Jaime del Valle

This is the second post of the series Marketing and Picking Up Women (or Men), where I explore the similarities between picking up women at bars (for example) and doing great marketing.

I always start with one of the concepts that Mystery teaches his socially challenged students to become pick up artists in his TV Show The Pick Up Artist and in his book The Method

The concept for today’s post is: Kino Escalation.

The principle, in few words, is that when you are picking up girls, you cannot go from “Hello” to “Kiss” directly. You need to climb a “Kino Escalation Ladder” to gauge interest and to build momentum. It is a long distance race, so you need to pace yourself and stop at checkpoints. And these checkpoints should be incremental so they build towards a higher destination. They are called “kino” because they typically are physical checkpoints. Touching her hand, putting your arm around her, smelling her neck… you physically get gradually – hence “escalation”- closer to kissing her. And those checkpoints are also testing her interest. You don’t move up the ladder if you slip in one of the steps.

Well, not any different in Marketing. Going from “Hello” to “Kiss” in marketing would be something like having a banner for a new launched vehicle taking over the Yahoo homepage saying “Buy Me”!
“Hey, wait a minute! I don’t know what car you are, that brand doesn’t even ring a bell, and, most importantly, I am not interested in buying a car at all!”

To be able to start off the right foot, with a nice RELEVANT “hello”, targeting techniques must be applied. Whether they are contextual, behavioral or any other type of sophisticated targeting, marketers MUST present themselves in a humble and relevant way, stepping into the ladder with the right foot before they take the next step.

And if the interest comes from the customer, even more so! This is where Search Engine Marketing comes into play. As a girl might say hello to you first, a customer can type some words in a search engine to express his interest. You don’t want to mess up the second step. Think about it.

Flirting:
Girl says “Hi ”. Boy turns around or says “Bugger off :-p”

Marketing:
Customer types “Price of car X” in Google. Brand of Car X doesn’t show up in the results.

It is basically the same…. Rude.

But this only speaks to the relevance of marketing. If I stick to the initial concept of “kino escalation”, the analogy would be something like this:

Flirting:
Girl says “Hi ”. Boy says “Let’s sleep together”

Marketing:
Customer types “Car” in Google. Brand X appears in the results saying “Click here to buy”

Ok, ok, depending on the product or service, that customer might be ready to buy, but the marketer needs to acknowledge the interest of the customer and build progressively and in a relevant manner towards purchase (after all, we are here to do business)

So, without wanting to drag this topic any longer, my takes on “kino escalation”

Don’t be rude.

If someone says hello or shows interest in you, acknowledge it always and try to find out more.

Take one step at a time.

Ideally, you want a longer term relationship with that person (yes, even a one-night-stand counts as a longer term relationship if you compare it with having a drink) so solidly build your path to that goal. Aim to have several occasions to interact with that person and use those occasions to gauge the interest, build the momentum, exchange value and engage further. I hate those online forms that ask you for your post address, telephone number, social security number and date of birth just to subscribe to an email update.

Ask me for my email address only, then provide me value and progressively, if I trust you and the value you are giving me, I will give you more (information)

Be relevant.

If a girl asks you for the time, give it to her. Relevance is what trust is built on, and escalation is based on trust and feeling comfortable. If I ask you for the time and you answer “red”, I will (think you are stupid or that the music in the club is too loud) not want to engage in a conversation with you.

So if a customer types “price of x” in Google and you take him to a landing page where there is only an overview of the product, you have not answered his question.

Be daring.

We have all been afraid of what would that girl think if I put my arm around her. Well, if you don’t, you will never find. She knows what you are there for, as a customer knows you will eventually want to sell something. You need to avoid the “friend” condition (I will write a different post about this). You both know there will be something more; something else and you have to take the steps to achieve it.

Hopefully, at the end, if you are polite, you are relevant/interesting, you sequentially build the interest and the attraction and dare to move from one step to the next one, the relationship, whatever that might be that you pursue, will be fruitful

Agree?