Skyon, a Marketing Pick-Up Artist

Hey everyone, Skyon here and just as johnmoore said, I’m hijacking his blog while he’s away.

I’m not a blogger. However, I am big-time lurker in the blog world. And since I’ve taken a lot from you, it’s time for me to give back to you.

While John is tending to business elsewhere, I’m going to share my approach to marketing. On the surface, my approach is sure to piss off a lot of you. But if you give me a few days, I hope to show you how my approach to marketing isn’t repulsive. In fact, it’s a more effective way to attract customers and earn transactions from them. But the reality is many of you will be turned off because I consider myself a Marketing Pick-Up Artist.

In the business circles I run in, many people consider me a Master Marketing Pick-Up Artist. But I didn’t used to be. I used to be a marketer whose aspirations were bigger than their accomplishments.

When I was a younger marketer, I had aspirations to be a whiz-bang brand-builder that was able to get customers to spend money on whatever brand I marketed. I put together well-reasoned marketing plans with tactics galore designed to acquire customers. I spent millions on advertising campaigns that maximized reach and frequency. I sat behind the glass mirror listening to customers in hundreds of focus groups. I crafted snazzy PowerPoint decks that Sr. Execs would drool over and then hand-over their car keys so that I could drive the success of a marketing program. Problem was, I looked the part of a master marketer but my results were anything but.

It wasn’t until I studied the writings of Marketing Professor Stephen Brown did I begin to hone my marketing abilities. Stephen approaches the art of marketing from a skewed angle. In his underground Harvard Business Review article, TORMENT YOUR CUSTOMERS, Stephen shot a marketing missive across the business bow by writing,

“Everyone in business today seems to take it as a God-given truth that companies were put on this earth for one purpose alone: to pander to customers. Marketers spend all their time slavishly tracking the needs of buyers, then meticulously crafting products and pitches to satisfy them. Marketing has become a sober-sided discipline. It has lost its sense of fun. It has forgotten how to flirt.”

Marketing has forgotten how to flirt. A brilliant line that has forever changed my marketing life. I now approach marketing like we all do (or did) in flirting with the opposite sex in nightclubs. Yes, my approach to marketing is similar to how the best pick-up artists market themselves to people at a bar.

Before you scoff and hurl surly names at me, you need to wake up and realize Marketing is Pick-Up. Marketing is getting customers to like the brands we market. We pick attractive customers and if we do our job right, we pick-up customers as they pick-up the brands we market to them. Marketing is indeed pick-up.

Once I understood marketing is pick-up, my whole game changed and the success that once alluded me, began surrounding me.
** END OF PART ONE **

Comments

[Darrin Dickey]

Well, with a name like Skyon, we have to at least give you the benefit of the doubt.

So are you saying that marketers make people love their products as opposed to making products people love?

[Skyon]

@Darren ... that's a killer line. Respect!

[Henre]

Well, Skyon, is that what you're saying?

Eagerly awaiting your follow up post to explain what you're getting at and if your approach is as Darrin mentioned.

[Martin Calle]

If you go into a bar with 100 girls and ask every one to dance you will find 10 qualified decision makers. At least two will want to take you home. That's the law of averages. That's a 20% close and they'll make you CEO.

[Eros]

i dont think thats what he is saying. from a marketer and pick up artists viewpoint myself I see the relation a certain way and i think that is what he is trying to say too....

i think that pick-up artist skills and routines and techniques can be used in the marketing and business world to your advantage. not the same routines obviously but using the same concepts and altering the actual words to get great results in marketing and promotion.

[PUA]

"It has lost its sense of fun. It has forgotten how to flirt."

I reminded of an example in "Influence" by Dr. Robert Cialdini. In it he highlights one of the most successful auto salesman to date. He never studied sales gimmicks or techniques, his one secret was to mail out a holiday letter to all his former customers once a year. He signed it "i like you". Sounds cheasy, but every former customer would come in years later when they needed a car. He didn't have to pressure them to sign the line, he just talked to them when they came in and they made up their own mind. But they always wanted to buy from him.