Shouting at everyone…

As a population, we are bombarded with messages every day – the actual number is hotly disputed, some say 3000, some 10 000, but whichever way you look at it, there’s an awful lot of information that we haven’t asked to receive being shoved in front of us each and every day. As a coping mechanism, we have learnt to tune most of the ‘clutter’ out, especially if we’ve seen it before. We have developed ‘advertising immunity’ – the ability to filter through information without even seeing most of it.

So when the majority of advertisements aren’t even getting through, what options do marketers have to get through the clutter? Some go for saturation – placing more and more advertisements, increasing the noise (and not just figuratively either, they really do increase the volume of their ads) and ultimately reducing the effectiveness of each ad. Some make ads that are increasingly outrageous and attention grabbing, thinking that this will be the silver bullet they need for market penetration, but although people might remember the content of the ads they’ve seen, they often can’t recall the name of the advertiser – while such ads they create excitement about a type of product or service and increase awareness of the need for it, they fail to point customers in the right direction, and people buy wherever they can find the product. So, the agency wins a Golden Pencil, the advertiser spends millions on making people laugh (but not buy), and most of the customers run straight into the arms of the competition. Ouch.

This type of marketing – or advertising to be more precise – is known as ‘interruption marketing’. The aim of the game is for the advertiser to make you stop and look at their ads … on TV, on a bus, in a magazine, one the web, even with skywriting. The options are virtually limitless, and so are the numbers of ads competing for attention. As the noise escalates, so does the cost of getting people’s attention. And it’s a game that very few can afford to play long enough to succeed.  The ones who do succeed interrupt people constantly with new offerings almost every week, spending more on better directors, getting bigger sets, choosing stranger places to put their ads, becoming more controversial, trying to be funnier than the other guy, and sometimes, just trying to out-weird the other guy. (As I write this there is a well-known chocolate company showing an ad (in prime time no less) with a gorilla playing the drums to Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight – which he’s listening to on those little white earphones (that most people would recognise, I’m sure). What does it mean? Who knows? It’s interesting, it’s weird, it’s certainly different. But does it make me want to rush out and buy a bar of purple-wrapped chocolate? No more than normal.) Some companies will keep switching from one form of media to another, from paying kids to lurk in forums and rave about products to going back to good old-fashioned direct mail.

But does any of it actually work?

Seth Godin likens this type of advertising to trying to get married by wearing the best suit money can buy, having a team of the best copywriters work on pick-up lines, having a comprehensive analysis done to find the location of the most demographically suitable prospects and then going there and asking people one at a time to marry you. Sure, you get to talk to a lot of people, but how many of them are going to say yes?

So what’s the alternative?

Whispering in the ears of a select group…

Permission marketing is about not interrupting people on an ongoing basis. It’s not about trying to compete with the existing clutter, but rather going around it. To continue the marriage metaphor, permission marketing is the equivalent of dating – you venture a smaller request that’s easier to say yes to than ‘Do you want to get married?’ So you ask someone out for a cup of coffee. Assuming all goes well on that first date, you up the ante and ask them out for dinner, then a movie, a weekend away … the relationship has a chance to build organically. It’s about turning strangers into acquaintances, acquaintances into friends, friends into customers and customers into loyal fans that will stay with you for life.

Permission marketing does involve interrupting people – but just once, right at the start. You ask them out for coffee by offering something of value in exchange for their permission to continue building the relationship. It’s about asking a customer to raise their hand and opt into the dialogue, then filling their hand with something of value that makes them want to come back for more. And then you ask them on another date … and another … and another. The great part about permission marketing is that you both know why you’re here. The ‘pitch’ is out there in the open, with each message building on the one before it and being keenly anticipated by the people you are marketing to. It’s a long-term dialogue that yields long-term results, and because of its almost limitless potential to be personalised it becomes symbiotic – people stop feeling as though they need to be on the defensive while they are being ‘sold to’ and start feeling as though they are worth more to you than just the ‘quick sale’.

In the world of the internet, which is like a sped-up version of reality (it’s a veritable marketing hothouse … direct mail with no waiting on postage and virtually no cost) you see this all the time.

You visit a site about knitting (okay, stay with me here … and imagine you like knitting) and before you know it you’re being offered a free ebook on creative knitting techniques in exchange for your name, email address, and permission to contact you again. Before you know it tips are bouncing into your inbox (knit one, purl one, knit one, purl one) and then a few offers for ‘special’ deals, then the request that you join the subscription for their magazine or wool club … all with your permission, of course. And because you opted in to this dialogue, you are more likely to read and respond to these offers than if they just showed up out of the blue.

Sales trainer Chet Holmes talks about educational marketing, highlighting that in any given market, only 7% of people are active buyers, 35% know they have a problem to solve but haven’t searched for a solution, another 35% don’t know they have a problem, and the rest are loyal to their current brand and won’t change. Permission marketing expands your audience from the 7% to the other groups, so your marketing casts a wider net.

What’s great about this process is that the people who give you permission to contact them have identified themselves as being interested in your offering, if they’re not familiar with your specific products, they’re at least in your field of view. Second, by actively participating in the process and providing you with their details they have lowered your future cost of speaking with them, making them far more profitable prospects than can typically be obtained through interruption marketing.

And it doesn’t just work online – anywhere that you offer up your details in exchange for something, anything, is an example of permission marketing, A club, an association, an offer of free information, opting in to having updated real estate lists emailed to you weekly, anything with automatic replenishment services (Amway is a great example of this) or where the next installment in a series is sent automatically (like those DVD series you buy off TV)  – these are all examples of permission marketing in action.

So how can you use this process to your advantage? How do you break the shackles of traditional interruption marketing and embrace the notion of marketing to people who actually anticipate and want to hear your message? The first step is simple. When you successfully interrupt someone and have their attention, stop throwing away the opportunity to turn that brief interaction onto a lasting relationship. Consider this – someone calls your business with some questions, which you cheerfully answer, offering as much information as you can. They thank you and assure you that while they’re ‘just thinking’ right now, they’ll get back to you soon. Do you know how much that phone call just cost you? Even forgetting that 90% of people who say they’ll call back never do, you spent money somewhere, somehow, to get them to ring in the first place! There is enormous opportunity cost in not creating the groundwork upon which to build a relationship with them.

If Holmes’s theory is accurate, over 70% of the people who make initial contact with you won’t be doing it at the stage in their buying cycle when they’re ready to actually purchase. If you depend in interruption marketing to engage your customer in a transaction at the ‘purchasing’ phase of their buying cycle, it’s going to be a pretty hit and miss affair – and usually more miss than hit. Permission marketing extends the length of your relationship with people; increased communication with them improves your chances of hitting the purchasing phase of their buying cycle and the strengthens their trust in your offering, making them more likely to purchase from you. The concept of permission marketing also ties in with Robert Cialdini’s premise of reciprocity in Influence – the Psychology of Persuasion – the more they accept from you, the more likely they are to ‘return the favour’ and buy from you. (You can read more about Cialdini’s ideas on reciprocity here.)

Attention is currency

In commerce, much like in dating, relationships are the landscape and attention is the currency. The permission marketing approach makes you a welcome sight, rather than an irritating distraction – and each contact is an anticipated next step in the relationship. What marketers then need to do is use their currency to create an asset out of the relationship.  Amazon is without doubt one of the best at doing just that. Amazon has brilliant software, which its system uses to build a profile about you, creating a relationship based on its quiet suppositions of what you like, what you are interested in and what you are likely to respond to. Even if they lose money (which they have done a lot of) their asset is still worth billions of dollars because they have your attention.

Attention is vital for success. In Japan (it seems like about 97% of weird stories originate from Japan…) there are vending machines that will give you stuff for ‘free’ if you give them your attention. You give the machine your attention, watch an ad and out pops a ‘free’ drink. That’s the price they’ve placed on your time, buy into the process (that is, give them permission to market to you by paying for the drink with your time) and you’ve agreed with them. It’s the just another step in the trend of the ‘Noughties’ that’s been dubbed ‘Freeconomics’ – giving people stuff for free in order to market to them and (hopefully) make money from them. You can take a look at a great article about this is at The Age and you can check out more about these vending machines at The Inventor Spot.

The concept of Freeconomics has spread across a vast range of industries – many musicians are offering free downloads, you can exchange your details for free podcasts, e-books, software trials – the list is endless and it’s everywhere. Last week I got some sort of spyware on a computer in my office. My normal toolbox wouldn’t fix it – of course. My friend Google served up a program that would fix it and came in two flavours – free (good diagnostic, but no ‘fix’ mode) and a full-featured paid version. What was interesting was that instead of just handing over $29.95 I could register for anyone of half a dozen alternatives – all opt-in, permission based offers. It was refreshing to see! In the end though I wanted the solution faster than a series of opt in offers could give it to me and I used the plastic.  But the concept was fantastic!

Benefits

Permission based marketing can be more resource hungry than traditional techniques, but its cost effectiveness is also likely to be much higher. Resources are more targeted and communications more adapted to the audience. Put simply, an efficient permission-based marketing campaign will:

•    Improve response rates
•    Develop closer relationships with contacts
•    Increase the effectiveness of your marketing campaign
•    Increase consumer loyalty

Although there is little supporting empirical data from the business-to-business (B2B) arena, research from consumer markets does back up the benefits.

Get permission to start now!

Of course, as with anything, the most important thing you can do is start! So here are some quick tips on how to start your permission marketing process today:

•    Work out what you have that your prospects want, and that they’d exchange their details for. If you don’t have anything what could you put together with the resources you have? Use curiosity. Use novelty. Use a bribe. It’s all bait (the good kind).

•    Ask for permission! Capture their details – but make sure they know you’re doing it and why.

•    When prospects raise their hands, fill them with value – and it doesn’t always have to be expensive ‘stuff’. Perceived value can be just as important, so think about e-books, articles, white papers, podcasts and other low cost, high impact goodies.

•    Keep filling their hands with value – keeping the relationship going is vital.

•    Don’t pitch too hard. People know a pitch is coming – they are smart and have been sold to before, so keep it low key. Remember the idea is to grow the relationship.

•    Create something worth talking about. Think about Seth Godin’s Purple Cow – what’s yours?

•    Use situational permission. I know the example is old, but ‘Would you like fries with that?’ is a great example of situational permission. It’s asking the right question at the right time. (For the record, this question hasn’t been used at a McDonalds for years … since meals were bundled. But it’s still rolled out as a ‘killer question’, which always makes me laugh.)

•    Keep communicating, but not too much. Are you emailing too much? If you are wondering about it, you probably are.  The idea is to build a relationship where people look forward to being contacted, not make them feel like they are being stalked.

•    Give value with each interaction. Remember, you are putting your energy into the ’select few’ – even if that ‘few’ is a big crowd. Frequency of contact and value given each time will convert these strangers to friends. The analogy is used for seeds and a watering can. You have a hundred seeds, and enough water to water each one just once. Or, you can water ten of them ten times. What’s the best bet for getting that seed to grow?

•    Knock your customers out with value. Seth points out that Muhammad Ali didn’t become the heavyweight champion of the world by punching 20 guys once each. He won by hitting one guy twenty times. So, it’s all about knocking your customers out (not literally though!).

•    Never share your permission, because permission rented out is permission lost! Have a privacy policy and don’t break it – relationships are built on integrity and if you break the trust the relationship will crumble.

•    Hold a seminar on a subject that your prospects will like. Interrupt them to make the invitation, but allow the event to create a dialogue. No hard sell … just value. I have seen this work with small events where there is a specialist speaker in a room of just a dozen people. I have also seen it work in a room with 700 people and a dozen different speakers all presenting then selling, presenting then selling. People attending the event knew it was a pitch, but saw the trade off as reasonable given the value that was given away as well. Remember that what works in one scenario won’t necessarily work in another and the way you position it creates the expectation.

The way of the future

In a society where we are increasingly able to block out the ‘white noise’ that surrounds us, having the ability to gain people’s attention will be vital to success. It’s all about asking yourself where you want your marketing spend to end up – do you want to create a killer commercial and air it to millions of people, most of whom either won’t see it because of the new advances in technology that allow us to skip through ads on commercial TV now, won’t remember, or won’t associate with your company? Or do you want to clearly define your focus group and aim your permission marketing campaign toward the select few who are most likely to become actual paying customers? No, you aren’t going to win any awards without a big, splashy ad campaign, but you are more likely to identify and develop relationships with clients who have enormous profit potential – an isn’t that what marketing is meant to do?

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