BY Mahesh Fernando
The concept of ‘Marketing’ has been heard for many years and in-fact; it has been in existence since the end of Second World War, in 1950, where the service economy first employed more than 50 percent of the US population.
Marketing’s modern origins as a management discipline emerged in the 1950s by way of production concept which was predominantly based on achieving lowest product cost, thereafter the focus changed and firms started developing high quality products thus, wanted to sell them at a
higher price.
When there are many products at different prices the buyers need to be motivated to make the purchase decision and this development created a need for a selling approach that uses sales personal and this concept was made popular as the sales orientation, after many years the customers felt, that, their right to make decisions where manipulated by the sales people and this phenomena created a need where, business firms had to find a process that looks at the needs of its target prospects and offer benefits in line with need gaps, this was the key to develop current concept of marketing, whereby marketers looks to the potential opportunities in the market (needs of people)and offer benefits to satisfy them.
Over a period of time this process was popularized as the marketing exchange process whereby, marketers create benefits and exchange these benefits for a price with the customer.
Personality Marketing
What is Personality Marketing? How can I market my personality? These are some of the key questions that ponder in the minds of most of us who think of this subject, however, it is not all that hard for anyone to start marketing his or her personality, the process start with identifying the key strengths/weaknesses and listing them from highest to lowest.
Example for key strengths of a human can be: ability to convince others, ability to sing, dance or perform multiple tasks etc., some of the common weaknesses can be: shyness, poor language capability or lack of confidence and consistency etc., as a starting point one can look at the following process.
List down strengths and weakness, see how you can use your top strengths to your advantage in day-to-day life, when it comes to weaknesses make sure you don’t over-expose them in public and take proactive steps to minimize any impactful weaknesses, more importantly do not worry about your weaknesses all the time, all of us have some weakness or the other and all successful people have done one thing right in their life’s and that is, overcoming their weaknesses by way of using strengths or common sense to suit the occasion. In-order to develop your personality and achieve higher quality of life below easy steps can be followed as a ‘Personality Marketing Plan’.
Marketing’s modern origins as a management discipline emerged in the 1950s by way of production concept which was predominantly based on achieving lowest product cost
How can I create my own Personality Marketing Plan?
Basic personality marketing plan can have the following components and all of us have the capacity to develop a plan and put it in to practice on our day to day life, following are the key components of a personality marketing plan- Situational Analysis, Objectives, Strategy (Marketing Mix) and Controls.
Situational analysis
Before any form of panning we need to understand our current status and this is where one has to look at his or her age, health status, current income, level of education and qualifications, up to what extend you have capitalized on market opportunities and the growth of your income on annual basis etc.
Objectives
Set these objectives: Personal objective, financial objective, education and health related objective.
Strategy
Anyone can develop a personal marketing strategy using the following marketing
mix tools.
Personal product strategy
- Think you are a brand and use your strengths to promote yourself.
- What are your key achievements and how will you make use of those achievements?
- List down your key features and the benefit and see how you can make use of them on daily basis.
Personal price strategy
Think of your income, are you financially independent and have your income gown each year? If so, by what percentage?
Remember low quality products attract low price and high quality products always have a perceived high price and push yourself to be a high quality and high price service provider.
Personal place strategy
How often you look at the opportunities in the market to capitalize?
Remember no opportunity will come to our door step and all successful people have search for opportunities and capitalize on them using their strengths.
Personal promotions strategy
nHow do you advertise yourself?
nHow do you sell your ideas to others?
nHow you manage your relationships in personal and professional lives?
nDo you know how others feel about you?
nDo you respect others, take responsibility and act intelligently.
nWhen is the last time you look at grooming yourself or testing your level of IQ and look at improving on your capabilities and good looks?
The personal controls
All activities we do in life needs to have a way of measuring progress and results, remember “what gets measured only get done”. Hence, have a way of measuring your achievement on daily basis and challenge yourself and push your limits.
Create your own brand, now you know how personality marketing can help to achieve greatness and any one at any level can practice personality marketing and get on the fast track of achieving success, what are you waiting for? Let’s start listing strengths and weaknesses, create our own personality marketing plan and get on the fast track and achieve your dreams!
(The writer is a business leader, presenter in international forums, trainer, life coach, visiting lecturer and a resource panel member for some of the leading education institutes in Sri Lanka and overseas)
