Permission Marketing

Muhammed Ali didn’t hit 20 guys 20 times, he hit 1 guy 20 times.

I suppose that’s not the friendliest example of how to “Turn Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers,” but Seth Godin’s Permission Marketing had some memorable visuals.

Another story that stuck with me was watering seeds. If you had 100 seeds and 100 little sachets of water, how would you best get the flowers (or food) to grow? Seth recommends watering 20 seeds 5 times each over a certain period of time and just throwing away the other 80 seeds.

His analogies with dating were especially memorable. Spend lots of money on a really nice suit and go up to complete strangers and hit on them. When that doesn’t work, just go do the same thing over and over until it might work. Seems so dumb, but then that’s what lots of advertising is.

Wow, I just realized this book was written in 1999! But there is so much that’s so applicable today. I’m one of those fanboys who believe that Seth Godin is way ahead of his time–and ahead of everyone else.

He breaks down 5 different kinds of permission marketing and again uses understandable descriptions to help us understand what he’s getting at. He wraps it up with 10 things you can do to use permission marketing in your business.