Permission marketing

Isn´t it so annoying when your favorite movie or football game is brutally interrupted by some desperate corporate trying to sell you more washing powder, cars, beverages or something else? I guess very likely your answer is yes. Probably you are more likely not to buy that particular brand that just ruined your day. The question here is that actually who benefited from this traditional TV add? At least it was not the annoyed consumer that decided to ignore the add, nor it was the marketeer whose message did not meet the consumer.

Think about your life as consumer. What is the most scarce resource of yours? Is it that you cannot afford to eat? I guess not. Is it money? I guess that is not the biggest problem either. I bet the scarcest resource of yours is your TIME. You never have enough of it and you try to manage it so that you could achieve everything you want to. Then some marketeer taps into this scarce resource of time of your´s and even better: without asking your permission.

How would you prefer to receive information as consumer? I guess the following preferences are almost global. You probably would like to:

1. receive information that is relevant and interesting to you.

2. decide yourself when it is convenient for you to receive the information.

Traditional advertisement (TV, radio, magazine, print, etc) does not respect either of the above basic needs of the human being. For permission marketing, in contrary to traditional, these are the core principles.

Permission marketing is an alternative way of promoting things to the consumers who have decided to listen to you. Permission can be given in a form of registering to mailing list, adding you as friend in facebook, liking your local business in facebook or other platforms, following you in twitter and so on. In all of these cases the consumers decide themselves that they are interested about you. Therefore they are much more likely to be receptive to the information you provide them. Eventually they may make a positive purchase decision if they feel that they need something you sell.

The key success factor of permission marketing is to provide unquestionable value to the consumer. Consumer is not going to be interested about you, if they do not see any very selfish, egoistic and obvious incentive to do it. This incentive maybe getting some priceless tips for free (like from blogs), getting a possibility of receiving a freebee or any kind of other benefit that is relevant to the consumer. What you as a marketeer get in return is a permission to talk to that person. And more importantly to talk about the topics he or she is interested in.

Is permission marketing only possible in the internet? No. Permission marketing can be used in traditional direct mailing as well. Similarly permission is the very heart of any successful business to business sales relationship. To take it even further, any mutually beneficial relationship cannot flourish without respect and permission. As a matter of fact marketing your stuff using permission paradigm (way of thinking) simply respects the human nature. That is why it is so powerful. The tricky part is that you as a marketeer may have to alter your way of thinking. Like Albert Einstein said: “Any truly large problem or challenge cannot be solved with the same way thinking that it was created.” This is very true when considering new marketing.

Yes, I know this may sound a bit idealistic. But do not get me wrong, I am not saying that the traditional media is useless or dead. No, at the moment it is still very relevant to use the traditional media. The key message here is that the traditional media is becoming increasingly inefficient. The winners of the future will be the companies who realize it now, decide to do something about it and setup an alternative advertising concept (like permission marketing) early enough. If you are not doing it, your competition will for sure.