Salutations to all,
With all this hype around Halloween, and any holiday for that matter, it got me thinking about how much money many companies pull in during these seasons (so long as the company sells products related to the current holiday). Places like value village for instance, much have a huge skyrocket in sales the 2 weeks leading up to halloween, and this is without any advertising. People just seem to know (perhaps through word of mouth?) that value village is the place to go for halloween costumes, that Christmas decor can be purchased at The Bay, or that Easter candy is sold at all chocolate shops. This is sort of a counter-fact to the fact that advertising is what brings up sales. It does, but tradition, and seasonal purchasing habits seem to drive sales up even farther, with much less effort and money than that of marketing. What does this mean though? Is marketing redundant? No. Marketing is what gets the companies name out there, and if done properly once, it can have lasting positive memories in peoples head of good halloween shopping for intance, at value village, which will draw them back year after year. Interesting.
I have a picture of Barrack Obama here (current president of the United States of America) because he is essentially the definition of self-marketing. His life before becoming the president revolved around marketing himself to America and convince them that he was what they needed and wanted. I’m not entirely sure if self-marketing is a real term, but if its not, I’m coining the term now. Self-marketing is very similar to product marketing except the only difference is, your the product. Although some examples, such as President Obama are more obvious than others, self-marketing is all around us, even more so that product marketing (if that’s possible). When we introduce ourselves to people, converse with friends, talk to a teacher, help a peer, or even walk past a stranger, we are engaging in self marketing. The way people dress influences how other people see them and perceive them. Same thing goes for body language. If someone walks around with there head down and won’t look at you as you walk by, its an example or poor self-marketing. However if you walk past someone with your head high and a smile on your face, you will (in most cases) be perceived more positively. Even on Facebook; how people see your Facebook account, and your activity, influences how they think of you. Everybody in the world wants attention, I don’t believe these people that say they don’t attention. They are obviously saying that for attention. Some people say they don’t want attention because they are shy, and use it as a way to cover up the fact that they struggle to present themselves, or self-market themselves, in a manner that is impressive to others. The reason people have friends is because they have convinced people that they are a fun or interesting person, and that associating with them will be beneficial to others. An interesting example is when someone switches, schools or goes to a new school, such as first year university. Right from the get go, you must market yourself to others and if you think your not doing it, your wrong, because we do it all the time. Lets look at the example of two guys who were both popular and had lots of friends in there respective highschools. Then they came to university and nobody knew them. One started from square one and was really nice and outgoing and made an effort to meet lots of people. The other just assumed he would be as popular at university as he was at school so he walked around with a cocky attitude and cool look that told everyone that he thought he was better than everyone. Guess who would get more friends? The one who marketed himself better. It’s not a fool proof formula but it promotes marketing your best assets. If you are funny, make people laugh, PEOPLE LIKE LAUGHING. If you enjoy saving the environment, show people that. By marketing who you really are, people will be drawn to you that are similar to you because they want to be apart of what they are also interested in or what they enjoy. If you walk around acting like something your not, your going to either rub people the wrong way, or attract the kinds of people and perceptions that you may not want, or that you may not be actually interested in. Long story short is to just be yourself and get your name out there, people can’t see what you have to offer if you hide it. Nobody puts an add for there grocery store on a billboard in the middle of the Sahara dessert. Nobody carves an add for their clothing line into the ice on the south pole. That’s ridiculous, so what would you hide what you have to offer? Market yourself.
Marketing has always struck me as a system of competition between different companies within an Industry. I was very intrigued to stumble across the term “affiliate marketing” which is a sort of marketing in which many companies within an industry actually band together to draw a large amount of attention towards the group of them. Although this may initially appear the opposite of what a company would want, it sets the group of them ahead of the pack. Michael Fleischner blogged about this topic and compared affiliate marketing to a pharmacy at the side of the road all by itself, or a group of nice stores all in the same area as each other so that customers can go visit several stores in one day. A very apt example. A link to Michael’s blog can be found