Read Purple Cow if you need reminding why it’s not safe to play it safe. How would your clients describe you? If you define your personal brand – who are you? – are you remarkable?
In Purple Cow, Seth Godin urges us to be remarkable, as being safe is risky. He suggests creating a remarkable product for ‘sneezers’ to spread (like an ideavirus) in your niche market. Good products or services get talked about because they are worth talking about (Apple’s Ipad is an obvious example). Busy customers choose winners, so it’s worth being the market leader. Think about your ideal customer – the one you’d choose – and cater your products to that customer.
Godin explains that the age of big TV advertising is dead – we’re back full circle to word of mouth – only today it is faster as we now use social media. ‘The marketing is the product’ – he suggests reinvesting in finding your next remarkable product and put the marketing investment into the product instead of into the media.
If you think of yourself as a product (Tom Peters calls it Brand You), the same is true for you. Do you invest in making you remarkable?
Purple Cow, New Edition: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable–Includes new bonus chapter
