12 years ago, I began showing interest in fitness, specifically weight training. But it wasn’t easy to find coaches who have a solid understanding of what they’re doing. For months, I was struggling searching in one gym after another. Then I went online to build my own knowledge. But it was almost the same, coaches who have a couple of tricks to put in front of everyone who knocks on their door. It was frustrating, with limited time and attention and lots of nonsense all around.
Until I stumbled upon a guy from the UK who was sharing good knowledge and applying it to his own training in a garage at his home, AND I signed up for his newsletter, and still for 12 years.
At last, someone was applying science and not pulling tricks out of a remedies book. Everything in this guy’s free ebook was supported by a published clinical study from a respected firm.
Every piece he shares carries value, something that I know will help my training or diet.
He always offers something to sell (books and personalized training programs), but he puts the sale in a context that makes it relevant and does not sound pushy or offensive.
After a while, I bought one of his books, and it was very well thought of and put together, so I went for more of his books one after another.
How did he manage to keep me loyal and eager to hear from him for 12 years?
The answer is Permission Marketing.
In 1995 Seth Godin was the first to name Permission Marketing. He defines it as The privilege of delivering anticipated, personal, and relevant messages to those who want to receive them.
It's asking people to permit us to send them our messages. It's the exact opposite of "send it to everyone you."
And so, someone who permits us to engage with them gives us something very precious these days and even non-refundable and limited: their ATTENTION.
But it's not that simple because with their attention comes their TRUST: “I trust you with my attention, please don’t waste it.”
SO, in return, we MUST respect that and honor our promise to give them back something valuable enough.
The challenge about Permission Marketing is that we should either:
Commit to it.
Or don’t do it at all.
Because every time we engage with the people we seek to serve, we either add to the Attention Asset (by honoring our promise) and thus make ourselves more irreplaceable and justify why paying attention to us is worth it.
Or we are subtracting from the asset, using up some of it (by selfishly asking for some benefit).
So, our job here is to know how much we need to engage with the people we seek to serve before they decide on their own to move forward. And there’s no specific answer for that. It’s on us to know, considering that we are doing it WITH people who are enrolled in our journey, not AT them (this all ties back to empathy).
Our game
It’s going to cost us much in the short term.
Empathy, trust, tension, enrollment, action, and permission come together in the modern marketing we are doing, and each one of them is essential. It will take us much time to do the necessary work on that initially.
But then, people will be enrolled in the journey. They’ll be willing to lend us their attention and see if we can keep our promise. They’ll be eager to give us a chance because something about us makes them believe in us.
So, day by day, week by week, we grow. It's slow in the beginning, but at some point, when the people who believe in us start talking about what we do, the growth curves up exponentially.
The game of spam
The send-it-to-everyone mindset shows little respect by forcing itself on people’s attention and then wasting it. In the short term, numbers will go up almost every time.
But in the long term, they end up just like everybody else: ignored.
Because what they share isn’t worth people’s precious attention, and people will unsubscribe, leave, unfollow to spend their attention somewhere else that’s more important.
Both games yield results, in the short-term or long-term. So the question is: How can we play the more respectful game while building our brands?
