Marketing is not what you think.

Marketing is one of the most misunderstood disciplines in business. Too often, people reduce it to advertising, manipulation, or clever tricks to separate people from their money.

Seth Godin is one of the most influential marketing thinkers of our time, and someone I’ve been fortunate to work with. He’s spent decades reframing our views on this subject. His work reminds us that true marketing is not about pushing products—it’s about creating change, building trust, and helping people solve problems that matter to them.

Marketing Is About Serving a Community

At its heart, marketing is the generous act of helping someone get where they want to go. It starts with empathy: understanding the worldview, hopes, and fears of the people you seek to serve. Godin stresses that marketing isn’t about shouting louder or reaching everyone—it’s about finding your people, the smallest viable audience, and earning the privilege of telling them a story that resonates.

When you see marketing this way, it stops being about self-promotion. Instead, it becomes about service. It’s about saying: I see you. I understand you. Here’s something that might make your life better.

Marketing Is a Story Well Told

Every decision we make is shaped by the stories we believe about ourselves and the world. A car isn’t just transportation—it’s freedom, safety, or status. A piece of software isn’t just code—it’s a way to feel in control, efficient, or secure.

Marketing tells the story that connects what you offer to what people already believe and aspire to. But the story has to be true. People are smart. They can smell manipulation. If the experience doesn’t match the promise, the story collapses. Great marketing is backed by a product, service, or idea worth talking about.

Marketing Is Building Trust

Transactions might win sales, but trust builds movements. Trust comes from consistency, from showing up, and from delivering on promises. It grows when a business treats its customers as humans rather than numbers, when it earns attention instead of hijacking it.

In marketing, trust is the ultimate currency. It’s more valuable than clicks, impressions, or followers. Because when people trust you, they don’t just buy from you once—they tell others, they come back, and they give you permission to tell them more stories in the future.

Marketing Is Change

Ultimately, marketing is the act of creating change. Every time someone chooses your product, attends your event, or adopts your idea, they are changing. Marketing is about helping them make that leap—moving from one state to another.

This shift in perspective is powerful. It means marketers are change agents. They are not neutral; they’re responsible. To market something is to say, I want the world to be different because this exists. That responsibility should not be taken lightly.

What Marketing Isn’t

Marketing isn’t trickery.
Manipulation might win in the short term, but it erodes trust. Dark patterns, exaggerated claims, or fear-driven tactics are not marketing—they’re shortcuts that damage relationships.

Marketing isn’t for everyone.
Trying to appeal to everyone leads to watered-down messages and mediocre products. Real marketing embraces focus. It says, This is not for you—this is for them. That clarity is what gives it power.

Marketing isn’t just advertising.
Ads are a tool, but marketing is the strategy that makes ads either relevant or invisible. Marketing includes product design, pricing, customer experience, and the stories we tell ourselves about what matters. In most cases, the product or service itself is the marketing.

Marketing isn’t an afterthought.
Too many organisations build something and only later ask, “How do we sell this?” This is back to front: marketing starts before the product exists. It begins with the insight about what people need and the change they seek.

The Real Work of Marketing

If you want to “do marketing” in ways that resonate with the right people, you don’t start with a billboard, a funnel, or a viral video. You start with people. Who do you want to serve? What change do you want to make? What story will earn their attention and trust?

Answer those questions, and you’ll discover that marketing is not a department or a campaign. It’s the very act of making something worth talking about—and then finding the people who will care.

That’s the work. And done right, it’s not just about selling more stuff. It’s about making things better by making better things.

 

Peter Fritz |eBusiness Manager