Universal Language

There is a language in the world that everyone understands. The language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose and as a search for something believed in and desired. - Paulo Coelho

Market globally if you've got a good enough product.

Mass Audience

The idea of a mass audience was really an invention of the Industrial Revolution. - David Cronenberg

  Invented by marketers.

Attention

Attention is a bit like real estate, in that they're not making any more of it. Unlike real estate, though, it keeps going up in value. - Seth Godin


If attention is in short supply, plan on giving more for it and receiving more for it.

Writers' Influence

The difference is slight, to the influence of an author, whether he is read by five hundred readers, or by five hundred thousand; if he can select the five hundred, he reaches the five hundred thousand. - Henry B. Adams

This is still true today but it's probably more difficult to get the 500 to take the time to read your writing.

(Other posts on Ideas)

Enviromental Change

Human nature hasn't changed a bit. What has changed is the environment we live in. - Seth Godin

Innovators have always been those who saw the changing environment, and were keenly aware of human nature. Thus they changed the environment. Study both.

Augmented Post

Sometimes I have more to say. Here's a post from the past - expanded.

Price Isn't Everything
Maybe the reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is...... that you haven't given them anything else to care about. – Seth Godin

This thought can be applied to a lot more than customers. The next time you find yourself thinking "All they care about is my.......", remember this line.

My father went into the lumber yard bussiness in 1962 with the idea of expanding. The nearest competitor was just down the street and was much bigger with a lot more customers. He wanted some of them.

One of the vendor's salesmen told my dad "You don't want his customers - they are the kind of customer that wants cheap stuff." The guy down the street specialized in cheap stuff. He sold the cheapest two by fours in town and his customers delighted in finding those that wouldn't break in half if you picked up one end.

There are those that want the cheapest - they will abandon you for a penny. You don't want them. If you have a new product you may be tempted to price it cheap in order to make sales. If you do you will get that kind of customer - you don't want them. It is better to offer the best product you can; price it reasonably; give exceptional service. That way you will get "good" customers who know that value is more important than price. There are customers you do not want.

Remarkable Value

As you sit down to consider ways to be more remarkable, the challenge is to be worth talking about... at the same time you are adding value for the person who's talking about you. - Seth Godin

When your business is both remarkable and valuable you have the winning combination.

The Key to Success

I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody. - Bill Cosby

The concept of the long tail says you can succeed by merely pleasing some of the people some of the time - you just have to find them. It's all in the marketing.

Being a Needle

When you are a needle, and you want to get the word out, don't start by jumping into haystacks. – Robert May (posts at businesspundit.com)



This one really got me to thinking about selling (a product or even yourself). When we wrote our book on trail riding we sold a lot more books in feed stores than we did in bookstores. In a bookstore we were a needle in a haystack. In a feed store we were a spear. We all start out as needles. You can jump into a haystack if you want but you had better work to make yourself into a pitchfork.

Novelty

Of all the passions that possess mankind, the love of novelty rules most the mind; in search of this from realm to realm we roam, our fleets come fraught with every folly home. – Samuel Foote

Isn't using this what Apple has been best at? Novel products can become fads but to become indispensable they must have value beyond their cost. Microsoft has been good at he latter, Apple the former. So the lessen to be learned is to imbue your product with both.

Price Isn't Everything

Maybe the reason it seems that price is all your customers care about is...... that you haven't given them anything else to care about. – Seth Godin

This thought can be applied to a lot more than customers. The next time you find yourself thinking "All they care about is my.......", remember this line.