Sorry, someone had to say it.

Your products are predictable. Your insights are recycled. You don’t bring surprise with you when you enter a room.

That’s why people are ignoring you.

Which used to be fine, because you could just buy attention for your brand or your company or your sales efforts. But that half-price sale on attention is now over.

The only path left is to lean out of the edge and become interesting, noteworthy and yes, remarkable.

This, in two words, is the secret of the new marketing.

Find ten people. Ten people who trust you/respect you/need you/listen to you…

Those ten people need what you have to sell, or want it. And if they love it, you win. If they love it, they’ll each find you ten more people (or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three). Repeat.

If they don’t love it, you need a new product. Start over.

Your idea spreads. Your business grows. Not as fast as you want, but faster than you could ever imagine.

This approach changes the posture and timing of everything you do.

You can no longer market to the anonymous masses. They’re not anonymous and they’re not masses. You can only market to people who are willing participants. Like this group of ten.

The timing means that the idea of a ‘launch’ and press releases and the big unveiling is nuts. Instead, plan on the gradual build that turns into a tidal wave. Organize for it and spend money appropriately. The fact is, the curve of money spent (big hump, then it tails off) is precisely backwards to what you actually need.

Three years from now, this advice will be so common as to be boring. Today, it’s almost certainly the opposite of what you’re doing.

Almost all of their actions are driven by the search for more customers.

The reason this is a mistake is simple: it’s expensive. Attracting a new customer costs far more than keeping an old one happy. Not only that, but an old customer is far more likely to bring you new people via word of mouth than someone who isn’t even a customer yet.

Which is why share of wallet makes so much more sense than share of market. How much does each of your existing customers buy from you? Do they count on you for all the things they buy in this market, or just some? Does Toyota sell me every car my family drives? Does Chubb get to insure every single thing I own? Usually not. Because marketers are so focused on more that they forget to take great care of what they’ve got.

and two of them are negative, while 98 are positive…

which ones are you going to read first?

If you’re a human being and you’re telling the truth, the answer is pretty obvious: you want to know which misguided losers had nasty things to say and you want to know what they said. In fact, if we’re being totally truthful, it’s likely you’re going to take what the critics had to say to heart.

That’s a shame. The critics are never going to be happy with you, that’s why they’re critics. You might bore them by doing what they say… but that won’t turn them into fans, it will merely encourage them to go criticize someone else.

It doesn’t matter what Groucho or Elvis or Britney or any other one-name performer does or did… the critics won’t be placated. Changing your act to make them happy is a fool’s game.

Here’s a surprising thought, though. You should ignore your fans as well.

Your fans don’t want you to change, your fans want you to maintain the essence of what you bring them but add a laundry list of features. You fans want lower prices and more contributions, bigger portions and more frequent deliveries.

So, who should you listen to?

Your sneezers.

You should listen to the people who tell the most people about you. Listen to the people who thrive on sharing your good works with others. If you delight these people, you grow.

Too often, we hear about businesses that just might be a dream come true for their owners, but hardly for the people they seek to recruit or the customers they hope to snare. What do your prospects dream of? What would get them to wait in line?

Cukup jelas bahwa kita semakin membeli apa yang kita inginkan, bukan apa yang kita perlukan.

Struktur dari banyak organisasi (dan hampir setiap sekolah yang pernah kita temui) mendukung hal ini. Hal ini menyangkut tentang bagaimana membersihkan piring anda, menyelesaikan tugas-tugas anda, dan mengikuti instruksi.

Inisiatif sangatlah sulit untuk diukur dan diarahkan dan diberi imbalan. Penyelesaian tugas, di lain pihak, adalah orientasi pabrik yang dapat diramalkan dan dirasa aman, namun akhirnya jarang sekali menyebabkan perkembangan dan kesuksesan.

Kita telah dilatih untuk menjadi roda-roda penggerak di system yang luas, pekerja-pekerja di pabrik yang telah diatur dengan baik.

Pada era awal pabrik, ada banyak permintaan untuk roda-roda penggerak yang terlatih. Mereka mempunyai serikat, dan pekerjaan mereka stabil, konsisten dan dihormati. Masih banyak hal yang lebih buruk daripada roda penggerak.

Berikut ini adalah bagaimana roda penggerak telah berubah dalam beberapa tahun belakangan ini.

1. Pekerjaan roda penggerak adalah pekerjaan paling bawah.
2. Jika pekerjaan roda penggerak menjadi mahal, perusahaan-perusahaan akan mengotomatisasi pekerjaan itu.
3. Jika sebuah perusahaan tidak mampu mengotomasikannya, mereka memindahkan pekerjaan itu ke tempa lain yang lebih murah atau di outsourcing.
4. Jika kompetisi berpindah, perusahaan-perusahaan akan mencari jalan untuk mengukur dan membuat unsur pekerja roda penggerak mereka semi-otomatis untuk membuatnya tetap lebih murah.

Hasil akhirnya adalah bahwa sudah tidak mungkin untuk menjadi sukses atau makmur dengan melakukan pekerjaan yang dideskripsikan dan diukur oleh orang lain.

Bukankah kita perlu menelpon orang setiap bulannya untuk menawarkan kartu kredit padahal orang tersebut telah jelas-jelas mengatakan tidak membutuhkannya atau menipu mereka dengan cetakan yang kecil untuk mendapatkan keuntungan? SEMUA PAKAIAN Rp.50.000 adalah tanda yang dipasang di iklan dan tulisan kecil dalam tanda * sangat kecil. Mereka menipu anda untuk mencoba sebuah pakaian, berharap anda akan membeli produk tersebut yang harganya jauh diatas Rp. 50.000 – dengan membuat kesalahan. Bagaimana hal ini akan mendapatkan keuntungan?

Karl Marx pernah menanyakan sebuah pertanyaan sederhana. “Siapa yang diuntungkan?” Hal ini adalah pertanyaan kunci. Perusahaan yang bekerja untuk menguntungkan konsumen mereka tidak akan mendapatkan masalah yang berarti untuk memperlakukan konsumen yang teliti dengan hormat. Ini adalah hasil alami dari pemasar yang bertujuan melayani. Mereka yang bekerja untuk membohongi dan memaksa konsumen mereka, di lain pihak, akan kehilangan segalanya dan mendapat sangat sedikit.