“Marketing doesn’t create product advantage, it only conveys it.”

Marketing as storytelling.

Marketing in the dating sense is nothing more than the process of identifying, creating, delivering and communicating social value to potential customers, partners and society at large. It is also the art of maintaining and fostering continued relationships between all parties involved in this process, which is simply social-networking. At a basic level these all are skill sets, but at a more refined level they truly rise to a level of an art form. They are all accomplished and communicated in a myriad of ways, but all lead up to an emotional response in perception, in the form of storytelling. The people we interact with tell themselves a story, of who they perceive you to be. Marketing is the actions we take to help to influence that perception.

What story can you tell?

Marketing is more than just the art of communicating your brand. It is also the essence of the art to use your ability to use nonverbal techniques to signal a series of statements and promises of who you are and what you are about. You need to understand the biases of your prospects are, which is often defined by the sexual market place, and which totems you can then utilize to tell your story to these prospects. Your story should be a symphony, not a note… all the elements should be playing together in concert to deliver your message.

Work out your positioning.

To be truly successful in marketing yourself for healthy and productive relationships you need to know yourself and your brand. In previous posts I’ve talked about the need to analyze your psychological social development, as well as, performing relationship autopsy on past relationships, to help understand the psychological motivators and level of relationship skills that you have developed to that point. Based upon those assessments and further development, you can more appropriately start to screen and filter for healthy and productive relationships, and avoid unhealthy and potentially toxic relationships. All these elements will help to establish your positioning within the dating environment. Identifying your positioning is key to the marketing process, as it is far better to sell your product and services to customers who actually want them, than it is to cold call and cold sell potential customers who don’t and have no intention of buying what you have to offer.

Develop a tag line

You should be able to describe in a few words who you are and what you have to offer. Think of your elevator pitch boiled down to the essential. The best marketing tag lines are simple stories that are most likely to break through, the most likely to be understood and the most likely to spread. The best example of this is a close, personal friend, dating life coach, and fellow 21-Convention speaker  Right Hand Man, who will introduce himself and proffer his name three times in quick succession and literally state his tag line of ‘more fun than your last date.’ It leaves a lasting and resonating impression because it’s offbeat, aggressively original, plays to female hypergamy (desire for better) and establishes a frame/promise for what they can expect out of any relationship they develop with him, which is in perfect alignment for what he is looking for in a relationship. He then over delivers on that promise, to their sheer joy. While it isn’t necessary to state your tag line, but being consciously aware of what yours is, and what you promise as your brand to each and everyone you interact with is. Consistency in this case truly matters, as it builds credibility, which is critical in a low-trust environment, such as the field of dating, as expectations are the engine of our perceptions. Assholes are assholes, not because of their behavior, but because they fail to deliver on expectations of their promise and their customer base feel ripped off because of it.

Build visibility by raising your profile.

Most dating advice you’ll receive about raising your profile will center on developing a series of dating streams of how potential prospects come into your presence and while valuable in its basic application, it doesn’t take into account the desired outcome of ‘new’ prospects. Developing the same prospects in different social forums, such as social venues, community events, organizations & clubs, on-line dating sites etc, doesn’t help your cause, if you keep meeting the same people. You want to focus upon finding new prospects that will fit your bill for what you are looking for. This is why I think the community is seeing a huge increase in popularity of day-game, which essentially hacks into this notion of random occurrence that leads to fresh and new opportunities to meet women you’d normally never come across or in contact with.

Building your dating streams is an ongoing process.

A regular scheduled routine is better than major marketing effort swings. While the tendency is to focus on major efforts because of its promise of immediacy, it is the sum of the small efforts and small success over time that typically leads to greater overall success, whether it’s a weekly boy’s night out or regular schedule activities, as they breed familiarity with the local population groups and the consistency of your brand communication leads to referral credibility, which aids people about confirming their coherent story about you.

Great stories unfold fast

First impressions are far more powerful than we give them credit for. Great stories match the voice of the consumer’s worldview that they are seeking, and they sync right up with their expectations. Either the customer is ready to listen to what is delivered or they are not, as it doesn’t agree with what they already believe and feel. When instant romances ‘just happen’ it is due to these elements coalescing. And what the customer is feeling is everything to them, whether it is an accurate portrait of you or not.

Live it out loud

Marketing is effectively a form of storytelling, and everything you do supports that story. You must have a consistent, authentic story that is framed in terms of the worldview of the person you are telling the story to, your story must be robust enough to gather their attention and keep it, honest and transparent to provide credibility to believe in and finally you have to be prepared to live it out loud, as soft-spoken stories rarely give rise to large rapt audiences.