Getting a job consists of marketing and selling
yourself to a company. This is the same thing as a company's
marketing and selling its products to its customers. The techniques
used to market a product are collectively called the "marketing
mix". The marketing mix is the marketer's toolbox. Marketers use
some or all of the tools in varying ways and in differing
proportions. How marketers use the marketing mix is a function of
selling goals, skills, targeting of customers' needs, budgets,
competition. The marketing mix includes advertising, publicity,
packaging, pricing, market research, direct mail, and numerous
other disciplines.
You must consider all
possible pieces of the marketing mix in marketing yourself. Your
marketing plan for yourself will be a recipe of the ingredients in
the marketing mix.
Your Marketing Mix
ADVERTISING When someone who knows you, or knows of
you, recommends you to a potential employer, that is word-of-mouth
advertising. Ask influential people you know to spread the
word.
DATABASE MARKETING Build your people file with
letters, press and magazine clippings of interest, e-mails, and
phone calls - and use it.
DIRECT MARKETING Sending a letter to a hiring person
in a target company with a message tailored to the company is
effective direct mail.
LEAD GENERATION Identifying a hiring company,
getting an introduction, or getting a referral are sales leads.
Networking, want ads, and industry publications are good
sources.
MARKET RESEARCH Use the Internet, the library,
publications, the street, and the phone to learn all you can about
the target company, its industry, and its people.
MEDIA PLAN Use the Internet to connect companies and
respond to companies. Put up a personalized web site.
PRICING The marketplace usually sets the price - the
compensation for your job - but showing your economic value
and dollarizing your impact is crucial to the hiring person.
PUBLICITY Write articles, contact organizers for
associations, and give speeches on what you know. Put writers,
reporters, editors in your database. Let them know you are
available for a quote.
SEGMENTATION The world of organizations can be
segmeneted by geography, industry, size, customers, culture, age,
whether they are private or public, profit or not-for-profit, and
countless variations. Your forty-mile radius is the first step (see
Draw a Forty-mile Circle, Chapter 9).
SELLING You are selling yourself. There are books on
selling. Read them.
TRADESHOWS Job fairs are trade shows for hiring
employers. Industry trade shows are where companies selling to
common customers present themselves. Visit your target companies at
trade shows.