The full title of this book by Seth Godin is
Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers
In my review posted on Amazon.co.uk, I gave the book Three Stars.
Here is my review.
A good idea that has dated as our needs change.
You are bombarded with thousands of advertising messages each day. There is only have one way to react to maintain your sanity – to develop a stronger screening mechanism so that the more messages you see and hear, the more you don’t even have to even think about them to ignore.
You literally just don’t see them.
This creates a vicious circle as it forces marketers to develop more extreme methods to try to capture our attention.
This traditional advertising approach is what Seth Godin calls Interruption Marketing. It’s first purpose is to interrupt your thoughts about your problems, your own agenda and instead focus on the advertiser and their agenda.
The author offers an alternative and it’s called Permission Marketing. Instead of shouting to interrupt and gain attention, imagine having customers and prospects who want to pay attention to your promotional messages because they have given you permission to send them.
According to the author, permission marketing is anticipated (people look forward to hearing from you), personal and relevant. It is the equivalent of old fashioned dating. It builds the relationship slowly over time so that when you do ask, the chances of hearing a “Yes” are much higher.
The idea of permission marketing is a full five star idea but the book has been padded so it loses a star.
The book was written in 1997 when the Internet represented the bright future and it is interesting to see how many predictions have come true. Email was the main source of permission marketing, even though they was still plenty of spam. Then social media was emphasised as the way to build relationships. Sadly both have been abused by marketers and also by us consumers. Our interests are transitory. What’s important one month is often irrelevant three months later but we still receive emails, we still have that link in Facebook and we still follow them on Twitter.
I’d like to see an update on the Permission Marketing idea that accepts that we often only want a limited number of close, long term relationships. I think the Internet still holds a big hope but it’s through search marketing that gives us a chance to access what we want, only when we want it.
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