The Better Your Product Is, The Better Your Marketing Will Be
Sander’s Book Club: The Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday.
Ryan has produced yet another masterpiece! This time explaining how to create products that will outlive the author. Sharing a roadmap for turning an idea into a reality and taking it to the people.
In this book, he explains how marketing consists of four parts:
- The Creative Process — From the Mindset to the Making of the Magic.
- Positioning — From Polishing to Perfection to Packaging.
- Marketing — From Courting the Coverage, Pushing to Promotion.
- Platform — From Fans to Friends and a Full-Fledged Career.
It all starts with the idea that most creatives never give themselves a real shot at making work that lasts for even ten minutes let alone years. This means that people say they want to create classics but are rarely doing the work for it.
In most cases, we believe that creating something will be enough. Hoping Jobs was right when saying that once it’s built, the people will come. Not realising it’s only a part of Apple’s branding.
Ryan writes “Promotion is not how things are made great — only how they’re heard about.” People tend to think if advertising doesn’t work then marketers didn’t push it hard enough. Whereas usually, the product must have been crappy. And crappy products don’t survive. But no one wants to acknowledge they didn’t succeed in creating the next big thing.
It starts by wanting to create a classic. People thinking about things other than making the best product never make the best product. Lots of people want to be the noun without the verb. Not everyone is right for the job — and it’s better to realise that sooner than later.
All this can be harsh but at least it’s the truth.
Fortunately, Ryan does publish a route around the failure. One that starts by taking the time, and not rushing the process. Saying, “Very few great things were ever created at a hackathon,” something I very much agree with. Continuing with the advice to really figure out who’s the customer and what’s their pain. Simple, but still not followed often enough.
One of my favourite thoughts on this was, “For every project, you must know what you are doing — and what you are not doing. You must also know who you are doing it for — and who you are not doing it for — to be able to say: THIS and for THESE PEOPLE.”
Followed by another excellent thought, “You can’t afford to wait to after it’s finished to figure out who what you’re making is for. Because too often the answer turns out to be: no one.” As Paul Graham once said, “Having no specific user in mind kills startups,” and all other projects.
Just as we ask, who is this for, we must also ask, what does this do. A critical test of any product: Does it have a purpose? Does it add value to the world? How will it improve the lives of the people who buy it?
Some other questions to ask are, What does this teach? What does this solve? How am I entertaining? What am I giving? What are we offering? What are we sharing? What sacred cows am I slaying? What dominant institution am I displacing? What groups am I disrupting? What people am I pissing off?
From there, the book goes to positioning — figuring out how to best describe the product when talking to potential customers. Being really good is merely the first step. In order to earn word of mouth, you need to make your product safe, fun, and worthwhile to overcome the social hurdles to spread the word.
My favourite exercise from this part was writing down the description of what you do. One sentence. One paragraph. One page. Same story in different lengths. Starting with, I am making a __ that does __ for __ because __.
Next up, he goes into marketing, explaining that “Marketing is anything that gets or keeps customers.” — which I very much agree with.
He recommends giving stuff away free or for very cheap at first, saying “As a general rule, the more accessible you make your product, the easier it will be to market. You can always raise the price later after you’ve built an audience.”
And another thought to remember is that advertising can add fuel to afire, but rarely is it sufficient to start one. Thus it’s first important to get the word spreading and then add advertising.
Then, Ryan takes us to create a platform enabling us to continue creating and selling. Focusing a lot on creating a list or a network to have a platform to talk with the existing and future fans. The best time to build your network was yesterday.
Finally emphasizing, ”Marketing can’t stop. The work can’t stop. The hustle can’t stop. It must go on and on.” As long-term success comes from sticking around. As more great work is the best way to market yourself. As we should prove to the world and to ourselves that we can do it again… and again.
Yet, it’s important to note that it all still takes luck. Just that the more you do, the harder you work, the luckier you seem to get.
Tl;dr
9.5/10 — I loved the book. And yet again, Ryan managed to make me rethink many of my well-established perceptions. Do read it as well!
Sander’s book club is an initiative to record my thoughts just after finishing reading any book. Hope these encourage you to read more!
If you could recommend me just one book to read, then which one will it be? Let me know via my Newsletter, Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook.
