You're more likely to hit the target if you aim for it. And you're
more likely to sell to someone if you've convinced them to ask
about it
Seth Godin, Yahoo!'s Internet marketing pioneer and the inventor
of "permission marketing", is no fan of his profession. He preaches
that much advertising today is unanticipated, impersonal,
irrelevant junk. He wants to change the way almost everything is
marketed so that the consumer is put in control of what they see
and hear.
Godin feels that he has a right to take issue with his peers. He
calculates that every day he has just 17 minutes that's not
occupied by either his young family or his demanding job. That's
why he despises marketeers who track down something he's interested
in and then interrupt his enjoyment with an ad - in newspapers and
magazines, on the radio and TV, by post and e-mail, and on the Web.
He hates it, and refers to it disparagingly as "interruptive
marketing".
Is the Net a marketing saviour? Not when you consider that there
are 40 million commercial Web sites out there, only 125m people
surfing on a regular basis, and the average consumer sees 3,000
marketing messages every day. As Godin says, if you put an ad on a
Web site exactly where you hope it will interrupt someone, it's
still like walking into a bar and propositioning a total
stranger.
"Marketeers have a lot of homework to do if we're to start
making Web advertising pay," says the marketing heretic. "Web
advertising is in big trouble because two things are true of
consumers today - very few life or death purchasing decisions
remain because everything is good enough, and people are too busy
to research everything.
"Somehow, marketeers have to break through the clutter. One way
is to organise your company so you can date your prospects. This
will turn them from strangers into friends and eventually from
friends into customers."
That's what Godin's Grandpa did. He sold things. He met people,
learned what they wanted to buy, understood their problems, crafted
a solution, and they bought it. This marketing model, says Godin,
is returning today.
"It's 'permission marketing'," he says. "Permission is the right
and privilege to market and sell to people who want to be marketed
and sold to. This way you will always be the yellow box." Gaining
prospects' permission to market to them isn't rocket science. Just
make sure there's something in it for them. Make them a
personalised offer they can't resist and which makes them contact
you.
Godin concludes, "To the consumer, everything on the Web is
another pumpkin in a big pumpkin patch. Marketing's job is to make
sure a customer always picks the same pumpkin - the yellow box.
Only permission marketing can achieve that.
"That's why permission is the only asset worth building on the
Web."
- Further reading: "Permission Marketing" by Seth Godin,1999,
ISBN 0-684-85636-0.
Web sites adopting permission marketing
- www.lifeminders.com - You say what subjects you're interested
in - family, entertainment, personal finance etc - and the site
markets to you. So far, 12.5m consumers have signed up.
- www.aa.com - Within months of launching this service the
airline had the personal permission of millions of potential
customers to sell to them once a week - a marketeer's
dream!
- www.referrals.com - Launching soon, it will offer money -
thousands of dollars - in return for finding job candidates.
Simply, if you can suggest a friend for a job vacancy and that
friend gets hired, you get paid.
Examples of permission marketing
Gain permission to send marketing e-mails and letters and they
are far more likely to be read.
- Or "Send me the date of renewal of your mobile phone contract
and I'll e-mail you our best offer at that time", instead of trying
to sell every day through an ignored newspaper ad.
- Give free valuable information. "Buy plants from us and we'll
remind you how to care for them by e-mail at appropriate times of
the year and include our latest offerings". The new UK garden shop
site at www.crocus.co.uk offers this garden service.
- Give away money. "£500 if someone you know sells their life
assurance policy to us".
- Identify people in financial trouble. Invite them to, "Call
this number - we'll help you out of debt".
Seth Gogin - CV
- Vice president of direct marketing for Yahoo!
- Professor at New York University.
- Founded Yoyodyne, the first company to create promotions and
direct mail campaigns online and the pioneer of permission
marketing, before selling it to Yahoo! in 1998.
- Graduated from Tufts University in 1982 with a degree in
computer science and philosophy.
- MBA in marketing from Stanford Business School.
- From 1983 to 1986, he worked as a brand manager at Spinnaker
Software where he led the team that developed the first generation
of multimedia products, working with forward-thinking authors such
as Arthur C Clarke and Michael Crichton.
- Recipient of the US 1998 Momentum Award, which honours
outstanding Internet industry accomplishments.