Free Prize Inside
The Next Big Marketing Idea
by Seth Godin · first published 2004
80% recommend20% neutral
How to find the A"soft innovationA" that will make your product, service, school, church, or career worth talking aboutWe live in an era of too much noise, too much clutter, too many choices, and too much spam. And as Seth GodinA's 200,000-copy bestseller Purple Cow taught the business world, the old ways of marketing simply donA't work anymore. The best way to sell anything these days is through word of mouthA—and the only real way to get word of mouth is to create something remarkable.Free Prize Inside, the sequel to Purple Cow, explains how to do just that. ItA's jammed with practical ideas
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In addition to Four Steps to the Epiphany, Crossing the Chasm, and Getting Real, I would add All Marketers are Liars by Seth Godin. Of Seth's other books, Permission Marketing, Free Prize Inside, and The Big Red Fez also made a big impact on me. But All Marketers are Liars is the best starting place I think. Definitely also read Art of the Start. It's less insightful and more informative, but…
on “Ask HN: Best startup books?” ↗…Gatto The Singularity is Near by Kurzweil This graph: http://alexkrupp.com/picture_library/plot.jpg Dee Hock's essay on leadership A handful of blog posts by Mark Cuban All Marketers are Liars & Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin. All of the books that Seth recommends are also worth reading. Bruce Schneier's interview on ITConversations Magic Ink, an essay by Bret Victor War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning by…
on “Articles, Ideas, Books and/or Concepts that have changed your life” ↗I would start with the Purple Cow and Free Prize Inside by Godin, they are high level but they talk about that fact that you need to make your product exceptional instead of pouring money into marketing. I would also check out Inbound Marketing by Halligan…
on “Ask HN: Marketing Books for Developers?” ↗I've read books on this subject, most notably, 'Free Prize Inside' by Seth Godin- a perfect sequel addressing 'the how', to the book about 'the why' to be remarkable: 'Purple Cow'. Whenever I read on the subject it gets me to thinking about how my particular company…
on “The Value in Wowing Your Customers” ↗Read some Seth Godin books.... purple cow, free prize inside etc... and you will learn how to market/pr. One of my college degrees is in PR but I learned more via Seth Godin's books
on “Ask HN: What PR book should I read?” ↗…academic papers about what makes online communities successful: https://www.amazon.com/Building-Successful-Online-Communitie... But I also like Seth Godin's books a lot, e.g. All Marketers Are Liars, Free Prize Inside, and Purple Cow. A lot of my reading on web stuff has been vaguely in those categories though, in terms of either academic research, academic theory, digital ethnography stuff, psychology and sociology,…
on “Elon Musk owns 9.2% of Twitter” ↗…http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4101280286098310645 * Hard Work: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/69/sgodin.html * All his books, especially All Marketers are Liars, Permission Marketing, and Free Prize Inside. * His best blog posts are collected in the book Small Is The New Big. I love all of Seth's vintage stuff, but my personal favorite is probably his post Clean Fire Trucks: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/12/clean_firetr...
on “8 Startup Insights Inspired By The Mega Mind of Seth Godin” ↗…so dated it was hard to get through, but there were some gems in there. I think Seth's book 'Permission Marketing' is a classic & doesn't get old (not yet at least), I learned alot there. Purple Cow & Free Prize Inside are my favorites of his, still marketing I guess. Good luck.
on “Ask HN: Best intro marketing books?” ↗…for two reasons: 1) The reward for invention and innovation is basically the same, but the ROI on innovation is 10x better than the ROI on invention. (This is one of the main ideas of Seth Godin's book Free Prize Inside.) 2) The best person in a given industry makes 10x as much as the tenth best person, and 100x as much as the 100th best person. Thus the best way to make money is by innovating, not inventing, in an…
on “Smart People should do Stupid Stuff” ↗…you can make something people want for zero R&D, versus making something people want that requires a huge investment, the intelligent choice should be obvious. This is the premise of Seth Godin's book Free Prize Inside. That is, you could spend 50 million dollars inventing a new cereal that will double sales if it succeeds (but will most likely fail), or you could double sales just by putting a free prize inside.
on “Facebook isn't a technology company - funny Mark thinks it is!” ↗Edgecraft. Seth Godin describes the process in Free Prize Inside. (http://decentmarketing.typepad.com/weblog/2004/05/on_the_edg...)
on “Ask YC: Could you provide a specific account of how you personally come up with novel ideas?” ↗…there: 1) The idea behind the book All Marketers Are Liars 2) His idea that ideas that inspire people to talk about them are the ideas that spread. This idea is spread out across three books (Purple Cow, Free Prize Inside, and The Big Moo). 3) His collection of ideas about what is and isn't worth measuring. C.f. his blog post on Clean Firetrucks, his blog post on holding the sides of the treadmill, etc.
on “The dumb, dumb world of Malcolm Gladwell” ↗…which sell mundane goods like vacuum cleaners." I don't understand where you are getting this from. Most of Seth's books are about mundane products: All Marketers are Liars, Purple Cow, The Big Moo, Free Prize Inside... Most of his best blog posts are about mundane products too. When he talks about stuff in the news he likes to talk about web startups, but that's about it. If I had to sum of Seth's philosophy in…
on “ShamWow: A jerk you'll want to buy rags from.” ↗The phrase "go to the edges" actually comes from his book Free Prize Inside. The idea is that the products/companies with the best stories win, and the way to find the best stories is to go to the edges-- make your product very small or very big, very cheap or very expensive,…