Transforming Your Marketing Culture with Seth Godin [@InboundNow #15]

Seth Godin joins us for episode #15 of Inbound Now ! Seth is a marketing mastermind, author of 13 books great books (including Purple Cow , Tribes , All Marketers are Liars, & Poke the Box ), and an inspiring speaker.

In the show we chat about:

• How companies can transform the way they do business by poking the box .
• How companies can provide an environment that encourages innovation & doesn’t shun failure.
• How companies can stand out and transcend traditional marketing tactics.

For the full transcript head here:  Poking the Box and Transforming your Marketing with Seth Godin

This book is about Doing, poking, prodding, and challenging the status quo . This is your message and mantra. How can companies and individuals in those companies start poking the box and transform the way things?

Race to the Top

It’s good to have short term goals but you must have an overarching vision of the future. Seth sees too many companies getting caught up in trying to optimize one tiny piece for a 2% gain and they often loose sight of more important initiatives that should and could be taking place. "Racing to the top is not about incrementally lowering your price or chiseling away. Racing to the top is about creating moments and movements and changes and innovations that people choose to talk about, that people want to engage with you about." The dark secret of Marketing it’s a lot easier to do when you have a product worth talking about.

Be Eagerly Prepared to Fail!

Failing enough times leads to long term success. “If you fail often enough, you will succeed” You have to fail successfully enough to keep going, be smart about failure. And remember,  Try is the opposite of hiding.

Always Be Shipping

The notion that you can wet test anything changes everything. Quote “The only way to understand the box is to see the edges”

Get Near the Edges of the Box

Push boundaries and try new things. How else will you know what works and what doesn’t? The cost of learning is so much less than the cost of not learning.

Advice for Marketers

Seth has given 4000 pieces of advice to marketers on his blog . Seth says “The Internet rewards relentless generosity.” and the more you worry about pay day, the less you are going to make.

Where do Seth’s ideas come from?

Brian Halligan , our fearless CEO, posed this question to Seth to try and get into his mind to see how it ticks. Seth says he tries to say things that scare him and tries to always keep a watchful eye to notice things that are interesting and then add his own unique spin.

Create a Failure Friendly Environment

"Anytime your boss says to you, "We need to do something new and failure is not an option," what she's also said to you is success is not an option, because if you're not prepared to fail along the way, eagerly fail along the way, then you're not going to succeed." Seth suggests creating an environment where your employees are more afraid about not failing than Making a list of how you failed and survived is going to teach you a great deal and inspire you to keep failing (smartly)

Yoda Was Wrong

Seth claims that the jedi master Yoda had it wrong! "I think Yoda was wrong, and I quoted him in the book, where he said, "There is no try." I think there's lots of try. It's okay to do your best and have it not work. In fact, every company that we say we admire, every brand that we say we aspire to has a long history of doing that."

Who inspires Seth Godin?

“You know David, I would say you” (Thanks Seth!) Seth says that everyone that reads his blog and supports his efforts he . Knowing someone is going to read his blog and take away from his ideas and take action are enough to keep him going.

The Enemy for Any Creator is Not Piracy it’s Obscurity.  

Great companies and brands reject the idea of average products for average people. They make amazing products for a select market. New marketing is about making great stuff.

Innovating Everyday

Seth says you should be innovating in your company on a daily basis. Take a look at how internal processes are working. What could be streamlined? What could be made better? How would you ever know this if you aren’t poking the box to see what works? Seth stresses to look at your posture.  Are you interested in figuring out how things work or just there to make it to the next payday keeping your head down? “This posture of curiosity is a choice and I’m always amazing when people aren’t interested at least at some level how things work” Why wouldn't you be interested in how things work? "The point is this is a moment. This moment will not be here in ten years. This moment was not here ten years ago. So the question is if you're lucky enough to work for an organization that's doing cool stuff, why aren't you poking and finding out what's working and what's not?"

Seth's Lesson for Marketers

"A lot of people don't have respect for marketers. The reason is because the old kind of marketer was a little bit of a scum bag who was trying to say one thing about a product that did something else." However there is hope! "The new breed of marketers is an impresario, a creator, an artist, a storyteller, someone who wants to make connections about things that matter. Not everyone gets to be the new breed of marketer. You have to choose to be this person and you can. So quit whining and go ."

Connect with Seth Online

Seth blogs daily on and cranks out amazing content . You can also connect with him on his personal site SethGodin.com