Permissive Marketing

Permission Marketing
One of today’s more common axioms is, “When a person is confronted with the unknown, they are inclined to do more of what they know.” When it comes to businesses’ marketing and advertising efforts this rings very true. A big unknown that many business people are facing in today’s difficult times is, “Why are people not responding to my marketing and advertising efforts the way they used to?” Too often those same business people answer that unknown with more marketing and more advertising. A question they should ask themselves is, “If my marketing efforts are producing poor results, will more of that marketing produce better results?” Logically the answer is “NO!”
So……… how can you improve sales? Unfortunately there is no simple answer to that question. There are a lot of complex factors that need to be addressed, and none of the solutions are easy and cheap. In fact, answering that question is kinda like eating a 500 lb. chicken dumpling. How do you eat a 500 lb. chicken dumpling? The answer is; one bite at a time.
A good first bite out of the question on how to improve sales would be to take a hard look at the marketing plan that you have presently in place, and see if Permission Marketing might not offer a number of good solutions on how to make those marketing efforts more successful. If you have no marketing plan in place Permission Marketing is still a good place to start before creating a marketing plan for the twenty-teens.
Seth Godin coined the phrase Permission Marketing in his new book of the same name. Permission Marketing is getting permission from your marketing target before sending them your marketing message. How do you do that? The answer is by offering them something of value in exchange for that permission. Before we go into the how’s and what’s of permission marketing let’s take a look at today’s most common form of marketing or advertising which Godin coined Interruptive Marketing.
Everyone in today’s world is familiar with Interruptive Marketing. Television shows are interrupted with commercials. Radio broadcasts, even from Public Radio, are interrupted with messages from people who support this programing. Newspaper articles are interrupted by advertisements. The scenery on the drive to Grand Ma’s house is interrupted by billboards. Your trip into your home is interrupted by your having to stop at the paper recycling bin to throw away all of the mail-outs you picked up from your mail box. Even commercial free satellite radio is interrupted by messages regarding other satellite radio programing. Seth Godin asserts that the average American is assailed by over one million interruptive messages a year, or over three thousand of these messages a day. How has the average American responded to this assault of advertisement? By ignoring them! Think about it. When was the last time you made a purchase decision based on an interruptive advertising message? What makes you think anybody will purchase your product or service from an interruptive message?
When I first read Seth Godin’s book on Permission Marketing I thought that it was something truly new and innovative. It was only later, when I started paying attention to the advertising directed at me that I realized that this is something that has been going on for some time. The earliest and most blatant Permission Marketing efforts I’m aware of has to be from the financial planners who have offered to buy you a steak dinner in exchange for your listening to their sales pitch. In fact, I can even remember the dinner my present financial planner bought for me and my wife. Then I remembered when my youngest daughter purchased her first new car. A month later J D Powers and Associates sent her a survey with a crisp new one dollar bill enclosed. For one buck they got every shred of information my daughter had to give them. What’s even more astonishing is that my daughter is one of those people who is not really interested in money. When she was younger I’d try to bribe her by offering her five bucks if she’d go walk the dogs. She would counter by offering me five bucks if I would quit bugging her about the dogs. Now this same person spent a good ten minutes filling out a survey for a single dollar. Not only that, when J D Powers sent her another letter a month later she grabbed it and read it immediately, hoping (I think) for another dollar that she didn’t care about. It wasn’t the dollar that prompted this reaction from my youngest; it was that someone had given her an unexpected gift. Everybody likes getting gifts. Today Allstate Insurance is giving away a lifetime membership to their Roadside Assistance Program to every driver in the United States. All you have to do is call them. And….. if they give you a free quote on your insurance the first tow is on them.
So, how can you implement a Permission Marketing plan for your business? Early in 2012 Express Autobody will be holding a series of seminars on marketing, one of which will be a forum on Permission Marketing. These seminars are free. If you’d like a condensed version of what Seth Godin delivers in his book you can click onto our link, SETH GODIN’S PERMISSION MARKETING on our blog which you can find at Express-Autobody.com. If you really want to get the low down on Permission Marketing then purchase Seth Godin’s book from Amazon.com , or visit Seth Godin’s blog at SethGodin.com.
With just a little information and a lot imagination you can create an effective marketing plan that just may turn things around for you and for your company. Good luck!
Understand that Express Autobody is not in the business to sell you marketing solutions. We are giving these solutions away for free, with the hope that the people benefiting will be grateful enough to recommend our company to their customers, friends, family members, employees, and anyone else in their sphere of influence. Thank you!