Seth Godin: 5 Ways to Grow Your Market

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Seth Godin: 5 Ways to Grow Your Market

The world's top marketing guru explains how to innovate your sales and marketing.

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Bestselling author Seth Godin

A few years ago, I heard marketing uber-guru Seth Godin speak about

business growth through innovation at a conference hosted by my

friend and mentor Gerhard Gschwandtner, CEO of SalesOpShop.com.

Iran across my session notes from that conference recently and

decided that Seth's ideas were definitely worth sharing:

1. Invent a New Market Segment

Position your product or service at the "logical extreme" of some aspect of your product category.

For example, if the typical product in your market is expensive but comes with free service, make

your product free and charge a subscription fee for the service. If you're making a commodity

product, go for something either huge or tiny.Seth used the example of Hummers and Mini

Coopers, but I think a better example is the PC market, where most of the growth in the past five

years has been in high-end game machines and tiny netbooks.

2. Exchange Your Sales Funnel for a Sales Network

Traditionally, sales is envisioned as a funnel, with prospects shoveled into the big end and

customers trickling out the bottom. Today, however, there is now so much market clutter that it's

increasingly expensive to locate new prospects.So rather than concentrating on lead generation,

create products and services that are so remarkable that existing customers can't wait to tell their

friends and colleagues about them. Find ways, like contests and special offers, to help your happy

customers get the message out.

3. Market to the Trailing or the Leading Edge

With the Internet, informed customers can always find whatever they want for the lowest possible

price. Growing your business therefore means finding either two types of customer: clueless or

brilliant. Clueless customers don't know what they want and thus can be persuaded to want

whatever you're selling.Brilliant customers are so knowledgeable that they can to be persuaded