May I? - business advertising and marketing techniques
Author: Entrepreneur

GET YOUR BUSINESS IN FRONT OF CONSUMERS THE SETH GODIN - AUTHOR AND MARKETER EXTRAORDINAIRE - WAY.

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING ARE INCREASINGLY COSTLY, YET DECREASINGLY EFFECTIVE. MARKETING GURU JAY CONRAD LEVINSON SAYS A CONSUMER HAS TO BE EXPOSED TO AN AD 27 TIMES BEFORE IT HAS THE DESIRED EFFECT. ONLY 10 PERCENT OF VIEWERS REMEMBER TV ADS THE NEXT DAY, EVEN THOSE THEY'VE SEEN BEFORE (AND NEVER MIND ACTUALLY RESPONDING). DIRECT MAIL IS CONSIDERED SUCCESSFUL IF IT DRAWS A 2 PERCENT RESPONSE. AND THE ADVENT OF A PLETHORA OF CABLE TV STATIONS AND, OF COURSE, THE INTERNET DILUTE THE EFFECT EVEN FURTHER.

The problem is, we all suffer from an attention deficit, argues Seth Godin, marketing expert and permission marketing director for leading Internet portal Yahoo!, in his latest book, Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers (Simon & Schuster).

Interruption marketing, designed to capture attention for a moment, doesn't work like it used to. Godin says the only way for a company to break through the message clutter is to ask potential customers for permission to send carefully targeted messages - and give them an incentive to pay attention.

Permission marketing, which promotes cooperative interaction between companies and prospective clients, often produces astonishing results: It isn't unusual for 70 percent of an audience to read some of the messages, while 35 percent actually respond (and you can measure this precisely, unlike with most conventional advertising), says Godin.