Talking to His Tribe

Marketing Analysis (4 of 6)

I never listened to an audio book before I downloaded the two Patrick Lencioni books onto my iPod, as I needed the first one in a hurry for module one of the MA programme. Since then I have now taken to checking out the audio book section in iTunes, which I had never bothered with before. I was pretty interested to discover that Seth Godin’s new book ‘Tribes’ is on sale there for 95 cents. Yes that is 95 cents, and it is a complete unabridged book, clocking in at more than three hours.

Seth Godin is my favourite writer on marketing. As evidenced by the fact that his daily blog is the highest volume contributor to the Thought-Of-The-Day posts that I have been interspersing throughout my online Learning Log blog. He primarily writes about marketing, but regularly crosses over into leadership, customer relations, and entrepreneurship; the whole enchilada basically. Most of his books are best sellers, ‘Purple Cow’ and ‘All Marketers Are Liars’ are two of his most successful titles. His daily blog is not only a must-read, but one of the few I have kept in my RSS-reader since my great MA Clear-Out Of 2008.

His interesting new business model/marketing strategy is to continue to sell a €20 hardback edition of his new books for those readers who want an archival edition, or one to give as a gift. But if all you want are his ideas (and, like all good business authors, he wants his ideas to spread) then you can purchase his book for less than a euro. From a marketing perspective I find this fascinating. It rewards the early birds, the Godinites who follow his blog and make it to iTunes within the 95-cent window (I am assuming that ultra-low price-point is not fixed). It also gets his book quickly into the hands of the people most predisposed to talk about it and to spread his reputation by word-of-mouth. Finally, by using dynamic pricing, he is assured of hitting the top five audio book list in iTunes, at least initially. Which raises his profile across target markets who may not be familiar with him.

Now I have not listened to ‘Tribes’ yet (all that required MA reading to get through don’t you know) so I cannot yet vouch for the quality of this new book But for less than the cost of most chocolate bars, it cannot hurt for me to take a punt on this one.