Selling Yourself Online- Online Dating Edition

Hey – I’m Casey and I am one of the Project Managers behind Tech Guys.

Let’s jump under the sheets so you can get to know me on a very personal level. Sometime in June, I uttered a phrase that systematically dissolved my relationship with a girlfriend of 2 years. After a few months of getting grounded, I decided it was time to start the prowl. Hell, I’m in a college town, so I shouldn’t have any problem finding incredibly attractive women in every nook and cranny of town.

But being employed in a virtual way, where you have no office to meet people, casts its own problems on finding mates.

In the 1992 salesman-worshiped “Glengarry Glen Ross”, the phrase “Always Be Closing” is repeated over and over. ABC. Make that money stack. After I had graduated from my undergrad, I picked up a job hawking a crap product to anyone I could find. I was that guy. Then, I came to the conclusion that I couldn’t sell as many units as I wanted by being face-to-face with the customers, so I decided to replicate myself.

This was the time when I learned the difference between sales and marketing. John E. Kennedy said that marketing was just “salesmanship in print” and I decided to devote the next few years of my life to learn exactly what that meant. Being able to sell yourself in print, to break down the barriers between interested and purchasing customers, was the one thing I knew I could leverage for the rest of my life.

The Perfect Storm brewed and erupted when my friend Benjamin introduced my broken heart to the awesomeness that is online dating.

This is a marketers haven. You can do or say anything you want, without any physical ramifications (for example, getting the epidermis smacked off  of your face). I literally had access to thousands of women in my age bracket (18 to 102) who were interested in meeting Mr. Right online.

Based on the numbers I was used to in the online marketplace, I mocked up some reasonable numbers of replies that I aimed for. If I sent out messages to 10 girls in my area, I expected 3 to 4 back. 35% reply rate was my goal.

First message, I was nice and charming. Telling them they had a nice smile, or that we shared similar interested. My return on those emails alone were near 20%. But they never went past the first exchange.

I have impeccable grammar, and my mother birthed me with a not-so-hideous face, so I already had that leg up … but 20% was bad. If I was at a grocery store and talked to 10 girls, all 10 would say something back to me. 20% is garbage.

So, I re-evaluated my goal and went back to the drawing board. I changed my profile picture, and pre-qualified the girls in the first paragraph on my profile. I stated that I’m a busy guy, and I don’t have a lot of time. It’s true, too — I had just picked up a few clients, and my days & nights were booked solid. In marketing, we call this scarcity. I leveraged myself as a hot commodity, and someone whose time is worth a lot (Oprah, Eben Pagan, and Dan Kennedy all do this in their professional careers), instead of just a guy who didn’t reply to messages.

Then, I watched as my inbox started filling up with messages from girls who were interested in me, and told me WHY I should reply to them. The tables turned, and I was being sought.

But, the numbers weren’t in my favor enough. I knew the kind of girl I was looking probably lived in my area, but that there weren’t too many of them. I needed more quantity so I could find the quality.

My next step was to set Tags in my profile so people could find me easier, based on important things like being a vegetarian, or traveling. This helped, but maybe only an extra visitor or 2 a week. Again, too small.

I considered purchasing the Paid Subscription package, but reflected and thought it would be a big waste in investment. I would look too much like a try-hard, and sticking out by having a membership probably attracted the wrong girls.

The next thought was to go back to the messages that I had sent out and see if there was something I could change. I began to analyze what I was sending out, and why some worked, while others atrophied and brought in zero response.

The first factor was that some people don’t find me funny. Too bad they’re wrong.

The next thing I noticed was that I might not be standing out enough. Around this time, an ex-girlfriend of mine was moving to Ohio and was worried about finding new friends. I offered her to join OKCupid and see how it worked out for her. After I coerced her to setup an honest profile, I was able to peek behind the curtains at what attractive women were getting on a daily basis.

Their inboxes would be flooded any given day with incredible communiqué, like “hey, sup?” or “hey, your cute”. Aside from the blatant disregard for grammar and punctuation, these dudes created an sea of lameness and noise that I had to rise above to get noticed.

After talking to my friend, I went home and put on my fancy pants. I knew I had to do something different to be noticed, and appreciated for the complex, funny individual I am.

My messages started getting incredibly off-topic. Girls would say “Don’t message me and say ‘hey ur cute'”, so I’d send a message with the subject line “Hey Ugly!”

The point wasn’t to upset them, the point was to get the message opened. That’s exactly what a good headline does on a product sales page — it gets the reader to read further.

Once she opened the message, I gave her reason to write me back. My messages were short, or long, depending on my mood. And I tested their effectiveness.

After I received a reply, which was near 40% at this point (way above my previous goal), I had to follow-up and keep the communication going.

I developed stock responses that played very well, and asked all the right questions. I would hand-tailor each one to fit the particular girl, but I was essentially asking the same questions:

• Are you adventurous?
• What’s your family like?
• Are you funny?
• Are you smoking crack… right now?

These four questions would tell me if the girls were even remotely interesting enough to continue to correspond with. Remember — I’m looking for Mrs. Right.

One of the next major things I did was play with the amount of time between messages. It started off as me being incredibly busy for a 2-week span and not having time to check the site, and it ended as a pure test. Would girls that I found interesting actually want to start the communication with me? Was I able to peg myself as a good guy, who was honest and respectful, and worthy of their time and attention? Would they come after me on their own right, seeking me out and communicating — even if I hadn’t responded in weeks?

Then, one afternoon, I was hanging out with Benjamin – the friend that got me started with this project, and we decided to ‘share notes’. Benjamin had messaged girls that we both thought were attractive, and he had dates setup, while I had no response. He was doing something different than I was, and was beating me at my own game.

We looked into the notes that were sent, the time between correspondence, and the quality of the message. I decided that Benjamin was more edgy than I was, and that some of his lines to pique their interest were just better than mine.

Over the next few days, I added my own versions of Benjamin’s to my repertoire and tried them out. Responses are again on the rise, and I feel like I’m hitting a ceiling with success. I literally went from having 20% of all girls respond once to me to now having upwards of 50% communicating with long dialogs. I’m still deeply interested in who these women are, and want to get to know them — but I don’t want to spend my time with girls that I’m not compatible with. These small tests have helped me double my efficiency online, giving me greater success in dating with less work.

Like Kennedy said, “salesmanship in print” is what makes the difference. It’s about how you change your message to sell the same product, in this case, me.

I love hearing stories of companies who have changed the placement of an order button, or a guy who wears a funky tie to the bar and gets 10 times more responses. If you’re bringing something of high value to the world, you’re robbing everyone if you don’t present it to them in the best light as possible. Your message, if it is one of honesty, consciousness and integrity, must be shared with the world. Any product that makes the world a better place deserves to be promoted the same way you promote yourself.

It’s your job to share your product, or service. Get on rooftops. Figure out what works. Then scale it. Broadcast your message. Make a ton of money doing it, too!