How to Market from Your Strengths: Choose Activities You Enjoy

There are two concrete ways to combine your favorite activities and strongest talents to build marketing momentum. As I’ve already mentioned, the idea is to make marketing enjoyable and more successful by tapping what you already enjoy and excel at doing.

The first way is to conduct marketing activities that make best use of those overlapping skills or attributes. In the last section of this chapter I profiled Rob, a U.S.-based mediator who particularly enjoys writing short stories, doing puzzles, and hanging out for heartfelt chats with friends. Since his friends and family suggested that some of his strongest attributes and skills coincide with these activities, my challenge to Rob was to consider marketing activities that could capitalize on those enjoyable activities. Marketing approaches Rob might consider include:

• Writing an inspiring short story about mediation or dispute resolution for the quarterly creative magazine published by his local paper.
• Compiling a book of inspiring stories based on mediations in which he’d been involved over the years.
• Create an inspiring and entertaining short speech based on his best conflict management-related short stories, for use with local groups seeking guest speakers.
• Locating his target market geographically and finding ways to hang out and chat with people in that market (more on this in a later chapter).
• Tapping more into his social ease by reframing (in his mind) Chamber of Commerce gatherings less as networking events and more as opportunities to make new friends.
• Educating members of his target audience about dispute resolution by creating a puzzle-based product, such as a crossword puzzle with ADR terms.

Any of the above activities are likely to be far more compelling to Rob than cold calling or writing self-introduction letters to be mailed out to a purchased mailing list.

The third item on the list, a short speech based on his favorite conflict management short stories, proved a winner. Rob knew that getting his face and voice in front of people in his target market has high value for building a mediation business. But dry technical speeches on “what is mediation” or “when and why to hire a mediator” bored Rob and bored his audience, too. By figuring out how to continue to give short speeches and do them from a place of passion, Rob began to unlock ways to really capture his audience’s attention.

Exercise 3.4.1: What marketing activities mesh with your interests and talents?

Now it’s your turn: If you could turn your favorite activities and best skills into marketing activities, what kinds of things could you do? Notice that I said “could,” not “would.”

Try answering this question by way of a brainstorm—the object is to generate as many ideas as possible for now. Remember the rules of brainstorming? No idea is a poor one or too ridiculous. In fact, sometimes the most outrageous ideas yield the most promising opportunities. Don’t self edit…just play with ideas. And when you run out of ideas, don’t walk away from the exercise yet. Rest with it for a few more minutes and you’re apt to get your second wind.

Copyright © 2006 by Tammy Lenski. All rights reserved.

Liked this post? A few others to consider:

1. How to Market from Your Strengths: Choose Markets that Share Your Passion
2. Marketing from Your Strengths: Finding Overlap Between Interest and Skill
3. Setting Your Mediation Marketing Agenda: Select Activities You Enjoy
4. How to Enjoy Marketing: Market from Your Strengths
5. Setting Your Mediation Marketing Agenda: Focus on a Target Market