Marketing has always been a weakness of mine. I look at people around me who seem to be good at marketing and sales and they appear to be self-confident, smart, exciting, maybe even a bit flashy. They know how to work a crowd and feel at home with strangers and friends alike. I, however, have never enjoyed being around strangers and do not feel “flashy” at all. I believe that I am self-confident and smart but that just doesn’t seem to be enough. I really struggled with this in high school because my best friend was definitely a salesman. All of the girls paid attention to him; sometimes I was even worried that my girlfriend liked him more than me. He was a huge flirt.

Some of these concerns about whether I was exciting enough or “flashy” carried over into college. I tried to overcome this and be someone I wasn’t but it didn’t feel right. I was afraid that I might not have a chance with the girls because of it. What I learned, however, was that marketing is less about groups of people and more about one person. You don’t need a group of people to know who you are when you’re in the “dating game,” rather, you need each person in the group to know who you are. Marketing is about relationships, one-on-one relationships. That’s how I won over my wife. I was introduced to a group of young ladies, began to get to know them individually, and picked my wife from their midst.

We can learn a lot about this from Apple. Just look what has been happening with the iPhone 5 the last few days. They have made it to the individual level. I bet you, like me, can think of someone who mentioned the iPhone 5 to you today.

Individuals, it’s what marketing is all about. How about helping me market this post? Go on, share it with your friends. Let’s pretend it’s the iPhone 5.