Here’s a sneak peek at the draft of the introduction to “Marketing Is Like Dating and I Can Help You Score.” I hope you like what you see here, and that you’ll like the whole book even more!

One night as I was pondering this book, I ended up sitting at a bar sandwiched between two marketers, both men. The man on my right I knew; he was my marketing consultant friend Jim. The man on the left was a friendly sales guy (is there any other kind?) named Bill. Although Bill was at heart a sales guy, he was then working in marketing.

The two plunged into a discussion of the definition of marketing. I sat there stunned as one stated “marketing is how you bust down the doors” and the other argued “marketing is like a bulldozer.” Those were both very aggressive, in-your-face definitions and nothing like my own.

But they’re both typical approaches to marketing. That’s one reason why in this book you’ll find the “marketer” is represented by a man and the “customer” is represented by a woman.

Just prior to that incident, I had been asked about the gender breakdown in the book, especially given the use of the word “score” in the title. (As one person put it, “Do women score?”) I was already thinking of the marketer as the man and the customer as the woman because traditionally in dating, it’s the man who pursues the woman…just like the marketer pursues the customer. Listening in on this bar debate solidified my thinking: Bulldozers and busting down doors? The marketer is definitely a man.

And maybe in the age of social media and engagement, the world is tired of testosterone-driven marketing. Maybe it’s time to sit back and re-evaluate how we go about trying to get people and businesses to buy from us.

So let’s. Let’s take another look from a fresh perspective: Dating…

“Can I buy you a drink?”

If you’re a woman, you’ve heard it.

If you’re a man, you’ve said it.

It’s the consummate line in the world of dating.

Unless you came of age in very unusual circumstances, you, my friend, have dated. Maybe you’re still dating because you haven’t found “the one” or you’re back on the dating scene because “the one” wasn’t. Or maybe you’re happily married…but you had to date to get that spouse.

Wherever you are now, today, you’ve been “there” at some point. “There” meaning the challenging, trying scene that is dating.

And here’s what a typical sequence of dating events looks like:

You’re in a bar, surveying the crowd for someone who catches your eye.
You approach someone to see if there’s an initial interest.
If so, you talk, woo and eventually go on a first date.
If that goes well, you keep on dating, and things get physical.
From there, you might keep dating and end up married.

If you’ve ever looked for a job, run your own business, or sold stuff, you’ve marketed.

You might think marketing and dating have nothing in common. Wrong. They have almost everything in common. Here’s the same sequence of events compared to marketing:

Dating

Marketing
You’re in a bar, surveying the crowd for someone who catches your eye. Your market research has determined your target audience.
You approach someone to see if there’s an initial interest. You market to that audience.
If so, you go on a first date. The consumer tries you out.
If that goes well, dating leads to sex. The customer buys something from you.
More dating and more sex lead to the long-term commitment of marriage. The customer is loyal and keeps on buying from you.

If you think to yourself that you’re dating consumers, not marketing to them, does your view of marketing change? Do you think differently about the consumer when you see him or her as a potential love interest, not dollar sign?

I hope so. Think about it. Picture yourself wooing consumers just like you’d woo a potential mate. Would you bust down doors or bulldoze your way to a date? Hardly!

How do we go about dating? Looking our best, on our best behavior, knowing we must catch the attention of the one we’re attracted to, interest them, woo them, convince them to spend their time with us.

So tell me, how is that different from marketing? You want someone to notice you, take an interest in you, invest in you (with time or money), and stick with you.

They’re already dating your website
Consider just your website for a minute as a way to understand this marketing is like dating analogy. It’s the same principles: There’s being in the right place at the right time to meet someone (the SEO that gets you found in the search engines). Then there’s the first impression (your home page). The next step after meeting someone and making a good first impression is to start engaging them (getting them to click deeper into your site). You might buy them a drink (offer valuable information or a discount on your website). And you keep talking (more clicking through on your site). If things are going well and you want to stay in touch, you get a phone number (the email signup). If things are going really well and you’re sure you want to see each other again, you set up a date (a free something). If things are going really well, you’ll sleep together (the sale).

Convinced?

Marketing is like dating: hard!
While working on this book, I figured as a 40-something divorcee with a lot of baggage, I’d better revisit what dating really is before thinking I had all the answers…from a marketing perspective anyway. I hit the library catalog and hit the jackpot with “Dating Makes You Want to Die but You Have to Do it Anyway: Getting through the absurdity of dating with your soul intact,” by Daniel Holloway and Dorothy Robinson.

From the mouths of babes–at least relative to my age–were all the dating stereotypes and scenarios laid out in black and white. Things didn’t change much in the 20 years I spent married, apparently!

Dating makes you want to die but you have to do it anyway. Just like marketing. OK, maybe marketing doesn’t make you want to die, but you have to do it. Everyone has to do it. You have to market yourself to get a job. You have to market a product to get a sale. It doesn’t matter how awesome your mousetrap or your Forex investment software or your pantyhose might be. If you don’t market your stuff, no one knows about your stuff and therefore no one buys your stuff. And you go out of business.

Being in marketing means being in the relationship business now. It wasn’t that way before. Before only salespeople had to worry about relationships, whether it was the gal working the sales floor at Saks 5th Avenue or the enterprise software guy working the room at a conference.

We buy from people we like. More than 15 years ago, I realized sales was like dating when I was publishing my own admittedly altruistic arts magazine and had to sell ads. Gallery owners and art dealers bought ads from me because they liked me and believed in what I was doing. (Hey, as a fledgling magazine, it wasn’t as if they really expected to get countless customers from those ads!) I quickly learned my appearance and personality were going to sell ads. Not the magazine’s glossy cover, insightful content or educated readership. Nope. Just me.

I had a relationship with these advertisers. That was why they bought.

Then after starting my copywriting business We Know Words, I realized marketing is like dating. I was preparing a talk on copywriting when it hit me. That was many years ago—pre Facebook, blogging and social media—and now I see how prophetic I was. Now we are in an age of engagement, with consumers publicly declaring allegiance to brands on Facebook and interacting directly with companies on Twitter. In the past week, I saw three references to marketing being like dating when I usually see zero (not counting the mess of papers on my desk trying to organize itself into this book).

Marketers used to be able to simply push marketing messages onto us in magazine ads, TV commercials and telemarketing.

That kind of marketing is about as relationship based as paying for phone sex.

Today ads and commercials send you to websites and Facebook pages. Telemarketing has been replaced by permission-based SMS messages sent to your phone. A QR code is something you choose to scan in order to see a video. And that kind of marketing lets the consumer choose to participate, choose to be engaged with you.

Just like you can’t force someone to date you, you can’t force them to buy from you or even listen to you.

The old way? Like an obnoxious guy forcing himself on a hapless woman in a bar insisting she sit and listen to him brag about himself.

The new way? Dialog, conversation, choice…the woman can engage or walk away. And the guy makes a much better impression because he is courteous and respectful. He asks questions, shows an interest. And if the interest isn’t reciprocated, he leaves her alone. Or should anyway.

Marketing has fundamentally changed
We marketers are now like salespeople because we’re focused on the relationships. Before we just wanted people to buy from us. Now we literally want people to “like” us! We don’t get to sit behind a desk and “market” blindly and forcefully.

Nope. Now we must be as relationship oriented as our sales brethren…but on a much bigger scale.

When we’ve done our job right, customers date us back. I don’t mean we’ve done our jobs right as marketers and tricked someone into buying a product or service. I mean as a company we’ve done our job right. My daughter and pretty much every other kid at her middle school wears Aeropostale clothing, with the word “Aeropostale” emblazoned across every T-shirt and sweatshirt. These kids have married the brand and proudly display that commitment.

In the same way, us boring grownups are publicly showing affection for brands via Facebook. Do you know what PDA is? Public display of affection? Some people are okay with it. Some aren’t. We’ve gone from a society that didn’t flaunt brand preference to a society that makes out with our favorite brands in public places. We are a lot more okay with PDA than we used to be!

Marketing is like dating. Marketing is the introduction, the promise, the getting to know you. Sales is the sex. And customer loyalty is the walk down the aisle that means long-term customer loyalty.

One of my marketing friends says typical marketing acts like a guy going into a bar and walking up to every woman asking, “Do you want to marry me?”

Does that sound like a good approach? How many yeses will he get?

But he is right. It’s a typical approach, even if a bad one. And if every other guy is doing it, all the women in the bar are annoyed by a man, even before he opens his mouth.

But what if your approach wasn’t proposing to every consumer you came across? What if your approach was to woo that consumer, to make him or her feel special, to do things for that consumer regardless of what you’d get in return? What if you set out to delight your potential customers, not harass them?

Would that change the game?

Change the game and score
If this book changes your mindset about marketing, and you transform yourself from a bulldozer driving marketer into one who woos, courts, dates and commits to customers, you’ll score. You’ll score more customers. You’ll score higher retention rates. You’ll score word-of-mouth marketing and a loyal fan base.

You’ll stand out. In a very good way.

And maybe as a marketer you can change the question from “Can I buy you a drink?” to “Can I buy you a book?”

This book. The marketing world needs it.

Or we’re just going to have to learn to live with a lot of pushy marketers busting down doors and driving bulldozers…