← Home
Akimbo · March 20, 2019 · 18m

The Smallest Viable Audience

Godin's counterintuitive argument: instead of trying to reach everyone, find the smallest group of people you can serve so well that they can't help telling others. Mass marketing is dead; minimum viable audiences are the future.

Canon

Godin connects business strategy to human psychology: just as deep relationships predict life satisfaction better than a large number of shallow ones, deep customer relationships predict business success better than mass reach.

Highlights

The race to reach everyone is a race to the bottom — the alternative is to matter to someone
Godin: trying to appeal to everyone requires removing everything distinctive. The result is bland, forgettable, and competing only on price. The alternative: serve a small group so intensely that they become evangelists.