The state of the current sexual marketplace means two things: competition is fierce, and you must maximise your exposure to your target market (the girls you are interested in) to be successful. A buzzword that has been popular in the marketing and advertising industry for a number of years is “always on.” It is my belief that if you want to beat the current market and pick up the hottest girls it is imperative that you also develop an “always on” approach.
First, let’s look at a definition of the term. Here’s one from a blog written by Dave Chaffey of smartinsights.com in 2014:
Dynamic personalisation and structured testing and improvement of digital experiences is a key feature of always on marketing, a term which has emerged to show a change in emphasis from burst marketing campaigns to generate awareness and response to investment in marketing activities which continuously drive and meet changing demand. This is what Google has called the Zero Moment of Truth. For always-on marketing to be effective, efforts should be made to increase the effectiveness of different [digital] channels through testing, review and optimisation.
This clearly refers to digital marketing efforts and is more than a little pretentious, but if you cut through the verbiage, what Chaffey is saying is that contemporary marketing has moved away from big, discrete ad campaigns to continuous activity across many different channels that is constantly tested and then tweaked to achieve the best results.
As girls today are bombarded with sexual opportunities through their social circle and approaches in real life as well as through the omnipresent digital titans Facebook, Snap, Instagram, Tinder, and so on, achieving cut-through in the market is increasingly difficult for men, just as it is for advertisers trying to sell to increasingly fragmented audiences.
In this way, given that the challenges you face on the dating scene are analogous to those faced by brands trying to shift product, it makes perfect sense that you should adopt a marketing strategy that is popular with these same huge corporations.
Since the days of The Game by Neil Strauss, the study of pickup has become increasingly polarized, with specialists popping up claiming expertise in many niche areas. Broadly, these include night game (pulling in clubs and bars), daygame (e.g., meeting girls during the day in the street, coffee shops, galleries, public transport), and online game (dating sites and apps). There are also strands concerning social media game, social circle game, and so-called entourage game.
In actual fact, these disciplines aren’t as wildly different as their exponents claim. In the endgame, everything simply comes down to the key elements of attraction, vibing, hook point (female-to-male), comfort, and escalation. That’s it. Whether you’re in a hot nightclub in Miami or a library in Huddersfield, the fundamentals of attraction remain the same. While there are differences in how you should operate in those milieus, they are not as great as you might think. Indeed, the main reason that daygame and online game gurus have sprung up is that it is somewhat easier to establish and sell to a niche than it is to be a generalist.
My contention, though, is that in today’s market you have to be a generalist—a renaissance man of seduction, if you like. The only way to achieve the best results is by generating leads during the day through daygame, online, and through apps and in the evening through night game and social circle or entourage interactions. As a modern man, you simply don’t have the luxury of being able to eschew one form of game for another.
In other word, you need to be “always on.”
To demonstrate how you can develop your “always on” strategy effectively, I discuss four pillars revealed in an article on marketing blog warc.com here:
1. Understand the context. In always-on marketing, context is everything. Locations, rhythms, competition, locations, and emotion all have an impact.
This is vitally important. Basically, you need to be socially calibrated. As I said before, there are clear differences in how you would approach a girl in a nightclub as opposed to a bookshop (although the fundamental structure remains the same). I, for example, have approached in art galleries, Vegas nightclubs, and on the London Underground, and in each of these the manner of my interactions has been different.
In the nightclub, for example, energy, emotions, and drama run high, compelling you to be larger than life and flamboyant. Chatting to the girl in the queue opposite you at the coffee store is going to be different. Don’t whatever you do make the mistake that many guys make of having one “pickup” persona that you use in all circumstances. Be agile, flexible, and adaptable.
2. Understand the consumer. Always-on marketing is the ultimate extent of consumer-centric marketing. It requires a deep understanding of the patterns, motivations, considerations, and analysis of consumer behaviour.
In terms of seduction, this really involves understanding women and their dual sexual strategy (so-called “beta bucks and alpha fucks”) as much as possible. For this you need to become a student of human nature. There are many great books, blogs, and articles written on this subject, but also be observant, keep your eyes open, and draw your own conclusions. Stay in tune with popular culture. Listen to song lyrics, and watch TV shows.
The great American playwright Edward Albee once said, “We are animals, are we not? I’m interested in the fact that so much of what I think is wrong with the world is to do with the fact that Man’s nature is so close to the bestial. And we had better be a little more aware of it.” Pretty lies may cloud the truth, but human beings in the main are out for themselves. Understand your target market (women) inside out so that you can position yourself accordingly.
3. Understand the data. Always-on marketing is ultimately data driven, and without using both your own data and the exhaust data from the broad digital world you will not be able to understand and know enough to deliver true, always-on marketing.
Data is king these days in advertising and most other disciplines, and so it is with pickup. If you are not keeping some kind of record of your approaches, failures, and successes, you are a fool because it is only through tracking the data and then tweaking your approach that you will be able to better your results.
Say, for example, you approached a hundred girls in a shopping mall, asked them straight up for sex, and you were rejected a hundred times. Then say you tried ten indirect approaches (asking where the pet shop is) and got three phone numbers. In that instance, the data would clearly show that the first technique was flawed and the second fruitful.
This is an extreme example, but it is only by tracking your progress and analysing your results that you can improve.
4. Become Service and Product driven. Always-on is not advertising. It requires a view of brands and businesses being of service to consumers, practically and or emotionally useful. Understanding consumer requirements is being able to predict, create, and deliver services and products that they might want. Providing the vehicle for them to “pull” your business into their daily world.
This is really about how you position yourself in light of the data (both your own and that of other guys, and there are many websites, blogs, and forums where you can find that). In the past, many men would approach women emphasizing their “good” points to try to demonstrate that they would make “great boyfriend material.” As we now know, though, this was a flawed strategy, as more often than not the nice guy gets rejected.
We now know this is broadly because women have a dual mating strategy that compels them to seek out alphas (cads) for short-term mating opportunities (fast sex) and nice guys (dads) for paternity and long-term investment.
If you can successfully present yourself as a quick, discreet, and pleasurable sex partner, you are providing something that is “practically and . . . emotionally useful” to a great many women (because they want sex, too, remember).
Once you have had sex with her, you can, if you wish, transition into a relationship. The important thing to know is that you will certainly have a lot more success by presenting yourself as a lover up front rather than a needy beta provider.
In today’s dating market, you need to be always on, which means you must always be approaching through many different means—e.g., daygame, night game, online game, and social circle game.
You must develop a full understanding of the context of each along with a deep understanding of women and what makes them tick.
You must experiment with different techniques (direct, indirect, sexual, suave, charming) and tweak when the data shows that something isn’t working.
You must then position your product (yourself) as something that will be practically or emotionally useful to the woman you’re seducing. Today, that often means being the sexy cad rather than the provider figure, at least at first.
Finally, you must be agile and adaptable, having the energy and persistence to maximize your exposure on the market while at the same time learning from and correcting your mistakes.