In his book, Seth Godin brings us back to the root of marketing, which is essentially the conversation between brand and customer. For your message to be heard, you need an attentive listener, and that can only be attained when someone is actively engaged. In this day and age of data privacy, it is crucial for us to have permission from our audience to build a trusting relationship with them.
Quick Notes:
The traditional model of mass marketing, which Seth Godin labels as 'Interruption Marketing' no longer works. The advertising space is saturated. There are too many ads competing for the consumer's attention. This is overwhelming for the consumer who ends up tuning out from all the noise, rendering all of these ads ineffective.
Seth Godin's 'Permission Marketing' is all about enticing consumers to voluntarily give you their time and attention and actively listen to your message. It is an opt-in approach to marketing.
The first instance is to offer a no-cost opportunity to invite potential customers to engage with your brand. Once you have their permission, you can then begin building a relationship with them.
Once you have established a relationship with your customer, it is important to build trust overtime. This is done with personalised and nuanced communication as you better understand your customers' needs.
Remember that not all relationships are equal. Customers may have different levels of trust with your brand, and with that comes different levels of permission. Situational permission is a fleeting permission customers give to brands at a certain time and place, but does not extend beyond that (e.g. salesman at your door). Intravenous permission is the highest level of permission where customers allow brands to act on their behalf (e.g. a brand making recommendations and purchases for you on a subscription model).
The internet is a potent space for permission marketing. Direct ads should be used as means to get a customer's permission to begin a conversation. It should not be the end of it. Once you have the user's permission, you can begin unlocking great data potential to help personalise your marketing to the customer.
It is important not to abuse the trust of the customers that have opted in to receive marketing from you as this trust is fragile and can be revoked at any time.
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