This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See

“If you do X, you will get Y.” That promise is often hidden. It can accidentally be set aside or intentionally camouflaged, but all effective marketing makes a promise. The promise isn’t the same as a guarantee. It’s more like, “If this works for you, you’re going to discover …”

a focus on the customer as the only project of a startup. Customer development is the act of gaining traction with customers, of finding a fit between what you make and what they want. This traction is worth far more than fancy technology or expensive marketing. That, and only that, separates successful projects from unsuccessful ones.

The simple marketing promise Here’s a template, a three-sentence marketing promise you can run with: My product is for people who believe _________________. I will focus on people who want _________________. I promise that engaging with what I make will help you get _________________. And you thought that all you were here to do was sell soap.

At every step along the way, create and relieve tension as people progress in their journeys toward their goals.

Sonder is defined as that moment when you realize that everyone around you has an internal life as rich and as conflicted as yours.

Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem.

Your tactics can make a difference, but your strategy—your commitment to a way of being and a story to be told and a promise to be made—can change everything.

If you can bring someone belonging, connection, peace of mind, status, or one of the other most desired emotions, you’ve done something worthwhile.

Affiliation isn’t as focused on scarcity as dominion is, because affiliation admires the network effect. More affiliation leads to affiliation for everyone involved. Abundance is welcome. The affiliated marketer seeking leverage works to prime the pump by sending the right signals to the right people, in search of a cascade.

Permission marketing recognizes the new power of the best consumers to ignore marketing. It realizes that treating people with respect is the best way to earn their attention.