If the goal of marketing is to present something in a desirable and useful way, we can say that we are constantly marketing ourselves in our day-to-day lives.
Admittedly, your day would be a lot better if more people viewed you, or your skills, as more desirable and useful. It would be nice if that actually happened as soon as possible, or right about now, you often say to yourself.
Company’s spend millions of dollars in their marketing campaigns so that they can move people to buy in. It should only makes sense that you invest, at least, some time and effort into moving people’s hearts, so they actually buy into you.
To realize how important it is that we learn to market ourselves better, we need to see a human being as a psychological “open-system.”
The Open System
This means: Things that happen to us will leave an effect on us whether you like it or not.
There’s absolutely no way we can escape the day-to-day input and output while interacting with the world and it’s many entities. Even if we lock ourselves somewhere, hidden, we will affect the world by our absence.
Therefore, our mental make-up is going to going to be largely determined by our reactions to these inputs.
Ask Yourself…
How do people react to you? How do you feel when this happens? If the reaction produces negative emotions in you, consistently over different scenarios, your brain won’t be wired the same as someone who enjoys and thrives in that setting.
Now, this wiring influences how well your future interactions go. You may learn that it is better to be quiet because expressing yourself means getting a negative emotion. You may avoid eye-contact because you feel negative emotions towards it.
Over time, the consequence of not being able to generate positive emotions while being around people makes you feel insecure, and it then becomes difficult to even feel the emotion of confidence – something that you need in order to interact properly with people in the first place.
You may become recluse, and further neglect social practice.
And so, like this, the downward spiral goes. Unable to escape bad interactions. You may cope with a plethora of toxic behaviors, such as lashing out at people in frustration.
Are you given praise for your actions? Do people smile when they see you? Are you listening to mostly positive messages?
You can’t escape these inputs. And you can’t escape the fact that you will react and be impacted by them – and especially to the negative ones.
It is wise, then, to learn the skills to being confident and poised around people – market yourself better – so you can mitigate these negative emotions from other people, and so that the input from other people in your life is mostly positive.
For this to happen, you must master these 2 phases of marketing yourself.
Like Marketing a Product
We will compare the marketing of ourselves to what professional marketers do for products.
By creating a unique narrative with media, marketers know that they can give a message of strength, sex, and abundance…
As a result, we are drawn in by the positive emotions generated by these messages evoked by the advertisement and the product that we associate with it.
Despite the varied themes of all different types of advertisement, the goal is always going to be to move more product as quickly as possible.
Similarly, we will find a flow to our communication skills, and it will be different from everybody else’s. But it’s purpose is always to display our unique value to another person, as quickly as possible.
First Impressions
First impressions are important. There’s no denying that.
For products, here, you have the click bait headline, the beautiful woman beside the sport scar, the high production and beautiful models in the cologne commercial…
Likewise, there are many ways you can initially present yourself so that you, mostly, get a positive reaction from people.
A lot of these presentations of yourself, these first impressions, are ideas that were preached to you for most of your life.
The golden rule, please and thank you’s, genuinely smiling, standing back with your shoulders pulled back.
You may have even become resentful of these rules and neglect them. But this is only unconsciously, and to your peril. There are some shitty consequences to neglecting behavoirs that get people to like you better.
We must continually hone these skills by practicing gratitude, so that our please and thank you’s be more genuine. We can practice confidence and positive thinking so that we can genuinely smile and hold ourselves tall. We will read and improve our grammar so we can hold longer, more interesting conversations.
If you have value to provide someone upon meeting them, learn to convey this right off the bat…
Being a person that has an elongated “warming up” period means you will miss opportunities – simply by taking too long. Simply by losing in the number’s game.
Expressing yourself in an effective manner, upon initially meeting is a skill you need to master.
Rapport
Brand-loyalty is a real thing. Just imagine – thousands or even millions of people that will stand by your product, give you the benefit of the doubt during minor failures, and express excitement at your new projects.
There are many large company’s that enjoy this phenomenon. Brands, like individual people, leave an impression on us. Sometimes, this impression hooks us in.
We feel an overwhelming sense of trust and admiration for some brands, and for others, we feel skeptical.
Not only do we have to leave a positive first impression, like brands, we must get a positive emotion from people over a long period.
Brands that consistently present themselves as unconditionally providing value will gain loyalty.
The parallel to your networking endeavors is the phase of doing work with your business partners or coworkers. You’ve given a good first impression, and the future looks promising…
Now, if you consistently show-up and, with good will, put in hard-work and attention to detail, people will react overwhelmingly positive to you.
They will want to be around you. They will trust you and smile at you. They will want to hang out with you outside of professional settings.
I initially wrote with good-will because it is common to ruin this whole vibe by being a complainer – a negative obnoxious troll.
If you man-up and do your work, while being overwhelmingly positive… people will always choose you over the cry-babies.
Pay attention to detail, and go the extra mile. It does a lot for how others think of you.
Conclusion: Practice Practice Practice
I hope I achieved my goal of giving you a sense urgency in growing people skills so that you can market yourself better. I hope you’re going to consciously learn and practice from now on. Your entire lifestyle depends on it.
We make life easier when we can get positive reactions from people upon the first impression… We can then make it magnificent when we can consistently do it over a sustainable relationship or partnership.