Principles of online marketing: David Perell
If you’ve ever wanted to build an online business, this thread is for you.
1. Out-Teach Your Competition: When people learn from you, they promote you. Everybody likes helpful people, so share your best ideas regularly and adopt a service mentality. The more you help others, the more they’ll help you in return.
2. Ride Trends: The Internet is a global conversation. Nearly every social media promotes trending ideas. Aligning yourself with the talk of the day will serve as turbo boost for your creations. One example: Mr. Beast’s video about Squid Games instantly became a viral hit.
3. Build a distribution advantage: Distribution advantages take time to build. But because they require such consistent dedication, they are hard to compete with. One example: Y-Combinator promotes its cohorts on Hacker News, where many of the best software engineers hang out.
4. Trust isn’t for sale: You can buy reach, but you can’t buy trust. Paid advertisements will give you eyeballs, but repeated high-quality interactions are the only way to generate trust. Once you lose somebody’s trust, you can’t buy it back. You have to earn it.
5. Repetition sells: Marketers know that repetition is nearly indistinguishable from truth, and the more people are exposed to an idea, the more likely they are to buy into it. Only once an idea seems obvious and repetitive to you will people finally start to get it.
6. Master one channel: Instead of trying to be active on every platform, pick one platform and master it. Since the Internet is driven by power laws, it’s better to be prominent on one valuable platform than average on a bunch of them. Find what works, then go all-in.
7. Embrace the spreadsheet: Once you start having success, your “marketing formula” will become clear. You’ll be able to quantify the value of each potential customer. Once the formula becomes clear, simplify your marketing strategy and measure your success in a spreadsheet.
8: Ditch the spreadsheet. The best marketing strategies aren’t things you’ll find on a spreadsheet. If they were that simple, everybody would do them. Embrace your creative side. Look for up-and-coming strategies that haven’t hit the mainstream and try them out for yourself.
9. Hire a Chief Evangelist: On social media, people want to follow people — not companies. Companies should hire the top influencers in their space who are aligned with their values, and pay them to create high-quality content. One example: @anafabrega11 and Synthesis.
10. The Paradox of Specificity: In the Internet age, when everybody has Google search and social media, differentiation is free marketing. The more specific your goal, the more opportunities you’ll create. Narrow your focus to expand your horizons.
11. Take people behind the scenes: People flock to stories they resonate with, which is why documentaries have become some of the world’s best marketing assets. Some examples: 1) Food: Chef’s Table 2) Music: The Defiant Ones 3) Sports: Drive to Survive (h/t @patrick_oshag)
12. Grow the market: Everybody knows about the Michelin Star guide. But most people don’t know that it was a marketing ploy to get people to drive more and ultimately, sell tires. That’s why the star system is still broken down by whether a restaurant is worth driving to.
