Book Review: Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Book Review

Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Disclaimer: These are my thoughts and opinions, not to be confused with expert opinion or fact. I am only a lifelong student.

This was the second time I have read Seth Godin’s book, Purple Cow, and was very impressed with the ease of reading. Godin is a master when it comes to describing difficult to apply concepts in an easy manner. With real world examples and application I recommend this book to anyone with a desire to stand out. In other words, YOU. Here are some of my favorite points.

1. Remarkable Marketing — Remarkable Marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service. Not slapping on marketing as a last-minute add on, but understanding that if your offering isn’t remarkable, it’s invisible. Have you ever heard I want our brand to be X (enter awesome, cool, hip, trustworthy) after the product and processes have already been created? What I believe Godin meant was to build your business or product around the brand perception you want. Make your product awesome, unique, reliable, cool, or whatever you want to accomplish then it markets itself.
2. Purpose of the marketing department — The marketing department takes a nearly finished product or service and spends money to communicate its special benefits to a target audience. Godin believes that this approach no longer works. I agree with that too a point. Using a marketing department to correct a product or company with issues no longer works. People are connected now more then ever and you cannot use a marketing department to create a public image if you can’t back it up.
3. Story of Sliced Bread — The invention of sliced bread went 20 years without creating much attention! In that time you had to have have effective media with your product. Wonder bread got the attention that the creator of sliced bread never could. Fortunately that isn’t the case anymore. If you take a product to market and get it in front of innovators who love it there is a good chance that it will get the attention it deserves.
4. Geoff Moore’s Idea Diffusion Curve — The marketing world has changed from the majority to innovators and early adopters. Social media and today’s connected economy gives you an easy way to creatively get in front of your niche audience. A simple Google search for the correct keywords will allow you to find dozens of sources for you to get in front of the correct people
5. The New Rule of Marketing: Create Remarkable Products That The Right People Seek Out — Simple. Build an awesome product, company, and service that speaks for itself. It will make your life easier.
6. Following the Leader — The reason it is so hard to follow the leader is he did something remarkable. And that remarkable thing is now taken — it’s no longer remarkable when you do it. How can you be the leader and be the first one to market? By being remarkable. (Thanks Seth!)
7. Ineffectiveness of Trends — TV and all old school marketing techniques are breaking or broken. How can you be more creative and effective with your marketing?
8. Adjusting User Behavior — “Instead of trying to use your technology and expertise to make a better product for your users’ standard behavior, experiment with inviting the users to change their behavior to make the product work dramatically better.” Interesting. This is something that many would warn you from but how could it be pulled off? Smart phones could be a good example. The creation of wearables, bluetooth, streaming music to your phone, etc are a great example of how people are adjusting to the products and not the product to the market. The product needs to be special.
9. Death of Product — Kill a dying product. Invest the money into another young growing one to profit more and prevent the pain of a profit killing product. How many products can you think of that should have been killed off that may have caused a company to take massive losses? I can think of one company that just can’t seem to get it right, JCPenney. At one point in time they were attempting to rebrand as having small stores within their huge stores. The biggest problem that I saw with this is that every one of these small internal stores have huge national brands. Why not turn each mini store into a local products shop where they sell mom and pop items or clothing from that state or area?
10. Simplicity of a Product — You must design a product that is remarkable enough to attract the early adopters but is flexible enough and attractive enough that those adopters will have an easy time spreading the idea to the rest of the curve. When I think of simplicity of a product Apple comes to mind. Yeah a lot of people bash Apple for a lot of different things but can you argue with their ease of use? They might be behind on some things technically (I don’t know if they are technically) but they are simple for kids or people who aren’t digital natives to use. Can you think of a company that does simple better?
11. Sneezers are the Key Spreading Agents of an Ideavirus — Sneezers are very powerful today with platforms like Twitter to blow up your product or service. Seeking out an industry expert that has a large following on social media could allow you access a large part of the market at a very quick rate. Give it a shot.
12. Don’t Try to Make a Product for Everyone — Make a product for a smaller population of people with very specific needs that you can identify and fulfill. Who is your niche market? Where do they go to get industry information? Going after a niche market makes it either to target everything about the type of people in it.
13. Need a Dense Population to Spread an Ideavirus — Same thing with a real virus. The closer the people are together the easier a cold will spread. Same thing when people are talking about your product or service. Find a closely bound group of people to help sell your product by sneezing on others. I hate to use Apple again so I will go with Google products. You have a select group of fans that brag and review and talk about and hate on email and on and on….you get the point. They have a huge but very dense population.
14. What to Do When No One is Listening — Be creative! Figure out how you can get people’s attention in a creative, fun, and effective way. Or you can quit and leave. Those are your two options. What you are doing right now isn’t working and that isn’t going to change over time. People have gotten use to the same old gimmicks over the years and they are no longer a valuable use of your time. Put your energy into something new. Start a social media campaign on Youtube or Twitter. You never know what will happen until you give it a try.
15. Importance of Super Specific Markets — Differentiate your customers and find the group that is most connected and profitable. Target your ads and promotions to the customers that you would select if you could. Even if you are running a startup who would you choose as your customers? Are those the people you are going after? Or are you going after whoever will write you a check? I have gone the check route and it is way more fun when you deal with people who you hand pick. Who are yours?
16. Pick a Underserved Niche in Your Market — Are you being crushed by your competition? Is there one thing that you do much better than any other company in your market? Why don’t you just do that? All of a sudden you are now the best! Is it possible for you to cut down on the number of services or products you sell in order to dominate the niche market?
17. Boring Always Leads to Failure — Don’t I know that. I have done things that were unexceptional before and have gotten what I deserved. Failure. But I tried and shipped something. I have learned from my mistakes and keep getting better everyday. What have you done that wasn’t creative that led to failure?
18. Making “Very Good” Stuff — According to Godin very good is the opposite of remarkable. Everyone these days boasts very good but why not remarkable? Think about if you could say We Have the Most Remarkable Service in Town and could back it up? Your customers would love you. Sales would go through the roof. Why do people then choose very good? Because it is harder to be remarkable. How can you be remarkable in your business or life?

I hope you enjoyed my points from the book! There are way more but these were the ones that caught my eye. The message that I from Godin got is to stand out you must be remarkable and to be remarkable you must be creative. If you enjoyed it be sure to comment below and share with your friends!