Marketing Book Review for April: Permission Marketing
| Published: | Apr 19, 2010 | |||
| Author: | Al Harberg | |||
Marketing Book Review
by Al Harberg
This months book:
Permission Marketing:
Turning Strangers Into Friends, and Friends into Customers
by Seth Godin
published by Simon & Schuster.If Godin were talking to an audience of software industry marketers, I believe that he'd be advising us to move advertising money away from banner ads and pop-unders, and start sending newsletters to our customers and prospects.
The main theme of this book is that old-fashioned advertising, which Godin calls "interruption advertising", doesn't work any more. Days are short, and hundreds of advertisers interrupt us to get our attention. Interruption advertising has become less effective.
For software developers, the cost-effectiveness of banner-advertising is marginal at best. While pop-unders seem to be working a little, prospects will soon tire of them, or turn them off with ad-blocking software.
To sell on the Internet, you have to trade. Give prospects something of value, and in return, they give you permission to market to them via newsletter.
Few people look forward to the commercials on television. And nobody wants you to send them a newsletter each month that advertises your software. But if your newsletter offers something of value - something that will make readers' lives better - then people will read it, and respond to it positively.
One of Godin's non-traditional concepts is that we should focus on share-of-customer, and not on market share. It's a lot easier to sell additional software to existing customers than to find new prospects and convince them to buy.
With permission marketing vehicles such as newsletters, frequency builds trust. Unlike ads (which people tune out), content-rich newsletters can turn your company and software into household words, at least among people in your target audience. With each newsletter, people are more likely to buy your applications.
Godin explores myths about marketing on the Internet. Too many software developers equate web traffic with business success. Or they believe that content by itself will generate return-traffic. Or think that search engines will send sufficient traffic to your site.
Unlike many business books that are written for marketing executives at Fortune-100 companies, Permission Marketing has useful strategies for mISVs to set up permission-based websites. And unlike many marketing books that tell you that you should manipulate people into believing something that they don't currently believe, Permission Marketing shows you how to use people's current beliefs to sell more of your software.
The book uses good examples and checklists, and doesn't get bogged down in obscure theories. It's a quick read, and time well spent.
About Al Harberg
Since 1984, Al Harberg has been president of DP Directory, Inc., a public relations firm that helps software developers use press releases to get publicity and sales.
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