The Best Marketing is Permission-Based Marketing

When I owned a warehouse and sold merchandise to independent retailers, I knew I could buy 100 cases of just about anything and sell it almost at will. Why? Because I had a big list of customers who wanted to know when I had a good deal on something. In the early days, I would call them one-by-one. when fax machines became ubiquitous, I’d send fax offers. When email came around, I sent emails. The point is: having a list of customers who welcome your offers and marketing messages is as good as gold…like money in the bank.

Hi, I’m Andrew Mazer or from Small Business University and this is your one good idea video which goes hand in hand with The One Good Idea Newsletter: subscribe to to it! CLICK HERE.

I want to tell you about a subject that’s a really important subject for just about any kind of business and it’s called permission based marketing. What is that? Permission based marketing is when people actually ask you to send them your marketing information to send them your advertising. Now, how does that happen? When people subscribe to your list, when people say, sign me up for your newsletter or sign me up to receive your specials and coupons…when they give you their business card and they drop it in the, fish bowl or the basket, or when they sign up on your website, They’re giving you permission to market to them. This is a gift!

I’m teaching small business owners, especially those in restaurants, retail businesses, service companies how important it is to try to capture customers’ contact information and potential customers’ contact information.

How do you get peoples’ contact information? You make a value proposition: a good offer, a coupon, or some good information are good incentives to offer in exchange for their name and email address. This can be executed very easily if you don’t know how to do it yourself. It’s easy to set up. (We can help you with this, just ask). It’s very, very simple and suddenly you can start to build a list of people who say, “Yes, send me your stuff!”

Interruption Marketing-The Opposite of Permission-Based Marketing

The opposite of permission based marketing is called interruption marketing. This is the kind of marketing that lands on your kitchen table, you see on TV commercials while you’re watching a show or hear on the radio. Clipper Magazine, Money Mailer, and ValPack,are example of interruption marketing you may be marketing with. It’s an interruption because people haven’t asked for it. They need to deal with it regardless if they open it to see its contents or not. As you can imagine, most of the people toss in in the trash without looking at it.

Interruption marketing is hitting a lot of non-prospects and it’s more expensive. About 100% of the permission-based marketing list prospects. Why else would they give you permission to send them your marketing message?

Why Some Business Owners Resist This Type of Marketing

Lots of business owners don’t want to send their customers email. They don’t want to be a bother. This is wrong thinking.

When people ask you for your email information, you’re not being a burden to them. “I don’t, I don’t want to be that guy that bombards people with email.” Well guess what? Permission based marketing means they asked you for it. It’s almost your obligation to send them your stuff. You don’t have to be worried about bombarding. People will always be able opt out of your list, and some will…that’s okay. Most people will stay on.

Email Marketing is a Numbers Game

Let’s say you get 1000 people on your list. That may sound like a lot, but it’s really not a lot. If you’re in the restaurant business and if you advertise in print and things likeGroupon , people will visit your website in large numbers. If you give them a good incentive on your website, they will opt into your list. You can build a very big list rather quickly once you have a plan to do it.

Let’s say for example, we started out of the out of the thousand subscribers, every time you send out an email, on average, about 30 percent of those people will open your email. That’s 300 people will open your email and then if you have something they want, about 10 percent of those 300,(between 5 and 10 percent…let’s say 7 percent) will end up doing business with you. That’s 21 people. People generally don’t just show up at the restaurant alone, they’ll bring somebody else with them, maybe their whole family, so this 21 people could easily turn into 50 or more. Now this turns into some significant money.

What about those other 70 percent of people who don’t open your email? Well, people don’t always buy. They don’t always have time to look, but they can delete your email or ignore it altogether, but guess what? They will look at your at, at their email inbox and they’ll see the name of your business and the subject line and they may choose not to open it this time, but you’ll still make an impression on their brain. They’ll still remember you. This is a way to stay in top of mind position. There are businesses out there that spend millions and millions of dollars on TV ads and radio ads just to stay in top of my position.

Reminding Your Customers You Exist

A lot of very big companies spend millions of dollars just to keep their brand burned into our consciousness. You can do that with all the thousands of people who already know you. It’s not their job to remember to do business with you, it’s your job to remind them you exist and just by having one email showing up in their email inbox once a week or once every other week, will remind them that you exist. This matters. This will really help you but you don’t have to spend a lot…this is pennies.

Okay, so permission based marketing is yours. It’s a 21st century phenomenon and you can add it to your marketing tool box. It’s not difficult. It’s very, very cheap and you can even automate most of the process. I urge you to look into permission based marketing, email marketing, and build a big valuable marketing list so you can push a couple buttons and get customers to make your phone’s ring, your doors swing, and your cash register cha-ching. Ask me if you need help with this CLICK HERE.

I hope you enjoyed this episode of the one good idea video newsletter, and if you have any questions, if I can help you in any way, just let me know. If you want to subscribe to our digital newsletter, which will send you a about once weekly or twice monthly, just go to www.smallbusinessu.org/ogi which stands for One Good Idea and that’ll take you right to the page. Thanks a lot for reading/watching and I hope to hear from you. See you next time.