Why we have a content marketing company at all has a lot to do with Seth Godin and his Purple Cow.
One of my favorite mentors I’ve never met is Seth Godin. Businessman, author, speaker, thinker—a thinker who has a knack for seeing things that others don’t, and another knack for explaining what he saw in a short and simple way.
Seth Godin is a major reason why I lead a marketing company today.
Yes, I’m in insurance. Yes, insurance brokerages aren’t usually also marketing companies. But the problem is there are a lot of people in insurance. We’re good, but so are other people. There wasn’t a lot we could say to prospective clients that hadn’t been said before. Also, in this industry, it’s the carriers who decide on the products, the interest rates, the underwriting, the pricing. We can’t just invent a better product than what the competition has. So, how could we get prospective clients to really pay attention?
That’s where Seth Godin comes in.
Read his book (via Amazon), Purple Cow. You won’t regret reading the whole thing, but in the meantime, here is a quick synopsis.
Imagine driving down a road and seeing a cow. Cool, you think. Cows are good. Then see another cow and another. All the cows are just about the same, and none attract much of your attention. You wouldn’t go home that night and tell your spouse about any of them. You forget them as soon as you pass by.
Unless one cow is purple.
Pull over! Take pictures. Talk about it. Tell others about it! A purple cow is news. That’s why you want to be the purple cow. Be good at what you do, of course—be excellent! But no matter how good you are, you won’t make much of a change in the world if you don’t attract attention, and the way to attract attention is to be startlingly and obviously different. Be a purple cow.
Over several years of thinking, writing, talking, listening, and reading, we got better at marketing ourselves, better at standing out and showing potential clients how we stand out. Then we started helping another company with their marketing, and then another and another. Now, marketing is a big part of what we do. We’re good at it.
People talk about our insurance business and that’s great, but people really talk about our marketing business.
So now, we don’t have to convince insurance companies to talk with us. They want to talk with us, and they want to talk with us about marketing. Oh and while we are there…insurance.
Now that’s remarkable.
Thank you, Seth.
Image of Purple Cow was taken by Richard Elzey under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License