Sell yourself the rest will follow

Whether we know it or not each and every one of us is a marketer. We actually start before we are able to crawl. Selling ourselves to the people around us is how we get attention at this age. At first it's with smiles and tears, then with age it becomes "mommy look me". "Me want ooou dada". "Bubby play me". "Sissy hug". When we find out what gives the best results we repeat it. How many times as a parent, grandparent, aunt, uncle, brother, sister, or cousin have you heard "again", "again", "again" from a little one? This is sell yourself as a small child understand it.

When we go to school we are still selling ourselves. Teachers pet is trying hard to get attention from the teacher. Bullies are trying to get the attention of others in a way that doesn’t work well, they usually do make friends with the ones who give them bloody noses or call their bluff. Class clowns are trying to get as much attention from everyone as they can. The athlete is marketing their ability. Even the quiet, shy student is marketing themselves the only way they know how. Our first date is because we marketed ourselves to the person our affection is aimed at. When we get our first job we have marketed ourselves to the interviewer.

As we age we use props to help us. Cars, houses, and clothes are examples of props. What we wanted as a child was attention and its really no different now. We want people to see what we believe in, who we were (mostly writers), or who we are now. Not many realize the most important prop they have is themselves. Attitude is truly more important than knowledge. We want to be someone people want to associate with and all the external props mean nothing in the end.

The most successful marketers concentrate on one thing at a time. Those who follow their passion do better than those who don't. They carefully choose what they are going to offer making sure it has value, is something they believe in and would use themselves. It also must be priced to compete with other similar products or services.

Marketers should try many marketing approaches until they get the results they are looking for. They have to learn what doesn’t work quite often, sometimes to the point the feel they should have given up long ago, before they find out what does. This is done by sticking to one strategy until it is fully tested is truly the way to go despite what they perceive as failure at first. What that means is they don’t change the product or service completely or the approach being used to promote it until they are absolutely sure its not going to work. If a marketing strategy they are trying doesn’t work its time to try another method not another product or service. An approach we have used was altering the product slightly to fit a new audience. This can be done with services also.

To be an effective marketer you need to know everything about your product or service. If you want someone to buy a product or service you want to convince them that you are the expert in your field. Extensive Knowledge is not as important as a good attitude and passion. Passion and attitude produce better than any other combination. What you are now selling with your attitude and passion is what you know and that means you are selling yourself.

An excellent marketer is actually selling themselves as an expert in their field. They then tell about the product or service instead of trying to sell it. Quite often they will show another product or explain another service which is not as good or more expensive so they can compared. They can then explain why the their product or service is the better value.

Authors who share the work of others are doing a type of telling instead of selling also. When they share they are creating value, valuable links and readers, for the author they are sharing. The high PR ranked link also helps with search engine optimization. This is referring to the ones like us who share with social networks outside the writing platform. They are also inviting any of those who are reading comments, especially those sharing to their work. Whether this is more true of marketers such as myself or everyone is unknown. In our case we look for articles which have value to our friends, fans and followers, however we always search those who are sharing first.

People don’t like to be sold, they want to feel the decision to spend their hard earned money is their own. Quite often a marketer will sweeten the deal just to make sure they have provided enough value. They also know when to put in the call to action. In most cases a sale won't be made unless the marketer asks for it. They now use lines like limited time offer, join now its free, there are only a few left, and act now, Or use one day price reduction, instead of buy it now or its the last one, unless its true.

An excellent marketer has either learned the hard way or has had a mentor or two teach them what they need to know. Personal experience has taught me there is nothing harder than marketing something of value “free” with truly no cost or obligation. If its free you can’t lower the price, or sweeten the offer. In many instances now we give these free things away as gifts. One of our lines is "Have you tried Video Email?, Hey (name) this is no free trial, please accept the link as our gift to you". This is most effective when they receive the offer in a video email.