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In 1999, Seth Godin published his work “Permission Marketing,” probably without knowing that 10 years later, inbound marketing would globally promote its postulates.
In the following article, we will analyze the most important points of the book to understand why after a decade, this bestseller remains important to the philosophy of inbound marketing .
But first, let's tell you about the author and his career in the world of business and marketing.
Surely, you have read his name in some publication on social networks quoting his emblematic phrases, however, have you wondered what his story is?
Seth Godin is an American businessman of Jewish origin who graduated with two degrees: Computer Science and Philosophy from Tufts University located in Somerville, Medford. He holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from Stanford Business School.
What is your work history?
From 1983 to 1986, he worked as a brand manager at Spinnaker Software, where he led a team that developed the first generation of multimedia products.
In 1995, he founded Yoyodyne Entertainment, a company specializing in interactive marketing. Its services included creating online promotional programs, such as games, contests and raffles for Internet users. It was therefore a fairly innovative business model for the time.
In October 1998, the company was acquired by Yahoo!. For his work, that same year Seth Godin received the Momentum Award for his achievements in the Internet industry.
Today, this author writes daily on his blog reflecting on the digital world. He also keeps his ideas alive by creating projects for companies that want to authentically connect with their communities.
His company altMBA is an example of this. It is an online academy of workshops for entrepreneurs from all over the world, where classes are taught on marketing, storytelling, securing buy-in, management, among others.
Get to know the companies that have received classes at their academy:
Incredible, isn't it? Now, after knowing who the author is, we present his work to you.
What is permission marketing?
It is a work that highlights the importance of turning strangers into friends and friends into customers. In the language and methodology of inbound marketing, it would be converting visitors into leads and customers into promoters.
This book is divided into twelve chapters. The first, entitled “The marketing crisis that money won’t solve,” exposes the same problem that the founders of Hubspot and inbound marketing realized: the saturation of invasive advertising on television, radio, and print media.
Interruption marketing
This type of advertising was called “ interruption marketing” and Godin explains that its name arose because the objective of these advertisements was to interrupt what the viewer was doing to persuade him with unnecessary products and/or services.
In the author's words:
“Almost no one comes home looking forward to the junk mail waiting in the mailbox. Almost no one reads People magazine for the ads. Few look forward to the three minutes of ads that interrupt television shows.”
What a reality! Nowadays, as active users of the Internet and social networks, we do not want to consume content that does not suit our tastes and interests.
Some data that surprised us from the work is that by 1999 it was estimated that the average American consumer would see about 300 advertising messages a day and 1,000,000 in a year.
He also mentions how in a simple trip to the supermarket people were exposed to more than 10,000 advertising messages and in a simple hour of television they could see 40 commercials.
In this regard, what are the main reasons why interruption marketing is at risk of failure? Seth Godin sums them up this way:
Humans have a limited attention span: you can't “see everything, remember everything, do everything.”
Humans have a limited amount of money: they cannot buy everything that is sold to them.
This is a mechanism that ends up being a trap with no way out: if many companies produce the same product (for example, sports shoes) there is so much supply on the market that demand decreases and this supply has to be made more effective through disruptive advertising in order to capture the attention of consumers.
But increasing that advertising exposure requires a lot of money and that would mean generating more noise and invasive advertising.
Permission Marketing: The Solution to This Problem
In light of these problems, Godin proposes a solution in the following: permission marketing.
It consists of a way of offering the consumer the opportunity to voluntarily qatar number for whatsapp decide whether they want to be the recipient of advertising.
This author establishes three characteristic elements of permission marketing .
It is expected: consumers are expecting to receive such advertisements.
It's personal : Messages are directly linked to the individual's interests.
It is relevant: the topics and content offered are useful to the consumer.
Do these inbound marketing features sound familiar to you ? Because they do to us!
Godin then outlines five steps for customer engagement that are most closely related to the inbound methodology.
The first of these is to provide an incentive to the consumer that allows the marketer to capture their attention.
Regarding this, the author states that “the incentive you offer the client can range from information and entertainment to a contest with a single winner and a direct payment for having paid attention.”
This incentive can be related to content offers that are provided to a user within a website in exchange for their contact information. For example: ebooks, templates, podcasts, webinars, guides, among others.
After this first incentive, which represents the “permission” that Godin refers to, marketing professionals can begin to offer their products and/or services from a more personalized perspective and focused on the needs of sales prospects.
Next, among the steps to compare a client, he points out the importance of constantly renewing these incentives, since over time they can lose effectiveness.
The longer this process of “courtship” and exchange of incentives continues, the more customers will grant permission to receive advertising content from brands.
Here is an image that summarizes these steps more clearly:
By doing this, permission marketing cuts through the noise and speaks to potential customers as friends, not strangers.
This personalized communication anticipated by the client generates a more important effect than a “message sent in a random place and at an erratic time,” as the author states in the work.
Ultimately, all of these principles had a great influence on the inbound marketing we know today and it is very interesting to analyze how a work written 20 years ago has so much importance today.
Inbound marketing can be said to be the implementation of permission marketing using new technologies and communication platforms such as social networks and blogs.
That is why we reiterate the great contribution that Seth Godin made in his time by going further, establishing parameters to create more consumer-friendly marketing.