Why Permission Marketing is the Secret to Prospecting

Seth Godin, the father of permission marketing, wrote a fantastic book on Permission Marketing (He’ll even give you four chapters free.) He explains the concept in this Fast Company article.

Marketing is a contest for people’s attention. Thirty years ago, people gave you their attention if you simply asked for it. You’d interrupt their TV program, and they’d listen to what you had to say. You’d put a billboard on the highway, and they’d look at it. That’s not true anymore. This year, the average consumer will see or hear 1 million marketing messages - that’s almost 3,000 per day. No human being can pay attention to 3,000 messages every day.

The interruption model is extremely effective when there’s not an overflow of interruptions. If you tap someone on the shoulder at church, you’re going to get that person’s attention. But there’s too much going on in our lives for us to enjoy being interrupted anymore. So our natural response is to ignore the interruptions…

Interruption marketing is giving way to a new model that I call permission marketing. The challenge for companies is to persuade consumers to raise their hands - to volunteer their attention. You tell consumers a little something about your company and its products, they tell you a little something about themselves, you tell them a little more, they tell you a little more - and over time, you create a mutually beneficial learning relationship. Permission marketing is marketing without interruptions.

You still have to get people’s attention in the first place, of course, and that still costs lots of money. But that’s the beginning of the story, not the end. You have to turn attention into permission, permission into learning, and learning into trust. Then you can get consumers to change their behavior.

In other words, when you ask permission to contact them, you immediately show your prospects that you respect their opinions. Too often, real estate agents try to interrupt their prospects by sending mail, which takes time out of their day to read, or by running print ads, which interrupt how they read their magazine or newspapers, or by advertising on tv, which interrupts their tv show. Then they assume that should be enough to make prospects want to contact them.

With permission marketing, you assume that one contact isn’t enough and build your marketing system around building a relationship with prospects. However, now you’ve gotten their attention. They’ve raised their hands and told you they are interested - but may not be quite ready to buy - but are ok with you sending them more information.

Do you see the difference? When we ask for correspondence, we’re much happier about receiving it. When we don’t, we view it as a nuisance to get rid of. For telemarketing, we ask to join the Do Not Call list. For email, we opt out or block the sender’s email address. Yet, most of us love to buy - especially if we see something we must have. We want to learn more about it - which is best for us, how we can get the best deal, common mistakes people make when buying, etc.

Your prospects don’t have the time or attention to read every piece of information - articles, advertising, mail, email, websites, books - that are out there. They filter out stuff that isn’t relevant. They throw out or delete the stuff that has the gull to annoy or irritate them. So when you send them unwanted email or direct mail, you fall into this category. But when they tell you they’re interested and grant you permission to continue marketing to them, then they’re far more receptive.

Will Prospects Actually Grant Me Permission?
Yes, they will - if you offer information that is valuable to them and specific to their wants, needs and concerns. Generic stuff won’t cut it. If they can get the same information from you that every other agent in town is also offering for free, your stuff won’t be perceived as valuable.