Squidoo Founder Godin Preaches Merits of Permission Marketing
By Samantha Maziarz Christmann, The Buffalo News, N.Y.
Jun. 12–Seth Godin has come a long way from his days as a Williamsville paper boy.
Nearly 300 people pilgrim-aged to Ellicottville to hear the best-selling author and popular blogger share his marketing and media expertise Wednesday. As the keynote speaker of Entrepalooza, an annual gathering of business owners and executives, the Stanford University graduate and founder of Web page sharing network Squidoo counseled audience members about the perils of using 20th century marketing in the 21st century.
“The world has changed enough over the past couple of years that it’s time for you to rethink how you do everything you do,” Godin told the audience. “There are some massive opportunities out there.”
Traditional media — Television, radio, newspapers — were invented to make life easy for advertisers, Godin explained. They exist solely because companies place ads.
Because the Internet exists for users, not businesses, traditional marketing falls flat.
“The Internet will do fine if you don’t play. It wasn’t built for you,” Godin said, addressing the crowd of entrepreneurs.
Adding more noisy advertising, with a pop-up advertisement or a direct-mail postcard, to a glut of media channels assures one’s message will be tuned out. Instead, Godin proposes permission marketing, which he popularized in a book of the same name.
Instead of annoying potential customers with uninvited interruptions, such as spam and telemarketing phone calls, Godin recommends offering incentives to spur consumers to reach out voluntarily.
“You want to talk to people who are listening,” Godin said. “People who give you permission to talk to them are listening.”
Godin also warned audience members against making what he calls a “meatball sundae.”
The meatballs, he said, are the products and services being sold. The dessert toppings are the new media marketing, such as blogs and social networks.
“A meatball sundae is a combination of two really good things,” Godin said. “The new media tools work great — unless you put them on a meatball.”
Just because a company has a Web site, he said, doesn’t mean it’s going to do a company any good, or that anyone will even see it. With so much media competing for so little attention, consumers must strongly desire something on a Web site to go there — a free prize, money, information, entertainment.
The answer, he said, is to make marketing decisions without relying on traditional advertising and instead devote those dollars to making a quality product worth talking about.
A remarkable product with a story to tell will assure consumers spread the word, give permission to be contacted with more information and lead to a mutually beneficial relationship between company and consumer.
The days when the marketer with the loudest voice and fattest wallet dominates are over, he said.
“What matters now is leading people and finding a tribe that wants to follow you,” he said.
The event, held at the Inn at Holiday Valley, was hosted by the Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership Alumni Association, Buffalo Niagara Sales and Marketing Executives and the Buffalo Niagara Partnership.
Donald Hahn, managing director of Hahn Sales Training in Amherst, is a member of all three hosting organizations and attended the event.
“I’ve been in business for seven years, and what I was doing when I started is no longer relevant. The Internet has changed everything,” he said. “[Godin] has opened people’s minds and given them ideas that can change their business. He has shifted the paradigm.”
schristmann@buffnews.com
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