This Is Marketing: You Cant Be Seen Until You Learn to See

Shun the nonbelievers!
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.
Where does love lie?
Pioneering technology journalist Clay Shirky understood how community-
driven software changes everything: “We have lived in this world where

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little things are done for love and big things for money. Now we have
Wikipedia. Suddenly big things can be done for love.”
But it doesn’t end with software.
The goal of the smallest viable audience is to find people who will
understand you and will fall in love with where you hope to take them.
Loving you is a way of expressing themselves. Becoming part of your
movement is an expression of who they are.
That love leads to traction, to engagement, and to evangelism. That love
becomes part of their identity, a chance to do something that feels right. To
express themselves through their contributions, their actions, and the badge
they wear.
You can’t hope that everyone will feel this way, but you can do your
work for the people who do.
“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.