This is marketing
by Seth Godin · first published 2018
67% recommend33% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Short, idea-focused guide to marketing as ongoing practice: who you serve, what you promise, and how to be seen by the right people. Suits founders, indie builders and developers who want a mindset rather than tactics.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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I don't think there's 1 single book on selling that is goo, your best best is to always keep on reading. I would incorporate: * Never Split the Difference * So Good They Can't Ignore You * This is Marketing
on “I'm an engineer that needs to sell my services. Any good books on sales?” ↗…product in Facebook groups. - If there are two books I'd recommend: "Rework" by Basecamp. It helps you to focus on a minimal set of features and think about what's truly important. Couple this with "This is Marketing" from Seth Godin, where he explains how traditional marketing is dead and how it's important to find a niche. Don't read more books, interviews or whatever. Get into a "starter mindset" by reading and…
on “Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?” ↗…to hear crickets at launch. Here are a couple of books that I found helpful for getting me to approach things from a different perspective: $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau Will It Fly by Pat Flynn This is Marketing by Seth Godin
on “Ask HN: HN complains, I propose solutions, nobody cares. Why?” ↗I like the approach Seth Godin talks about in his book This is Marketing. He uses a 4 quadrant chart to plot two qualities of a product. Then plots where competitors fall on those two qualities. For instance cost and durability. Some competitors could be positioned differently…
on “It’s worth spending weeks on research before wasting years on a hopeless project” ↗…every time. At least I think that many people just started to work on something instead of reading first. My favorites, which I read only after I launched a product: Rework. About improving a product. "This is Marketing" from Seth Godin. To get the right mindset about who the audience is.
on “What are the most indispensable books for indie hackers?” ↗…instantly useful - the best advice for making something with actually returns money: find and solve a "critical" problem. Learn how to look & find them. Start small while listening to it. Also, I've found "This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See" by Seth Godin to be really helpful. It changed my mind quite a bit around the topic of marketing (Ads != Marketing; love the concept of "find the Minimum Viable…
on “Ask HN: Books giving practical advice on starting a solo SaaS business?” ↗Books I would recommend: Marketing for Developers by Justin Jackson Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares This Is Marketing by Seth Godin Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software by Nadia Eghbal
on “Build, and They’ll Come” ↗…problems I had at the time: - Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra - Obviously Awesome by April Dunford - The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick - Every book Seth Godin has written, particularly This is Marketing - Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen - Forget the Funnel by Claire Suellentrop and Georgiana Laudi
on “Bootstrapping Atlassian: $10k In Credit Card Debt To $20M In Revenue In 5 years” ↗I took a queue from Seth Godin in his book 'This is Marketing' where he basically breaks it down to: People like me do things like this. I adopted a certain baseline of living as part of my core identity. People like me keep the house clean always, and tidy mostly.…
on “Todo apps are meant for robots” ↗…quite hard as there are many snake oil sales men selling snake oil. The first book I would read is Crossing The Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. After this, in no particular order you could have a look at: - This is Marketing by Seth Godin - Positioning by Al Ries - The Challenger Sale by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson - Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross - Traversing The TRaction Gap by Bruce Cleveland - From Impossible…
on “Ask HN: How to learn marketing and sales as a solo entrepreneur?” ↗…own experience using his own product. What I'm getting at is that, its really difficult to get people to love something you build unless you love it yourself, Seth Godin touches on this in his book "This is Marketing" I like the data driven approach to product development, but sometimes passion trumps data, if you build something you yourself cannot live without, it's much easier to slowly win people over to your…
on “Walking Away from the Product I Spent a Year Building” ↗…Ads, with the hope able to keep our app ranking afloat. Do you have any suggestion, how I can have a better marketing strategy? From your post, I will start by purchasing - "Rework" by Basecamp - "This is Marketing" from Seth Godin I also like your suggestion "Write articles that teach people something". Do you have suggestion which publishing platform I should use? Since I don't have a good writing skill, should…
on “Ask HN: Successful one-person online businesses?” ↗This is a great compendium. What might be helpful is a bit of a flow chart or an actual step-wise guide that shows you what to consider when and why and how. I'm reading Seth Godin's "This is Marketing" book right now.
on “Product Marketing for Engineers” ↗Rework by Jason Fried shows us a better, faster way to succeed in business in general and start-ups in particular. This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See by Seth Godin teaches us a revolutionary approach to marketing, sales, and advertising.
on “Ask HN: Reading which books have brought the biggest changes in you and how?” ↗