This Is Marketing by Seth Godin

What this bimodal distribution teaches us is that there are at least two audiences that
interact with every bestselling book. There’s the desired audience, the one that has a set
of dreams and beliefs and wants that perfectly integrates with this work. And there’s the
accidental audience, the one that gets more satisfaction out of not liking the work, out of
hating it, and sharing that thought with others.
They’re both right.
But neither is particularly useful.
When we seek feedback, we’re doing something brave and foolish. We’re asking to be
proven wrong. To have people say “You thought you made something great, but you
didn’t.”
Ouch.
What if, instead, we seek advice?
Seek it like this: “I made something that I like, that I thought you’d like. How’d I do?
What advice do you have for how I could make it fit your worldview more closely?”
That’s not criticism. Or feedback. That sort of helpful advice reveals a lot about the
person you’re engaging with. It helps us see his or her fears and dreams and wants. It’s a
clue on how to get even closer next time.
Plenty of people can tell you how your work makes them feel. We’re intimately familiar
with the noise in our own heads, and that noise is often expressed as personal and
specific criticism.
But it might not be about you and it might not be useful.
Perhaps you’re hearing about someone’s fears, or their narrative about inadequacy or
unfairness.
When people share their negative stories, they often try to broaden the response and
universalize it. They talk about how “no one” or “everyone” will feel. But what you’re
actually hearing about is a specific sore spot that was touched in a specific moment by a
specific piece of work.
This is the person who posts a one-star review because the book arrived late for the
baby shower. Or the customer who’s angry because she spent more than she budgeted for
on her wedding. That’s quite different from someone giving you useful advice about how
to work with someone like them in the future.
It’s worth the effort to insulate ourselves from a raw emotional onslaught and to tease
out substantial useful direction instead.
Why don’t people choose you?
Here’s another difficult exercise, one that stretches the empathy muscle of a typical
marketer:
Those people who don’t buy from you, the ones who don’t take your calls, who sneer at
your innovations, who happily buy from a competitor even if they know you exist . . .
those people . . .
Why are they right?
Why are the people who don’t choose you correct in their decision to not choose you?