“I hate marketing!” “If only I could just do my thing and have a constant stream of customers who love to hire me.” “Marketing goes contrary to my nature.” Sentiments like these are common, especially for introverts. Unfortunately, too many marketing experts have put out rigid rules that run contrary to reserved personalities.
Fortunately, there are approaches to marketing that fit introverted personalities. The key is matching your hard-wired preferences, habits and beliefs to marketing tactics that fit you and feel comfortable and natural.
Begin your search for your best-match marketing style by taking the Myers-Briggs personality test. If you emerge as introverted, this means you would rather spend more time alone or with trusted friends than interacting with strangers, and that social activities drain you, while solitude helps you recharge. Extroverts, by contrast, prefer to be with others most of the time and find being alone unsettling and draining.
Within the Myers-Briggs personality typology, INTPs (Intuitive/Thinking/Perceiving Introverts) are reserved, ingenious problem solvers who call upon both logic and creativity in their work. They respect authenticity and honesty and detest bureaucratic requirements. Comfortable with complexity, they are strategic and skeptical – devastating debaters. Their weak points include being forgetful about social rituals and not always being dependable in getting things done.
According to personality observers, noted INTPs include Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Carl Jung, Socrates, Rene Descartes, J.K. Rowling, Dustin Hoffman, Wesley Snipes, Meryl Streep, George Soros, Nikola Tesla, the fictional Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and Snoopy from the cartoon strip Peanuts.
If Myers-Briggs testing reveals that you are an INTP, you hate being pushed into anything and value authenticity, so you will recoil from most marketing techniques that involve pushiness vis-à-vis others. Here are some un-pushy promotional tactics that may feel more in tune with your personality:
· Writing a blog that highlights your independent thinking
· Creating a podcast centered on your business-related iconoclastic or unconventional views
· Challenging to a debate industry leaders whom you believe are dead wrong
· Writing well-reasoned letters to the editor about issues that affect your clients
· Creating useful information products that introduce your problem-solving approach and spark interest in working one-on-one with you
· Delivering keynote speeches that go against prevailing trends and get people talking
· Offering a 10-15 minute free consultation as a sample of your knowledge and talents
· Tweeting witty repartee with colleagues and fans
· Exchanging ideas with people who love a kind of technology you also love
· Publishing a newsletter that comes out whenever you have something meaningful to say
As an INTP, feelings tend to be mysterious terrain to you, so you need to pay special attention to unnecessarily avoiding insulting people who you think are making drastic errors. Many people like your outspokenness, but if you take it too far, even those who admire your intellect may consider you conceited and unfeeling. Stay away from large conferences because you probably feel the group setting wastes your time, and avoid promising to do anything on a rigorous or regular schedule.