Ideas that spread win – Being Remarkable – Internet

Related to our post of “How to Be Different: ‘Being Remarkable’ – the salesman’ of 2 days ago, there is a great presentation “Sliced bread and other marketing delights” by Seth Godin from February 2003 on the TED conference (Technology Entertainment Design).
What is so remarkable about this speech on being remarkable: although the presentation is now over 5 years have gone, and still very actual.
Although Seth Godin speaks about 18 minutes (+ headed by a commercial), you will keep listening as it is entertaining, interesting and gives you insight.

His main points are:
- Ideas that spread win
- The century of idea diffusion
- Is it remarkable? (the purple cow)
- Mass marketing is required
- The TV-industrial complex is broken: TV adds no longer work (less effective)
- Sell to the people who are listening
- Safe is risky (in marketing) – very good is bad
These are plenty of concepts and views on marketing. It is about marketing in a new era.

The change since 2003

Maybe the big change, since this presentation in 2003, are the small businesses marketing opportunities that were not yet existent then: in 2003 large amounts of money was still required for marketing, whereas now many on-line services are free (requiring even more effort).
This change relates to the broken TV-Industrial complex.
No longer TV and TV advertising dictate people and is the prime influencer of people, as the Internet has gained the new leading position (especially in B2B).

The many new other communication channels on the Internet are becoming more important.
Online press releases, blogs (and their feed), forums, Instant Messaging, online awards/contests, ..
Ideas that spread win. Especially on the Internet.
So start spreading your ideas, concepts, solutions on the Internet by using free and paying channels.

This was exactly the same message of “Web marketing Favors Small Businesses – Less is more” on our blog yesterday.

Change driven by search engines

One could say: it are the search engines who are driving the change.
If people want to know something they search it on the internet (they ‘Google’ it up).
The more references on the Internet, the higher the likelihood of your products or solution being found and retrieved: thus more lead generation.
Ideas that spread (over the Internet) win.

Sell to the people who are listening

There are enough potential buyers in B2B, thus focus on those who are listening.
For example: those who visit your website: they have found your company or products/solutions somehow. Catch them while you can as they pay attention for a limited amount of time.

Safe is risky

As the Internet is open to anyone, playing safe won’t make you or your business remarkable enough in order to be found on the Internet.
Still being remarkable can be done by the salesman, but first the potential customer needs to find your (un-remarkable company, product or solution).

Content & effort & time

As the Internet has given access to marketing to a much wider group of people, the required content, effort and time invested will be very high in order to beat the competition for lead generation and customer retention.