fail Forever
Success in life is all about marketing.
What can you make other people believe about yourself, the product or service you are trying to push?
The information doesn’t even have to be “true.”
By this , I don’t mean that it can be false. By not true I mean not factually accurate. Often marketing claims are unverifiable — they become true because people believe them.
It’s only necessary that other people become committed to the narrative you push. Your agenda must become their agenda which can then become a revolution. It must inspire others and appeal to who they are.
It doesn’t even have to make them feel good.
Often it’s more powerful to rile your base of supporters with issues they are all upset about.
It’s about making people align themselves with your vision. Can you appeal to their sense of purpose or aspire to the future you portray.
Marketing is about aspirations and a desire for more. Lust for a better life
And marketing is all about signaling.
We pursue marketing on many fronts. We get a degree to display our competency. We attend training courses to expand our credentials. We network to get referrals.
To succeed we are taught from the youngest of ages to market ourselves.
Think about it, your parents tell you to smile when meeting new people. They teach you to be the best version of yourself and show that face to the world.
Humans are natural marketers. It becomes more important we can convince a larger number of people of our sincerity when we grow older.
Marketing is what has enabled humanity to flourish. Our belief in myths, religions, and more lately brands, is what lets us work together in larger groups.
This lets us achieve amazing feats no other animal can match. And it’s all related to our ability to market idea’s which become popular.
But popular is a concept we misunderstand. People get the wrong impression of what it means to be popular.
To be popular you don’t need people to like you, Donald Trump won less than 50% of the vote. He isn’t particularly liked but nobody could argue that he isn’t popular.
He succeeded in holding the attention of the public like no candidate in recent history.
And he won. That’s the sweet spot between marketing and popularity. That’s where your product/service/self must reside.
If a TV show in the States gets 10m viewers it would be very popular but that is less than 10% of the countries population. If you can become popular in a niche you can succeed.
Start small and prosper. Grow through influence and evangelism. You need a supporter who becomes your marketing arm, user referral is the new TV advertisement.
And virality is the goal. You need a product, ideology or service that people obsess over. You need to stoke the flames of passion and let people feel good about what they are supporting.
That’s why certain people win — normal people can’t compete with obsession. Marketing is an obsession, it inspires a legion of fanatics.
What is a fanatic?
A fanatic is someone who won’t leave even when a competitor releases something better. A fanatic will defend you in the face of reasonable critique.
Look at Apple.
Consumers will ignore products that are superior in every way because of marketing.
Marketing is often a moat that people fail to see.
Marketing is why Peter got the promotion and Paul didn’t even though he was the better candidate. It’s not what you know, it’s what you can convince the other person is true.
Marketing is nepotism, it’s the power of beauty, it’s the sound of tranquillity. Anything that primes you to make a decision that might not be in your best interests.
Don’t kid yourself — we are all vulnerable to it.
But that provides tremendous opportunity. If we can harness the power of marketing we can dominate a workplace, a market, an entire region.
You don’t need a better product, you need a morepowerful story.
We don’t remember all the singers on the X-Factor. We remember the sob stories that suck us in. We roll our eyes at the next contestant who’s had family troubles but that never stops us falling for it.
That is the power of marketing. We can’t even avoid it when we know it is happening.
We are subservient to our natural reactions.
That’s why marketing works and that’s what you need to learn.
You can create the most incredible product that’s ignored. You can’t ignore great marketing that convinces you that you need something you don’t.
What is the trigger?
The trigger is what was said before. It is something that you are convinced you need when it’s something you don’t. Sometimes you don’t even know what you want until you see it. That’s marketing.
