Are you skeptical of the process of marketing because it doesn’t seem to fit your personality? Unfortunately, too many marketing experts have a favorite self-promotion prescription that fits what they themselves enjoy best but leaves others feeling inadequate to the tasks.

Instead of forcing yourself to do things that feel alien and unpleasant, consider an approach that tailors marketing recommendations to what you like to do, feel comfortable doing and see as fitting nicely with your self-image. With this approach, you can take on marketing with more enthusiasm and succeed because it doesn’t require a personality transplant.

To discover self-promotional strategies that will suit you, start by taking the Myers-Briggs personality test. If it pegs you as an introvert, you’d rather spend time on your own than among strangers. In fact, solitude recharges your energy while social interaction drains you. This contrasts with the preferences of extroverts, who would rather hang out with other people and who find it draining to be alone.

In the Myers-Briggs system of personalities, ISTPs (Sensing/Thinking/Perceiving Introverts) are hands-on, self-directed people who are observant, quiet, practical and often mechanically inclined. They keep a cool head in a crisis situation. Sometimes thrill seekers, they revel in experiences and sensory input and dislike routine, planning or heads-in-the-clouds theory. ISTPs are emotionally reserved and like to keep others guessing about them.

Personality analysts tell us that noted ISTPs include Clint Eastwood, Keith Richards, Ernest Hemingway, Bruce Lee, Amelia Earhart, Michael Jordan, Goldie Hawn, Meg Ryan, Angelina Jolie, Humphrey Bogart, Brad Pitt, Frank Zappa and the fictional character James Bond.

If Myers-Briggs testing pegs you as an ISTP, you may find the idea of marketing yourself kind of boring. Here are some marketing tactics that may be more in tune with your beliefs and preferences:
· Enter contests or challenges that offer a lot of visibility if you win.
· Post videos that document your practical successes and/or show you in action
· Sell low-priced courses or information products that help introduce your talents and point of view to folks who will go on to pay for your help at full price
· Develop a persona and legend about yourself that turn your abilities and personality strengths into a mystique
· Hand out a highly unusual business card when people start conversations with you
· Leverage relationships with clients who like and trust you by asking them to recommend you to their friends and colleagues
· At your web site or blog, document how you do things idiosyncratically yet masterfully
· Several times a year, host live demonstrations of your talents

As an ISTP, you should avoid offering services that trap you in a routine that you could carry out in your sleep. Instead, engage in problem-solving projects that have a defined endpoint and then allow you to go on to something new. Also avoid heavily scheduled commitments, which may run up against your desire to do whatever the heck you feel like doing.

Since you don’t believe in wasted effort, you’ll find it hard to do something whose only rationale is to please the client. So you’ll be best off seeking clients who share your act-now orientation and value your hands-on talents.