There Is No Mass Market

One of the greatest marketers in the history of economics is Seth Godin. During an interview, he said something that truly astonished me, and I want to pass it on. He said there is no mass market.

A mass market is an imaginary group of homogeneous people who make up at least 51 percent of the population and who want to buy your product. No such group exists. To Godin, it is meaningless to say most people won’t buy this product. Of course they won’t. Your market is not an imaginary homogeneous majority, but a minority of very interested customers. Focus your attention on them. Sell, or write, something that those people that will benefit those people. They will tell other people like themselves—no longer just by word of mouth, but by social media—and your marketing will take care of itself.

A side benefit to this is that you can make, do, or write what matters to you, and you can feel that you have enjoyed and done something useful with your life. The marketing will take care of itself, so long as you give it enough boosts with, for example, an internet platform.

More thoughts?

Godin follows his own advice. Now when he writes a book, it becomes a best seller without the need for promotion or interviews. But he didn’t start out that way. For his first book, he got 900 rejections.