“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill bit. They want a quarter-inch hole.” The lesson is that the drill bit is merely a feature, a means to an end, but what people truly want is the hole it makes. But that doesn’t go nearly far enough. No one wants a hole. What people want is the shelf that will go on the wall once they drill the hole. Actually, what they want is how they’ll feel once they see how uncluttered everything is, when they put their stuff on the shelf that went on the wall, now that there’s a quarter-inch hole. But wait . . . They also want the satisfaction of knowing they did it themselves. Or perhaps the increase in status they’ll get when their spouse admires the work. Or the peace of mind that comes from knowing that the bedroom isn’t a mess, and that it feels safe and clean.

People don’t want what you make They want what it will do for them. They want the way it will make them feel. And there aren’t that many feelings to choose from.

In essence, most marketers deliver the same feelings. We just do it in different ways, with different services, products, and stories. And we do it for different people in different moments. If you can bring someone belonging, connection, peace of mind, status, or one of the other most desired emotions, you’ve done something worthwhile. The thing you sell is simply a road to achieve those emotions, and we let everyone down when we focus on the tactics, not the outcomes. Who’s it for and what’s it for are the two questions that guide all of our decisions.

We tell stories. Stories that resonate and hold up over time. Stories that are true, because we made them true with our actions and our products and our services. We make connections. Humans are lonely, and they want to be seen and known. People want to be part of something. It’s safer that way, and often more fun. We create experiences. Using a product, engaging with a service. Making a donation, going to a rally, calling customer service. Each of these actions is part of the story; each builds a little bit of our connection. As marketers, we can offer these experiences with intent, doing them on purpose.

Every organization—every project—is influenced by a primary driving force.

I’m not really interested in helping you become marketing-driven, because it’s a dead end. The alternative is to be market-driven—to hear the market, to listen to it, and even more important, to influence it, to bend it, to make it better. When you’re marketing-driven, you’re focused on the latest Facebook data hacks, the design of your new logo, and your Canadian pricing model. On the other hand, when you’re market-driven, you think a lot about the hopes and dreams of your customers and their friends. You listen to their frustrations and invest in changing the culture. Being market-driven lasts.

If you have to choose a thousand people to become your true fans, who should you choose? Begin by choosing people based on what they dream of, believe, and want, not based on what they look like. In other words, use psychographics instead of demographics.

Cognitive linguist George Lakoff calls these clumps worldviews. A worldview is the shortcut, the lens each of us uses when we see the world. It’s our assumptions and biases and yes, stereotypes about the world around us.

There’s a filter bubble. It’s easy to surround ourselves with nothing but news we agree with. We can spend our days believing that everyone shares our worldview, believes what we believe, and wants what we want. Until we start marketing to the masses. When we seek to serve the largest possible audience, that audience will turn us down. The chorus of “no” will become deafening. And the feedback may be direct, personal, and specific. In the face of so much rejection, it’s easy to sand off the edges and fit in. Fit in all the way. Fit in more than anyone else. Resist. It’s not for them. It’s for the smallest viable audience, the folks you originally set out to serve.

Winner take all” rarely is Even in a democracy, a situation where second place rarely pays off, the idea of “everyone” is a mistake. I was talking with two congressional campaign organizers, and they kept talking about getting the message out to everyone, connecting with everyone, getting everyone to the polls. I did a little research and discovered that in the last primary in that district, only twenty thousand people voted, which means that in a contested primary, getting five thousand people to the polls is the difference between winning and losing. The district has 724,000 residents; five thousand people is less than 1 percent of that. There’s a very big difference between five thousand and “everyone.” And for your work, five thousand of the right people might well be more than enough.

When you seek to share your best work—your best story, your shot at change—it helps if it’s likely to spread. It helps if it’s permanent. But even if it’s extraordinary, it’s not going to make a difference if you drop it in the ocean. That doesn’t mean you give up hope. It means you walk away from the ocean and look for a large swimming pool. That’s enough to make a difference. Begin there, with obsessive focus. Once it works, find another swimming pool. Even better, let your best customers spread the idea.

“It’s not for you” We’re not supposed to say that. We’re certainly not supposed to want to say that. But we must. “It’s not for you” shows the ability to respect someone enough that you’re not going to waste their time, pander to them, or insist that they change their beliefs. It shows respect for those you seek to serve, to say to them, “I made this for you. Not for the other folks, but for you.” Two sides of the same coin. It’s the freedom to ignore the critics who don’t get the joke, the privilege of polishing your story for those that most need to hear it. . . . This is where you will find work that you can be proud of. Because it doesn’t matter what people you’re not seeking to serve think. What matters is whether you’ve changed the people who trust you, the people who have connected with you, the people you seek to serve. We know that every best-selling book on Amazon has at least a few one-star reviews. It’s impossible to create work that both matters and pleases everyone.

The comedian’s dilemma One of the great comics of our time is booked for a gig in New York City. His agent isn’t paying attention, though. The comic shows up at the club; he’s in a good mood. He brings his best material. He’s up there, working the room, and no one is laughing. Not a peep. He’s bombing. After the show, he’s beating himself up, thinking of quitting comedy altogether. Then he discovers that the audience is an Italian tour group, and no one understands English. “It’s not for you.” It’s entirely possible that your work isn’t as good as it needs to be. But it’s also possible that you failed to be clear about who it was for in the first place.

The simple marketing promise Here’s a template, a three-sentence marketing promise you can run with: My product is for people who believe _________________. I will focus on people who want _________________. I promise that engaging with what I make will help you get _________________. And you thought that all you were here to do was sell soap.

Start with empathy to see a real need. Not an invented one, not “How can I start a business?” but, “What would matter here?” Focus on the smallest viable market: “How few people could find this indispensable and still make it worth doing?” Match the worldview of the people being served. Show up in the world with a story that they want to hear, told in a language they’re eager to understand. Make it easy to spread. If every member brings in one more member, within a few years, you’ll have more members than you can count. Earn, and keep, the attention and trust of those you serve. Offer ways to go deeper. Instead of looking for members for your work, look for ways to do work for your members. At every step along the way, create and relieve tension as people progress in their journeys toward their goals. Show up, often. Do it with humility, and focus on the parts that work.

The internet is the first mass medium that wasn’t invented to make marketers happy. Television was invented to hold TV ads, and radio was invented to give radio ads a place to live. But the internet isn’t built around interruption and mass. It’s the largest medium, but it’s also the smallest one. There’s no mass, and you can’t steal attention for a penny the way your grandparents’ companies did. To be really clear: the internet feels like a vast, free media playground, a place where all your ideas deserve to be seen by just about everyone. In fact, it’s a billion tiny whispers, an endless series of selfish conversations that rarely include you or the work you do.

Marketing doesn’t have to be selfish In fact, the best marketing never is. Marketing is the generous act of helping others become who they seek to become. It involves creating honest stories—stories that resonate and spread. Marketers offer solutions, opportunities for humans to solve their problems and move forward. And when our ideas spread, we change the culture. We build something that people would miss if it were gone, something that gives them meaning, connection, and possibility. The other kind of marketing—the hype, scams, and pressure—thrives on selfishness. I know that it doesn’t work in the long run, and that you can do better than that. We all can.

It’s time Time to get off the social media merry-go-round that goes faster and faster but never gets anywhere. Time to stop hustling and interrupting. Time to stop spamming and pretending you’re welcome. Time to stop making average stuff for average people while hoping you can charge more than a commodity price. Time to stop begging people to become your clients, and time to stop feeling bad about charging for your work. Time to stop looking for shortcuts, and time to start insisting on a long, viable path instead.

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 smallest viable market. The fourth step is the one everyone gets excited about: spread the word. The last step is often overlooked: show up—regularly, consistently, and generously, for years and years—to organize and lead and build confidence in the change you seek to make. To earn permission to follow up and to earn enrollment to teach.

Things marketers know Committed, creative people can change the world (in fact, they’re the only ones who do). You can do it right now, and you can make more change than you can possibly imagine. You cannot change everyone; therefore, asking, “Who’s it for?” can focus your actions and help you deal with the nonbelievers (in your head and in the outside world). Change is best made with intent. “What’s it for?” is the posture of work that matters. Human beings tell themselves stories. Those stories, as far as each of us is concerned, are completely and totally true, and it’s foolish to try to persuade them (or us) otherwise. We can group people into stereotyped groups that often (but not always) tell themselves similar stories, groups that make similar decisions based on their perceived status and other needs. What you say isn’t nearly as important as what others say about you.

People don’t believe what you believe. They don’t know what you know. They don’t want what you want. It’s true, but we’d rather not accept this.

we have little chance of doing marketing to others, in insisting that they get with our program, that they realize how hard we’ve worked, how loud the noise is in our heads, how important our cause is . . . It’s so much more productive to dance with them instead.

Your job as a marketer is to find a spot on the map with edges that (some) people want to find. Not a selfish, unique selling proposition, done to maximize your market share, but a generous beacon, a signal flare sent up so that people who are looking for you can easily find you. We’re this, not that.

understand that there’s almost always a disconnect between performance and appeal. That the engineer’s choice of the best price/performance combination is rarely the market’s choice.

The early adopters are different. They are neophiliacs—addicted to the new. They get a thrill from discovery, they enjoy the tension of “This might not work,” and they get pleasure from bragging about their discoveries. The neophiliacs are very forgiving of missteps from those who seek to innovate with them, and incredibly unforgiving after the initial thrill of discovery wears off. That relentless desire for better is precisely why they’re always looking for something new. You can’t be perfect in the eyes of an early adopter; the best you can do is be interesting.

In your work as a marketer, you’ll be torn between two poles. Sometimes, you’ll be busy creating interesting new work for people who are easily bored. And sometimes, you’ll be trying to build products and services that last, that can extend beyond the tiny group of neophiliacs and reach and delight the rest of the market.

Marketers can choose to stand for something. Instead of saying “You can choose anyone, and we’re anyone,” the marketer can begin with an audience worth serving, begin with their needs and wants and dreams, and then build something for that audience. This involves going to extremes. Finding an edge. Standing for something, not everything.

What do people want? If you ask them, you probably won’t find what you’re looking for. You certainly won’t find a breakthrough. It’s our job to watch people, figure out what they dream of, and then create a transaction that can deliver that feeling. The crowd didn’t invent the Model T, the smartphone, or rap. The crowd didn’t invent JetBlue, City Bakery, or charity: water either. Crowdfunding is one thing, but the crowd isn’t that good at inventing a breakthrough.

There are three common confusions that many of us get stuck on. The first is that people confuse wants and needs. What we need is air, water, health, and a roof over our heads. Pretty much everything else is a want. And if we’re privileged enough, we decide that those other things we want are actually needs. The second is that people are intimately aware of their wants (which they think of as needs) but they are absolutely terrible at inventing new ways to address those wants. They often prefer to use a familiar solution to satisfy their wants, even if it’s not working very well. When it comes time to innovate, they get stuck. The third is mistakenly believing that everyone wants the same thing. In fact, we don’t. The early adopters want things that are new; the laggards want things to never change. One part of the population wants chocolate, another vanilla.

network effect is at the heart of every mass movement and every successful culture change. It happens when remarkable is designed right into the story of your change, and more important, when the product or service works better when I use it with others. The conversation I’m motivated to have with my peers becomes the engine of growth. Growth creates more value, which leads to more growth.

Even when we adopt the behavior of an outlier, when we do something the crowd doesn’t often do, we’re still aligning ourselves with the behavior of outliers. Nobody is unaware and uncaring of what is going on around him. No one who is wholly original, self-directed, and isolated in every way. A sociopath might do things in opposition to the crowd, but he’s not unaware of the crowd. We can’t change the culture, but each of us has the opportunity to change a culture—our little pocket of the world. The smallest viable market makes sense because it maximizes your chances of changing a culture. The core of your market, enriched and connected by the change you seek to make, organically shares the word with the next layer of the market. And so on. This is people like us.

It’s all built around the simple question: “Do people like me do things like this?” Normalization creates culture, and culture drives our choices, which leads to more normalization. Marketers don’t make average stuff for average people. Marketers make change. And they do it by normalizing new behaviors.

It shouldn’t be called “the culture” It should be called “a culture” or “this culture,” because there is no universal culture, no “us” that defines all of us. When we’re comfortable realizing that our work is to change “a culture,” then we can begin to do two bits of hard work: Map and understand the worldview of the culture we seek to change. Focus all our energy on this group. Ignore everyone else. Instead, focus on building and living a story that will resonate with the culture we are seeking to change. That’s how we make change—by caring enough to want to change a culture, and by being brave enough to pick just one.

The purpose of capitalism is to build our culture. Once you adopt a posture of service, of engaging with the culture to make change, the shift happens.

when it comes to style, technology, or innovations, most people like what they have. They want to do what others are doing, and they aren’t actively seeking novelty. Some people, though, the fifteen or sixteen people on the left side of the curve in the following graphic, are neophiliacs. They’re early adopters. They want the better, the clever, the innovative. They’ll wait in line to go to opening night of a movie, they’ll upgrade their operating system right away

If you tell your competition your tactics, they’ll steal them and it will cost you. But if you tell them your strategy, it won’t matter. Because they don’t have the guts or the persistence to turn your strategy into their strategy.

The approach here is as simple as it is difficult: If you’re buying direct marketing ads, measure everything. Compute how much it costs you to earn attention, to get a click, to turn that attention into an order. Direct marketing is action marketing, and if you’re not able to measure it, it doesn’t count. If you’re buying brand marketing ads, be patient. Refuse to measure. Engage with the culture. Focus, by all means, but mostly, be consistent and patient. If you can’t afford to be consistent and patient, don’t pay for brand marketing ads.

All the storytelling you do requires frequency. You’ll try something new, issue a statement, explore a new market . . . and when it doesn’t work right away, the instinct is to walk away and try something else. But frequency teaches us that there’s a very real dip—a gap between when we get bored and when people get the message. Lots of people start a project. They give a talk a few times, maybe even on the TED stage, and then they go off to do the next thing. They launch a new freelance business, get a few clients, then it sputters and they quit. Or they open a company, raise money and spend it fast, hitting the wall just before the good stuff happens. The market has been trained to associate frequency with trust (there, I just said it again). If you quit right in the middle of building that frequency, it’s no wonder you never got a chance to earn the trust.

The trust of action In a world that scans instead of reads, that gossips instead of researching, it turns out that the best way to earn trust is through action. We remember what you did long after we forget what you said. When we asked for a refund for a defective product, what did you do? When you lost our data, what did you do? When you had to close the plant and our jobs were on the line, what did you do? Marketers spend a lot of time talking, and on working on what we’re going to say. We need to spend far more time doing. Talking means focusing on holding a press conference for the masses. Not talking means focusing on what you do when no one is watching, one person at a time, day by day.

There are always new ideas beckoning the early adopters. They’re on the prowl, and they’ll be the first to leave. But those who admire the status quo might leave as well, once the tension is gone. They might have embraced your restaurant, your software, or your spiritual movement for a while, but the original status quo, the one they walked away from, persists as well, and without persistent and consistent inputs and new tension, they’ll show up a bit less for you. There’s a half-life at work. For any tribal behavior that’s not energetically maintained, half of the activity will disappear. Every day, every month, every year—it’s not clear what the half-life for a given movement is, but you can expect that it will fade. The alternative is to reinvest. To have the guts to sit with those you have instead of always being distracted to chase the next thing. The best marketers are farmers, not hunters. Plant, tend, plow, fertilize, weed, repeat. Let someone else race around after shiny objects.