Permission Marketing
Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers By Seth Godin
“Permission Marketing encourages consumers to participate in a long-term, interactive marketing campaign in which they are rewarded in some eay for paying attention to increasingly relevant messages…. Permission Marketing is anticipated, personal, relevant”
In a world with expanding media options and unlimited competition for a bit of you attention, how can a marketer break through? In the well argued opinion of Seth Godin, it is only through building a “Permission Asset” and building a relationship with your customers. In fact, businesses should increasingly expect to reward their potential customers in some way for their attention. The internet is the best direct marketing system ever conceived. u
5 steps:
- Offer the prospect an incentive to volunteer
- Offer a curriculum, over time, to educate the prospect about your product or service
- Reinforce the incentive to guarantee that the prospect maintains the permission
- Offer additional incentives to get more permission from the consumer
- Over time, leverage the permission to change consumer behavior towards profits.
Useful Info & Ideas to Try
Make every communication interesting, personal, and relevant.
When prospecting, getting an email or other contact info, particularly for an incentive, is much easier than getting a sale from a stranger. The less you ask, and the bigger the incentive, the more you will get.
An important part of permission marketing is to get your current customers to buy more from you. Frequency is key to getting your message through.
The ultimate goal is “intravenous permission”: the permission to take money from you every month. Ie: Book of the Month Club. Many users sign up for this because they do not like to make a choice.
Just about everyone wants to win something, and everyone wants to save a buck.
Points passed promotions can be effective. Allow people to think they are ‘’gaming’ the system.
Permission Marketing starts as an interruption, but becomes a dialogue.
The “one Shot” anonymous user to you website is a sure route to failure.
Test and measure – play your messages against each other, particularly your initial ‘offer’
Godin recommends against buying lists, and definitely against spaming prospective customers.
Godin points to Amazon and Radiohead as brands that have successfully built permission assets.
Despite being written back in 1999, this book still has excellent advice and case studies.
