Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends, And Friends Into Customers

Are you guilty of proposing marriage to multitudes of strangers who don’t know you, and who, quite frankly, don't give a darn? Here's why an expensive suit and designer shoes WILL NOT automatically turn you into a Master Marketer....

I’m currently reading a book by Internet marketing pioneer Seth Godin – the founder of 'Yoyodyne' (later bought by 'Yahoo') and the creator of 'Squidoo' -- and there's an analogy I'd like to share with you from the book that’s sure to put a smile on your face.

Even if you’re familiar with this illustration, it's such a gem and applies so well to what we are dealing with in our industry right now that I'm sure you can stand to hear it again :-)

The following is from chapter two of “Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends, And Friends Into Customers”, and this particular segment is called, “The Two Ways To Get Married.”


I'm quoting:

"The Interruption Marketer buys an extremely expensive suit. New shoes. Fashionable accessories. Then, working with the best database and marketing strategists, selects the demographically ideal singles bar.

Walking into the singles bar, the Interruption Marketer marches up to the nearest person and proposes marriage.

If turned down, the Interruption Marketer repeats this process on every person in the bar.

If the Interruption Marketer comes up empty-handed after spending the entire evening proposing, it is obvious that the blame should be placed on the suit and the shoes. The tailor is fired. The strategy expert who picked the bar is fired.

And the Interruption Marketer tries again at a different singles bar.
If this sounds familiar, it should. It’s the way most large marketers look at the world. They hire an agency. They build fancy ads. They “research” the ideal place to run the ads. They interrupt people and hope that one in a hundred will go ahead and buy something. Then, when they fail, they fire their agency!

The other way to get married is a lot more fun, a lot more rational, and a lot more successful.

It’s called dating.
A Permission Marketer goes on a date. If it goes well, the two of them go on another date. And then another. Until, after ten or twelve dates, both sides can really communicate with each other about their needs and desires.

After twenty dates they meet each other’s families.
Finally, after three or four months of dating, the Permission Marketer proposes marriage.

Permission Marketing is just like dating. It turns strangers into friends, and friends into lifetime customers. Many of the rules of dating apply, and so do many of the benefits."

End quote.

A couple of pages later, as he goes more into detail on what he calls “the five stages of the dating process”, Godin says (-- and, again, I'm quoting):

"The Permission Marketer must work to reinforce the incentive, to be sure that the attention continues.(...)
Along with reinforcing the incentive, the fourth step is to increase the level of permission the marketer receives from the potential customer..."


( And here’s the part that really cracked me up :-)


“Now I wont go into detail on what step of the dating process this corresponds to, but in marketing terms, the goal is to motivate the consumer to give more and more permission over time...”


End quote.

(Godin then goes on to talk about what types of “permissions” a marketer can obtain from his customer; permission to gather more data about them, permission to offer a new category of product their consideration, etc., etc., and about how the marketer uses the permission he has obtained to get the customer to eventually say, “I do”….turning permission into profits.)

Pretty humorous, huh?

Happy dating, everyone!



PS: If you want to check out Godin's website, it's http://SethGodin.com. And, no -- I'm not an affiliate :-)
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Lena Bjorna is an actress-turned-network-marketer, specializing in Internet marketing and personal branding. She and her team of marketing professionals offer serious but struggling entrepreneurs a step-by-step guide to true financial freedom. Free info and email bootcamp at http://www.LenaBjorna.com and http://www.NewCoffeeHouseLetter.com.