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So it's Thursday ... it's not as good as a Friday but it's a whole lot better than a Tuesday or a Monday. At least that's what the writers of a television ad that's getting some exposure where I live seem to think.

And some how that ad resonates with me ... and with a lot of other people too. Thursday is a better day than Monday or Tuesday ... it's almost Friday and that makes it almost the weekend ... and for many people that means that some great times are just a few hours away.

For me and for all those other people that the ad resonates with it means we can get away from work for a while ... we can kick back and have some fun ... maybe even sleep in ... or jump in the car and get out of town for a while. And that has got to sound good.

So maybe the guys who wrote that ad are on a winner ... they're resonating with their target audience ... they're identifying with them ... they're putting themselves alongside their target market ... and that's where any savvy marketer wants to be.

Sure there are some marketers who like to stand to one side and direct people to what the marketer wants them to do. These are the guys who want to shout at you ... tell you what's good for you ... they want to order you to take some action ... they want to overcome the natural resistance that most people have towards instructions that come from others that they don't know ... don't trust ... aren't comfortable with.

But if you really want to get a positive result from your marketing message you don't want to be like those guys who want to tell others what to do. If you want to get positive results from your marketing messages you have to place yourself in a position that your target market can connect with ... can have some empathy with ... can relate to.

And you, as a marketer, want to be there ... alongside your target market ... because when your market relates to you and feels that they have something in common with you then you stop being an unknown ... a stranger ... someone they can't relate to ... someone who just wants to yell at them.

When you stop being those things to the people that you are targeting then they start feeling a little more receptive to what you want to say to them ... what you want to share with them ... what you want to suggest to them. They start seeing you not as a marketer who wants to shout marketing messages at them but someone they know who wants to help them do better ... enjoy life more ... have more fun.

Of course that puts you in something of a difficult situation. If you're the marketer who shouts and you convince someone to buy what you're selling ... and the buyer's experience isn't a positive one ... then you haven't lost much.

However, if you're a marketer who wants to position themselves alongside the people they want to sell to ... and the buyer's experience is not a positive one when they buy what you're selling ... then you've wasted your time because selling to those people will be much harder in future.

On the other hand though ... if you work hard to put yourself alongside the person you want to sell to ... and they have a positive experience then you've begun to cement your friendship with that buyer and the next time you want to sell something to him the task will be much easier. And that's something that the marketer who wants to remain aloof and shout at the people he wants to sell to will never experience.

So if it's easier to make a sale by positioning yourself alongside your target market instead of distancing yourself from them how do you go about achieving that? What do you have to do ... what do you have to say ... what do you have to imply ... if you want your target market to believe that you're one of them?

And once you've got yourself into that position what do you have to do to ensure that you stay in that position? What do you have to do to keep those easy sales happening?

Perhaps that's something that you should be thinking about this weekend? Think about the sales messages that resonate with you and see whether or not the marketer who put those messages out there is being seen as a friend or are they someone who is standing off to one side and shouting at you.

When you find one marketing message that seems to be coming from a friend start picking that message apart to see what it is that makes you think that the message is coming from a friend you hardly know but feel you can trust.

Once you have identified the key factors in that message and the marketing approach start thinking about what you can do to apply what you have learned to your own marketing message.