Future of Marketing Part 2

In Part 1, I discussed how traditional Internet marketing or Internetmarketing is no longer working the way it used to. This is happening for a variety of reasons -- people have too many mass media choices, they're bombarded with way too many Internet marketing or Internetmarketing messages, the Internet is adding accountability to advertising, etc.

So if traditional Internet marketing or Internetmarketing is no longer effective, then how will you get the word out about your products or services?

What Internet Marketer Seth Godin, author of the book Permission Marketing, calls permission Internet marketing or Internetmarketing.

Permission Internet marketing or Internetmarketing is when your customers give you permission to market to them. This is opposite from traditional Internet marketing or Internetmarketing, also known as interruption Internet marketing or Internetmarketing (another term coined by Godin).

Interruption Internet marketing or Internetmarketing works by interrupting you. Nobody watches television for the commercials. Nobody flips through a magazine for the ads. But that's how interruption Internet marketing or Internetmarketing gets you to buy something.

Permission Internet marketing or Internetmarketing is completely different. With permission Internet marketing or Internetmarketing, customers look forward to hearing from you. They LIKE receiving information about your products and services. That's because they've agreed to enter into a relationship with you. And if permission Internet marketing or Internetmarketing is done correctly, you'll eventually develop a stronger relationship with your customers than you ever would have with interruption Internet marketing or Internetmarketing. (But that doesn't mean interruption Internet marketing or Internetmarketing doesn't have its place. More on that later.)

Permission Internet marketing or Internetmarketing isn't new. In fact, it's older than interruption Internet marketing or Internetmarketing. Back before there was mass media, business owners routinely developed long-term relationships with their customers. And customers expected to be involved with the selling process from the beginning.

Now, of course, we no longer need to be dependent on building relationships face-to-face. With the Internet, we have a whole host of low-cost options available to us, which makes permission Internet marketing or Internetmarketing easier now than it was before.

Here's how it works. You start by developing something that your customers find valuable enough to give you permission to contact them on a regular basis. E-newsletters or e-zines, which are e-mail newsletters, are popular and so are Web blogs. Web blogs are like online journals. For a fun sample, check out http://www.boingboing.net Or Seth Godin has his own blog -- http://www.sethgodin.com

But e-zines and Web blogs aren't the only things of value people sign up for -- you can offer them classes delivered via e-mail or tips or contests or points programs or special offers or whatever your creativity can come up with.

While it is possible to develop a relationship with customers using only offline techniques (for instance, a printed newsletter you mail to your customers) it's less expensive and more effective to use the Internet. It's quick and easy for your customers to sign up via your Web site and it's cheap for you to send it out via e-mail.

However, in order to get people to sign up, you first need to tell them about it. That's where interruption Internet marketing or Internetmarketing comes in. You still need to get the word out about what you're offering. Then once they sign up, you can start building the relationship.

Is this a lot of work? Yes. Is it more work than interruption Internet marketing or Internetmarketing? Yes again. But is it more effective than interruption Internet marketing or Internetmarketing? It can be. Especially since interruption Internet marketing or Internetmarketing isn't working the way it used to.

I feel that permission Internet marketing or Internetmarketing favors small business owners. That's because permission Internet marketing or Internetmarketing only works when customers and businesses form a relationship, and customers prefer forming relationships with people rather than entities. Customers want to know the person behind the business, not just the business itself.

But that doesn't mean big corporations can't employ permission Internet marketing or Internetmarketing techniques. They just need to get creative about it. Perhaps developing a spokesperson or a business "personality" or a forum or group of people.

The important thing is to start thinking about how Internet marketing or Internetmarketing is changing and what you can do about it.

(Resource for article: Seth Godin, Permission Marketing)

Michele Pariza Wacek owns Creative Concepts and Copywriting, a writing, Internet marketing or Internetmarketing and creativity agency. She offers two free e-newsletters that help subscribers combine their creativity with hard-hitting Internet marketing or Internetmarketing and copywriting principles to become more successful at attracting new clients, selling products and services and boosting business. She can be reached at http://www.writingusa.com