Are you a Risk-taker? How Behavior & Personality Types Impact Marketing

Marketing your business today is taking on a new mindset. Traditional marketers are clinging to their set ways of growing their business while new media marketers are looking to embrace new technology to drive sales. However, when we look at the personality types of today’s marketer, we find a new breed, called the Type T marketer, that is changing the rules and blazing a new trail of profit and ROI. This non-conventional methodology is rooted in their personality type.

The Type T marketer has evolved from a new way of looking at marketing. Frank Farley, a professor who taught a class called motivation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (when I went to school there), developed the concept of the Type T personality.  Professor Farley believes that the United States was founded by Type T personalities (thrill-seekers). Type Ts are true risk-takers that believed that they can accomplish anything they set their minds to. The people who discovered America and those that followed were Type Ts who saw greater opportunities across the Atlantic Ocean. Farley sees a correlation to the high number of Type T personalities in the U.S. and the high incidence of inventions, Nobel Peace Prize winners and successful entrepreneurs. Farley’s work shows how the Type T risk-taker tends to achieve more goals and reaps greater rewards because of their willingness to take more risks in life.

In looking at personality and behavioral types, most of us are on both sides of the marketing funnel; as consumers and as business people looking to grow our business. As business people, we push and pull the marketing levers of traditional media and new media to bring in those warm, qualified leads and new sales. It is my belief that our personality types dictate the type of marketer that we are in business.

The bell curve shows the relationship between traditional media and new media marketers. The traditional media marketer views marketing as a high-risk event and is constantly looking for ways to reduce the risk while increasing the ROI and tends to gravitate towards marketing events that are proven and have a history of success. The bell curve represents the ROI and Risk levels. You can see the traditional marker is constantly seeking to lower their risk with marketing activities (fear of the unknown) and tends to stick with proven methodologies. The new media marketer feels there is not enough ROI and risk in their marketing efforts and tend to gravitate toward new technology that has a high upside potential for ROI and also has a higher risk factor. However, New Media marketers have perceived limitations on what is and is not too much risk for the potential ROI gain. This may be a result of their education, experiences and/or environment that influences their decision making and therefore, influences whether they avoid or back down from activities that they perceive as too high of risk. This point is represented at the line of perception. This threshold at which this line is set at varies with each marketer.

The birth of the Type-T Marketer
Type T marketers are in constant search of new challenges and view no marketing activity as too great of a risk for the potential ROI, especially when proper preparation is taken. Where the New Media marketer backs down from risk is where the Type T excels. Type T Marketers have few if any perceived limitations and this is why they represent a straight line upwards and have no established line of perceived limitations. The Type T marketer tends to be the multi-media marketer that leverages traditional and new media marketing to get a 1 + 1 = 3 result with their marketing efforts. The Type T marketer sees no activity as a failure; it is merely one step closer towards success. They tend to recycle and repurpose marketing campaigns into different formats until they get the right combination that delivers the desired result. This methodology takes more effort, more resources and more brainpower to execute, but the knowledge gained along the way makes the Type T marketer stand alone from the competition. It is also a long term mindset because they are leveraging all forms of media marketing (online and offline) and are building valuable assets for their business along the way.

Credits:

Frank Farley (Type T Personality Founder)

Fred Von Graf (Inspitation behind creating this presentation “first presented at SMAZ“)

Failure – How else do we learn?

Faith – Can’t we all get along…