On the other hand, a smart marketer can build a product or service that’s worth searching for. Not the generic term, but to find you, the thing you built, the specific. When you do that, Google’s on your side. They actually want you to be found when someone searches for you.

And each of them builds awareness, permission, and trust, which gives you a platform to sell the thing that’s worth paying for.

The first step is to invent a thing worth making, with a story worth telling, and a contribution worth talking about. The second step is to design and build it in a way that a few people will particularly benefit from and care about. The third step is to tell a story that matches the built-in narrative and dreams of that tiny group of people, the

First, every trick for sale on the site is demonstrated with a video. That video, of course, doesn’t reveal how the trick is done, so tension is created. If you want to know the secret, you’ll need to buy the trick.

You can release that tension, right now, simply by signing in . . .

Reassuring the viewer (“As seen on TV”) that this is a safe brand, a brand you and your peers know, a brand that can afford to be on this box. That’s a tax that major companies in competitive markets have to pay. But it’s not the sort of marketing that’s realistic to consider for anyone else.

It’s easier to make products and services for the customers you seek to serve than it is to find customers for your products and services.

We sell feelings, status, and connection, not tasks or stuff.

the typical corporate cog wants to avoid getting in trouble with the boss.