Purple Cow: Transform Your Business

Book Notes by Julaine

Advertising To Customers

Advertise to the customer you want if you got to pick your customers.
Make something unique. Spend time making it, not marketing. It will be found.
no one i going to eagerly adapt to your product. The majority does not want to change - they are happy where they are. You want to convince the early adopters as they are the ones who will sell to to the masses.
Make a list of ways you can catch up by being different.
Once you figure out what to created that is truly remarkable you need to do two things simultaneously
  1. milk the cow for everything its worth. Figure out how to extend it and profit from it for as long as possible
  2. Create an environment where you are likely to invent a new Purple Cow in time to replace the first one when its benefits inevitably trail off.
The opposite of remarkable is "very good". Are you making very good stuff? How fast can you stop?
http://sethgodin.typepad.com and sign up for the blog for daily updates.
What can you do that is special for your top 20 clients?
Do you have a slogan or positioning statement or remarkable boast that's actually true? Is it consistent? Is it worth passing on?
If your business is intangible, can you make a second business card - something that actually sold them (and you)?
In almost every market, the boring spot is filled. The product designed to appeal to the largest possible audience already exists, and displacing it is awfully difficult. But this means the seeds of their destruction lie in their dependence on being in the middle.
Make a list of all the remarkable products in your industry. Who made them? How did they happened? Model the behaviour (not mimic the product) and you're more than halfway to making your own.
Remarkable comes from passionate people who are making stuff for themselves.
You're probably guilty of bing too shy, not too outrageous. Try being outrageous, just for the sake of being annoying. Its good practise. But don't do it too much.
The only route to healthy growth is a remarkable product.
Explore the limits. What is you are the cheapest, the fastest, the slowest, the hottest, the coldest, the easiest, the most efficient, the loudest, the most hated, the copycat, the outsider, the hardest, the oldest, the newest, the most?
Think of the smallest conceivable market, and describe a product that overwhelms it with its remarkability.
Find things that are just 'not done' in your industry and do them.
Ask "why not"? 

Bibliographic Information

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Purple Cow: Transform Your Business
by Seth Godin, ISBN 1591843170 / ‎ 978-1591843177
2009, Portfolio

These are notes I made after reading this book. See more book notes

Just to let you know, this page was last updated Thursday, Nov 21 24