Things Internet Marketers Can Learn From The Pickup Artist

Last year VH1 started a new reality show called The Pickup Artist. The show brought world renowned dating romancer Mystery and his 2 boys to teach 8 total losers how to score with women. It was a very entertaining series but I think there is many things that internet marketers can take away from the show. (you can catch most of the episodes online at stage6)

Peacock theory

In episode 2 Mystery teaches the guys that in order to be noticed and remembered you need to stand out. For examples he says that women wear shorter skirts or show more cleavage to separate themselves from the crowd. He goes on to say Men can wear tighter pants or go crazy with their hair. Now if I had not experienced this in real life I would call bullshit but when Dillsmack bet Marcus Tandler 100$ he would not wear his lederhosen out on the town in vegas… we saw exactly the kind of effect this peacocking had on women. They came out of nowhere and were all over Markus asking him where he was from and where he got his outfit. Markus won the bet and got all the attention from the ladies.. win win for him.

So what can internet marketers learn from peacocking? Well several things. For one you need to make your website stand out. For traditional websites this might mean some subtle things like using alternate colors or interesting branding techniques. For people looking to collect email addresses maybe you dont go with that standard 90 page in 1 page email submit thingie…. for people selling ebooks maybe you smack people in the face with a picture or audio right off the bat to let them know you are real and not like the 10,000 other people selling books to get rich over night.

Be interesting and people will be interested in you

In episode 3 of the PUA Mystery says nobody will be interested in you if you are not a interesting person. Looks can only get you so far.

I do not think you have to look to far to see parallels here with marketing. You can have the greatest looking site on the planet but if it does not have any meat to it people are going bye bye… A great example of this is plenty of fish Sure it doesnt look like much but it sure is interesting. The site does not need flashy graphics to sell its product (free dating). So the real lesson here imo is focus on your core product and not so much on a great design.

In blogging this is probably easier to draw corelation. John Chow, Problogger, myself and many others all have been making over there blogs. But all of our blogs were successful WAY before we went for a nicer design. Functionality should always be key.

Making your date feel secure and safe

In Episode 4 Mystery brings in some girls for the guys to practice kissing to see who is the best kisser. But the real lesson was not so much on how well you can kiss… Its kind of like what sun tsu says “the war is won or lost before the first battle” so before you go in for a kiss you need to have made the girl feel secure and safe with you. They go through many steps on how this works.

How does this relate to internet marketing? Well you are not going to sell anything unless people feel secure and safe buying from you. There are many little things you can do to make your visitors trust you. One such thing is just by adding a phone number to your site. Another is by adding one of the secure tags like hacker safe or thawt or another one of the many things that have been proven to increase conversion.

Self Confidence

For episode 5 the lesson was in Self Confidence. All the guys were to go swimming with beautiful women in nothing but spedos. Pretty humbling.

The lesson here business owners/internet marketers can take away is the “act as if” mentality. A lot of times when I speak people come up and talk to me and talk about their websites. Many times these people are just getting started and they start off with “well its not much but..” or “I am just a little guy” nothing turns me off more then someone who starts off like that. To me it means they value their business as not very serious and if they do not take it very serious then why should I. On the opposite side you have a company like photrade who approached me about their product at the blogworld expo. I was really impressed and was happy to test their product and help them launch. Other very well known sites wrote about them to citing my post. Now what you don’t know about this company is its run by people who also have day jobs. They have no VC funding and they beg, borrowed, and stole their way to get a booth at blogworld. They acted “as if” and very clearly believed in their product and because they convey such confidence in their product people will take them much more seriously.

Listening and Learning

For episode 6 the guys have to watch a lingerie show from the models Mystery as brought in. During the show the ladies are talking about what lingerie they like the best and why. Course the guys are not really listening because they are distracted by the looks of the models. When Mystery gives them the challenge for the day they are to assemble a lingerie outfit for the models based on what they were communicating when they were modeling. As Mystery says “You should always appreciate beauty but never be distracted by it”.

So what can an internet marketer learn from this? Well since you cant always hear feedback directly from your users you can study their behaviors and patters and really that is how you will listen and learn. Using tools like Google Analytics you can tell what pages users like, how long they stay on the pages, and many many other things your customers are telling you. Also I am a huge fan of heatmap tools like crazy egg which will show you a heatmap of your site and where your users are clicking. This is your customers voice and its vital when you are testing or measuring value.

Approaching moving targets

The challenge for episode 7 for the guys is to approach a girl who is walking by and try to pick her up. Mystery says “objects in motion tend to stay in motion” and talks about how much more difficult it is to pickup a girl who is on the move. Its really quite a interesting episode as the guys fumble around trying to pickup girls walking or running by them.

Your customer (surfing the internet) is moving super fast and is in-motion. You need to approach them and stop them. How do you do it? This is something you need to think about . For social media traffic this is super important. There are some tactics you can use to specifically target these people. (more on that in the next few days)

Shoemoney Final Thoughts:

Really the Pickup artist is mostly lessons in psychology and self worth. I can see why people who go and do Mystery’s course have a life changing experience.