Effective Advertising – Marketing With Permission

Have you ever tried to watch a TV show without being interrupted? Let’s face it, no one enjoys commercial breaks when you’re in the thick of it. Being angry at the ad, you surf the channel or just turn off the TV. This results in a huge waste of advertising dollars.

Or how about sitting in traffic on the freeway, listening to the traffic report. Don’t constant commercials every 3 seconds irritate your nerves? Oversized billboards screaming for your attention around every bend in the road don’t do much for you either.

This is what is known as “Disrupted Advertising”. It’s been the traditional form of advertising for years and it’s starting to lose steam. Because the consumer is overloaded with too many marketing messages, they stop listening. Although companies will continue to market in this way, the return on investment or ROI of interruption advertising will continue to decrease.

Jay Levinson, the author of the famous “Guerrilla Marketing” series on small business marketing, has found that in order for your target customer to take an action on your ad, he or she needs to see it 27 times! That means a typical quarter-page newspaper ad that costs around $200 will cost you at least $5,400 just to get your customer to take their first action!

Do not think that all hope is lost. There is a way to effectively market to your customers, without trying to interrupt them. In fact, you can market to them in a way that they expect to receive your messages, making the dollars spent on this form of advertising a great investment. It’s called “Permission Advertising,” which means, of course, that you have the client’s permission to market to them.

Marketing with an opt-in email list is a great example of permission advertising. Use content rich articles that are submitted to article directories to drive traffic to your site. When a visitor lands on your site, they can choose to opt in with a small snippet, whether it’s a download or a free guide to whatever they’re interested in.

Now comes the critical part. Most customers will not buy from you until they are sure they can trust you. You can build their trust by sending them content-rich information that they can benefit from. After a few messages, they will start to trust you and really look forward to your messages. Your ads will be received more pleasantly and your customer will be more likely to take action from them.

Always make sure you use a qualified email service company like Aweber or 1 Shopping Cart, so you don’t have problems with SPAM.