ExcerptMarketing for Business—and for LifeFor all its advances, the notion of marketing remains largely foreign to our daily lives. The area of “personal branding” is a notable exception, but there are many other ways in which we might apply the principles of marketing outside of business, yet we rarely think that way. We might talk about “selling” a project to our boss or “selling” an idea to our spouse, but we would rarely talk about “marketing” to them. Yet sales, if it is to be predictably successful, must be preceded by marketing. We don’t think this way because “marketing” tends to be about communicating to broad groups of people, yet in our personal lives we are “marketing” to individuals or very small groups of people whom we know (or think we know) very well. But the Internet is radically changing that conventional meaning of marketing, and with it, the principles of marketing can take on even more relevance to the business of daily life. So what does it look like to “market” a project to your boss? Or market a proposal to a client? Or “market” doing the dishes to your kids? This exercise is more about mindset than technique: You don’t need to conduct a focus group to find out what to fix for dinner. But you’d be surprised at what you might discover if you let go of what you already “know” about any of the “customers” in your life—spouse, children, poker club, business associates, whatever—and apply some of the principles of marketing to get what you want out of those relationships.
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